310 



. Mi\ Flckering on the Orthography of the 



with others, may 



H, HW. 



i 



Ilf either when single or in combination 

 perform its usual office of an aspirate. 



Hw will be wanted for the purpose of denoting the sound 



F 



which in English we now express by wh, as in what, when, &c., 

 though our Saxon ancestors used to put the h before the w, and 



wrote the same words hwrnt, hwmnne. The Swedes also (as 

 Mr. Du Ponceau remarks in one of his letters to mej formerly 

 used hw and hu ; but at the present day, they as well as the 

 Danes use hv, - 



J. 



The use of the letter J is attended with more difficulty than 



any of the preceding consonants. A German or an Italian 



would inevitably give it the sound of our y :* a Frenchman or a 



Poriusueze. that of zh 



our 



; whil 



a 



Spaniard would give it the strong guttural sound well known 

 in his language. Under these circumstances, therefore, although 

 it is extremely desirable to have single letters to represent single 

 sounds (as we generally denominate them) yet it appears to me 

 better on the whole to reject the letter J, and instead of it to 

 adopt a combination of letters, which shall be in analogy with the 

 common sound of our ch ftshj, which is the corresponding sharp 

 sound to that of J, As, therefore, I shall presently propose to de- 

 note our ch by tsh, so in the present cas& I would supply the place 



of our J, by dsh or dzh / or, if it should be 



ght best, in a 



practical alphabet, to sacrifice analogy to simplicity, we might 



* Mr. Heckewelder very judiciouslj employs the y instead of j, which Mr. 

 Zeisberger and the other German Missionaries always make use of. See his 

 Correspondence with Mr, Du Fonceau, p. 383. 



