'915.] LYMAN— A PRACTICAL RATIONAL ALPHABET. 369 



liable to the same objection, or to greater crudity, are yet additional 

 languages to be learned. English already known to a much larger 

 number of men than any other language, seems to be, by all odds, 

 the best adapted to become, perhaps with slight modifications, a uni- 

 versal language. The simplicity of its grammar, aside from orthog- 

 raphy, makes it remarkably easy for foreigners to learn ; and, for 

 use in universal form, the comparatively few irregularities of gram- 

 mar might considerately be eliminated, so that (in universal form) 

 it might be allowed to say mouses, instead of mice, and digged in- 

 stead of dug. English has already shown its capacity to express 

 perfectly the finest distinctions of ideas and must in that respect far 

 excel any artificial language, like Esperanto, or Volapuek, with their 

 rude, bald, lack, for example, of the definite or indefinite articles. 

 A rational, phonetic, practical spelling would, then, make English 

 ideally perfect for a universal language. Clearly, for that purpose, 

 the usage of speakers of some region, or of some degree of cultiva- 

 tion, with some degree of emphasis, must be selected as the norm to 

 which the written language should conform, in order to make the 

 writing and spelling in the main, though not always in every minute 

 detail, phonetic. Well taught children should, then, everywhere learn 

 to pronounce the words as they are spelled, and not be allowed to 

 drop the sound of r in arm, or pervert the sound of the English long 

 u (like yu, except after the sound of ch, j, r, sh, zh, or y). Normal 

 schools should train teachers in these details so that the children 

 may be properly drilled. In that way the language would be rightly 

 conserved, and would tend to become fit for universal use. 



One serious difficulty in the adoption of any such improvements 

 of our alphabet is that there are so many men who excel more in 

 persuasive eloquence, in " the gift of the gab," than in a thorough 

 knowledge of phonetics and inclination to careful reflection. Cad- 

 mus could not have been a ready tongued, shallow utterer of rapidly 

 up-bubbling superficial thoughts. A group, or committee, or society 

 of such quick-witted individuals (perhaps some of them so densely 

 ignorant as to suppose h to be a consonant, instead of the whispered, 

 or surd, form of its following vowel, or to insist that the English 

 ch, and ;' are compounded of sounds distinguishable even by the 

 ear, and as much unlike the real ones as the bursting open, or bang- 

 ing shut of a tightly swollen door, is to the mild clapping to or open- 



