The " Timehri " Articles Upon Indian Languages. ?9 



To grapple with language study it is not enough to be able to 

 speak several languages. Any oidinary person can learn as many lan- 

 guages as he desires. One n ust in addition study the construction of 

 languages, comparative philology, phonology (science of sounds), and 

 the principles of the growth of languages. 



Be it noted : I do not claim t > possess an exhaustive knowledge of 

 such subjects ; but I have studied them with care. 



Nor do I profess to know Makuchi and Akawatho through and 

 through. I had a useful vocabulary of Wapiana (the MaVuchi name for 

 them) from our Wapiana nurse, and a few words of Arawak from a 

 prisoner at the Penal Settlement. 



My only claim is that my studies were on sound lines. 



(My successor has worked upon wrong lines. I hope that he may 

 take warning in time and not fall into those traps into which Brett and 

 others have fallen). 



Some people in Guiana, ignorant of the nature and extent of opportu- 

 nities offered to me, and taken, for language study and original research, 

 jumped to the conclusion that I was merely a novice beating wildiy about 

 the bush. 



The paper by the Rev. C. J. Cary-Elwes, S.J., must have been 

 very informing to those who had not previously thought out the 

 matter at all, and to those who were ignorant of the rules which have 

 guided the Royal Geographical Society. But it ought to be pointed out 

 that the Society's method of adopting a f-cript without diacritical marks 

 was due to the fact — reiterated in its journal soma months back — that 

 the geographical requirements of cartography v.'ould obscure diacritical 

 marks. The Society claim" no more than that it has adopted a rough and 

 ready method, and it nowhere claims that, for language study and 

 literature, its method is ideal, or even sufficient. The Greeks used 

 diacritical marks, and so do the French, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards 

 to name but a few. 



The reason for the need of diacritical marks is this: Languages, 

 even non-tonal ones, are built up upon six, or more, long-vowels and (or) 

 a corresponding number of short-vowels. Pure English has short-vowels 

 predominating. French and other Latin languages have long-vowels 

 predominating. Pure English is found in Northern England and parts 

 of Scotland (I believe Caithness makes some big claims), while Norman 

 (French) English is found in the South-East. The difference can be 

 traced in such words as grass, gLiss, dance, prance : in the North the 

 vowels are short, while in the South they are long. 



While languages are so built up, the scripts adopted fail to meet the 

 requirements without the use of diacritical marks ! The English Alphabet 

 has only five letters (vowels a, e, i, o, u) to represent twelve sounds. 



