POWELL] PHILOLOGY CXLVH 



consonants, and these may prevail to a greater or less degree 

 in different languages. It is thus that the vocal apparatus of 

 sound used to express speech in voice is capable of producing 

 a great number of different sounds when we consider all the 

 languages of mankind. On the other hand, when we consider 

 the sounds of any particular language we find that only a 

 limited number of well-differentiated sounds are used. Per- 

 haps two or three score of such well-differentiated sounds 

 will be discovered. If for any languag'e we wish to represent 

 every sound by a distinct character, the problem is more easily 

 solved because the number of sounds to be represented is thus 

 restricted. Should we wish to represent all the sounds of all 

 the languages l)y distinct characters, so that one character will 

 stand for its special sound and no other, the problein is not so 

 easily solved. The characters, then, are far more immerous. 

 Very much practice and great painstaking are required to 

 discover the sounds of an unknown tongue. The speech of 

 one man differs from another in the emission of sounds, even 

 though they may have a common language. There are thus 

 innumerable slight differences in the sounds produced in the 

 same language by different persons, but habit interprets them 

 according to a common standard which is established hx vocal 

 and written spelling. The habit thus formed of interpreting 

 the sounds of the langfuao'e to a conventional norm renders it 

 very difficult to interpret the sounds of an unknown tongue. 

 It is thus that students of the lower and unwritten languages 

 use very different characters, because they interpret the sounds 

 of such languages by assimilating them to the sounds with 

 which they are more or less familiar: and there are instances 

 in which the same person will interpret n sound as one thing and 

 then another by its associations, and even in the same word the 

 sound -will have a double interpretation on different occasions 

 or when used by different ]jersons. There are certain characters 

 used to represent soimds in which this liabilit}' to misinterpre- 

 tation is cotmnon. Such are the sounds represented b-v I and 

 n, the sounds represented by 2) and h, and even b^■ j^ J), and w. 

 In one language related sounds may not be differentiated, and 

 the synthetic sound produced will then be interju'eted in \-ary- 



