364 LYMAN— A PRACTICAL RATIONAL ALPHABET. [Oct. i, 



peculiar sounds, which to ordinary foreigners without Porter's help, 

 and with merely the ear as a guide, are mysterious and even con- 

 sidered quite unattainable. He distinguishes nine points at which 

 the tongue is placed, and at each of those points, four degrees of 

 openness; making thereby thirty-six readily distinguishable vowels. 

 But a number of them are not in ordinary use, and are therefore not 

 to be considered in any orthographic scheme. A few additions are 

 to be made on account of the effect of stiffening the lips, changing 

 the sound. In order to accommodate ourselves to this classification 

 of the vowels it is desirable to add to our letters se (not a new 

 combination) as ae in German Maedchen, for the sound of a in 

 care; and oe (again not new), nearly like the oe in German schoen 

 for certain closely allied sounds ; and a new character, like the 

 Swedish a, with an o over it ; but contracted into a single form, for 

 the sounds, like a in war, or o in lord, or oa in broad. Yet another 

 new form may be added, e with a stroke like an accent just to 

 its left, to correspond with the French acute-accented e. We have, 

 then, nine characters for Porter's nine groups of four vowels each. 

 He calls attention to the fact that in each group of four vowels, 

 differing only in the degree of closeness of the tongue at the same 

 place in the mouth, two of the four are long and two short. Let us 

 therefore represent the long vowels by the ancient device of simply 

 doubling (with slight contraction) the letter used for the short 

 vowels, as the Greeks already set us the example with their omega. 

 All the vowels can in like manner be doubled, and somewhat con- 

 tracted, making at once eighteen easily written and easily read 

 vowels conforming well to the already established character of our 

 alphabet. Until appropriate type for the purpose are to be had, 

 we might provisionally merely double the present letters ; as : aa, 

 ee, etc. In one or two cases the number can be increased by 

 indicating a labial modification of the vowel by means of a small 

 upright stroke, an abbreviated / (provisionally a small /), close to 

 the right hand of the letter. In this way, we are easily provided 

 with about twenty vowels, apparently an ample supply for the 

 English language. 



Let us now consider the vowels one by one, more particularly. 

 In group I, the a of last, ask, chant, is short ; while that of father 



