270 ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 
39. “If this system of orthography should ever be adopted for the language itself, it is 
recommended that every author should write as he himself would pronounce; and then, as 
it is natural for every one to strive to imitate the best writers and speakers, in process of 
tume the language would become settled in a uniform mode of writing and speaking.” 
40. It is becoming evident, that without an orthographic reform, the integrity and uni- 
versality of the English language will be destroyed, and the arch with which it spans the 
globe will fall into fragments more heterogeneous than the dialects now current in the 
British Islands. Webster gives a word rail-lery; and eng-ine is common in the United 
States: both being taken from books, and not from speech. This would not have hap- 
pened if raillery had conformed to its analogue gallery, and engine (Fr. engin) to virgin. 
and origin. These are examples of corruption in one direction; in another, chiefly due 
to the East Indian press, we find a jargon coming into use, and reminding one of the 
? 
thieves’ dialect in London. Thus, an English soldier will “loot the camp,” where an 
American (since the Mexican war) will “vamos the ranch.” 
Al. The present author laid an alphabet before a learned society in the year 1844, but 
withdrew it before it was reported on, because he had a limited knowledge of vocal phe- 
nomena, and was not acquainted with the Latin alphabet—a knowledge which must pre- 
cede every attempt to employ it for phonetic, etymologic, or ethnologic purposes. Since 
that period, the Greek and Latin alphabets have been studied, but leaving three points 
still in doubt; namely, whether Greek 7 had the power of e in they, (the Latin E,) or in 
thére, (but accepting the latter, chiefly on the authority of E. A. Sophocles;) next, whether 
Latin O was German, English, Spanish, and Portuguese 0, or Italian 0, (which varies a 
very little towards awe;) and, what was the nature of Latin L, of which the accounts 
given by the ancient grammarians are unsatisfactory. From philologic considerations, O 
and L have been assigned their German and English power, which would cause the Ger- 
man word lob (praise,) the English word /obe, and the first syllable of the Latin LOB-us 
to be written LOB. 
41 a. TEN PARADOXES. 
1. The letters c and s never have the power of sh in English. 
2. In disquisitions upon the elements of speech, the term diphthong is useless. 
3. The term euphony is useless in etymology. (This view has been anticipated in Prof. 
Key’s paper “On the Misuse of the terms Epenthesis and Kuphony.” Philological So- 
ciety’s Transactions, 1847, Vol. III. pp. 45—56.) 
4. Allowing wh or hw to represent the initial sound of when, and en the closing vowel 
and consonant—‘when’ or ‘hwen’ will not spell the word. 
