ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 267 
must present radical differences, because one mode of notation must replace many modes. 
Hence if 0 is adopted with its correct power in host, the word lost must vary from its pre- 
sent form, and nothing in the new can recall old forms like lore, lose, and the seven or eight 
thousand words spelt with final e, which must disappear from the whole, perhaps to be 
transferred to other words which have been spelt with a different final character. Di- 
graphs being wrong in principle, they should not even be hinted at, as in using a character 
like €0 to recall the old 00, which ought not to be recalled intentionally, and for ages to 
come. Compare door, adore, oar, four; rot, rote, root, groat, slough;* mote, moat; they, 
met, meet, meat, mete; great, grate; bate, bait; bite, bight; heel, heal, fealty. 
30. “ Writers on phonetics .. . adopt the present letters as far as they go, adding 
a few new ones to complete the list. They wish to retain the old letters, so that the pre- 
sent generation may be able to read the new way with little trouble. Grave as this con- 
sideration may look, it is but a slight one. A man can learn a phonetic alphabet which 
is altogether new to him, in a few hours; a labor insignificant in an alphabet intended to 
spread over the world. There is no advantage to the learner, in retaining a letter as to 
its shape, and changing its character. We may retain the letter e, but when we restrict it 
to one of the many sounds it now stands for, we make a new letter of it. It occasioned me 
more trouble to remember that a particular sound belongs to the printing a, and another 
to the written a, than to attach those sounds to new characters, because in this latter case 
the other sounds of the letter a are not constantly occurring to my mind.” Condensed 
from An Endeavor towards a Universal Alphabet; by A. D. Sproat, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1857. 
31. English spelling can be reformed thoroughly, whereas, in Spanish, Italian, and German, 
the imperfections are fewer, and their removal less imperative. The Italian syllable qut 
corresponds with Latin qv1, but Spanish qui has w silent. Italian uses J nearly in its pro- 
per Latin sense, Spanish corrupts it to a guttural aspirate, and uses y instead of Latin J; 
Spanish ch is tsh, Italian ch is k, that is, h keeps the cay pure in Italian, and corrupts it 
in Spanish. It may be long before such discrepancies are removed. 
32. The English word chew (tshoo, Walker) would be expressed by chu in Spanish, ciw in 
Italian, ¢schw in German, tchou in French, yy or muy in Russian, czu in Polish, esw in Hun- 
garian, and wa in Hebrew. The Greek and Latin alphabets are incapable of representing 
it—for in tshu, the sh should have their power in mishap, and s being already an aspirate, 
it cannot be treated like the lenis ¢, to form th. If the English word favor were German, 
it would be spelt fewer; and if the Latin cor (heart) were English, it would be spelt core, 
as in fact it is. 
* As words, ‘groat’ and ‘slough’ are unkvown to the writer, except the latter as a medical term. 
VOL. x1.—35 
