DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET 



make it clear that this sound enters into a large 

 number of syllables. There are, for example, at least 

 twenty vowel sounds in the English language, not to 

 speak of certain digraphs; that is to say, each of the 

 important vowels has from two to six sounds. Each 

 of these vowel sounds may enter into combination 

 with the b sound alone to form three syllables; as 

 ba, ab, bal, be, eb, bel, etc. Thus there are at least 

 sixty 6-sound syllables. But this is not the end, for 

 other consonantal sounds may be associated in the 

 syllables in such combinations as bad, bed, bar, bark, 

 cab, etc. As each of the other twenty odd con- 

 sonantal sounds may enter into similar combinations, 

 it is obvious that there are several hundreds of funda- 

 mental syllables to be taken into account in any 

 syllabic system of writing. For each of these syl- 

 lables a symbol must be set aside and held in reserve 

 as the representative of that particular sound. A 

 perfect syllabary, then, would require some hundred 

 or more of symbols to represent b sounds alone; and 

 since the sounds for c, d, /, and the rest are equally 

 varied, the entire syllabary would run into thousands 

 of characters, almost rivalling in complexity the 

 Chinese system. But in practice the most perfect 

 syllabary, such as that of the Babylonians, fell short of 

 this degree of precision through ignoring the minor 

 shades of sound ; just as our own alphabet is content to 

 represent some thirty vowel sounds by five letters, 

 ignoring the fact that a, for example, has really half a 

 dozen distinct phonetic values. By such slurring of 

 sounds the syllabary is reduced far below its ideal limits ; 

 yet even so it retains three or four hundred characters. 



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