SoO Mr, Pickering on the Orthograj)Jiyoftlie 



m 



The whole Alphabet, then, of the proposed systematic Or- 

 thography, that U, the basis or fundamental characters of it, will 

 be as represented in the following Table ; in which the several 

 characters are arranged according to our common alphabetical 

 Older, without any attempt being made to class the sounds ac- 

 cording to their organic formation ; because, useful and necessary 

 as this would be in a philosophical investigation of the affinities 

 of those sounds, it would not be attended with any important 

 advantage in an alphabet, like the present, designed merely for 

 pt-actical use. AVhen we are searching for a word in a diction- 

 ary, whether of the Indian or any other language, we naturally 

 look for the icritten sign in the place where it ought to stand 

 according to the arrangement of our own alph a bet. 



I may here add, what I wish to be distinctly understood, 

 that, as it never was my plan to give a universal alphabet on strict 

 philosophical principles for the use of the learned, but merely a 

 ^practical one, to be applied to the Indian languages of North 

 America, so I have intentionally omitted many sounds, which 

 occur in the languages of Europe and other parts of the world, 

 and numerous modifications of greater or less delicacy in some of 

 the fundamental sounds which have come under my notice. 

 Among such omitted sounds might be mentioned the various 

 slight differences (to an unpractised ear often imperceptible) in 

 the French e and other vowels, depending upon the accent af- 

 fixed to thera, and about which, indeed, their own writers have 

 differed, as our own do iu respect to the nicer distinctions of 

 English pronunciation — the French u (German m, Danish and 

 Swedish yj — the French eii or oeu (German and Swedish o or 

 6, Danish C^) &c. ; to which might be added the Polish I harrea 

 4 or crossed I J which, as Mr. Du Ponceau remarks, is found in 



