266 ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 
difficulties encountered in the formation of a language previously unwritten,” (VI.)—this 
treatise, as a System, is unphilosophic, inconsistent, vacillating, and superficial.* 
25. Dr. Lepsius concedes that an alphabetic system should admit of “reduction and enlarge- 
ment without alteration in its essential principles.’ Yet a uniform mode of enlargement 
is not proposed, and whilst 7 is allowed to represent an aspirate /, ‘2 is not allowed to re- 
present an aspirate n, because / is “fricative” and “explosive,” by a false theory; nor 
is there a substitute suggested for the forbidden spirittis aspér mark. The diacritic marks 
used are not restricted to particular phases of speech; but, on the contrary, one mark is 
assigned several heterogeneous values. 
26. Professor Lepsius has not quoted Mr. Ellis, who is much his superior in this intricate 
subject, nor Dr. Latham, who would have informed him that a diphthong is not composed 
of two vowels. Nor has he given the Latin alphabet a critical revision, if we may judge 
from his notion (p. 41) that the Latin diphthong wis the German vowel 6, and that caLum 
ends with German m, and that this Latin word is, in German letters, kolum, rather than 
(in Polish notation) kojlu,, or (French) coylou”. 
27. English spelling has a redeeming feature to which the late period of its reform gives 
incalculable value. ts corruption is so great, that any consistent alphabet would have so 
many discrepancies from the present one, that the few concessions which the new could 
make, would be of very little aid to any one already able to read the corrupt one, whilst 
the drudgery of learning the irregularities of this, would be lessened but little by the form 
of a phonotypic one previously learned. Hence, as far as English is concerned, the new 
alphabet might be Greek, Russian, or phonography, because the labour of learning to read 
a consistent new alphabet is not great.} 
28. The Cherokees, who have a cumbersome and imperfect syllabary of 85 characters, which 
must be laboriously written in their printed forms, when advised to adopt the Roman _al- 
phabet, express their distrust of ours, stating that the best argument in favor of their 
own is the fact, that when their children have learnt the characters, they are able to read- 
29. English spelling is so irregular that any reformed orthography in Roman typography 
* See my Report on the Present State of our Knowledge of Linguistic Ethnology, made to the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, (Tenth Meeting,) August, 1856. 
+ The use of a corrupt alphabet induces bad habits in a phonetic one like Greek. A girl of fourteen, who knew 
the sounds of German and French, learnt the Greek alphabet in one hour, about one-fourth of which was taken 
up with a work on inscriptions, to account for the writing forms; but when words were to be spelled out, 7» was 
converted into English an; e¢¢ (instead of having the initial vowel of etch) became ice; and to words like xoapo¢ 
with the genuine but short vowel of céast, that of cost was assigned, (for even in the modern tongue, 0 and w have 
the same quality.) Similarly, several persons have been met with, who read the Spanish article e/ like the first 
syllable of alley; because, Spanish e being English a, a-/ must spell al. 
