I04 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 314 



SPEECH AND ALPHABETICS.' 

 I HAVE never practised offhand utterance on any subject. I have 

 always had to write what I had to say ; so that I have enslaved 

 myself to a method which I cannot now hope to change. The 

 method, however, has this advantage ; namely, that it keeps one to 

 the point, prevents rambling of thought and vagueness of expres- 

 sion, and so enables one to be exact to his intention, both in outline 

 and detail. I do not mean that an address on such an occasion as 

 the present should be read, but that, however little used, the pres- 

 ence of paper secures presence of mind. On the whole, therefore, 

 I do not know that I should greatly care to change my method, 

 even if I could. 



We are called on to say something on the subject that most in- 

 terests our thoughts. This requirement will, of course, furnish 

 excuse for whatever of egotism there may seem to be in our re- 

 sponse to the call. For my part, I can say, that, while I have from 

 time to time ridden an occasional hobby, there has always been one 

 subject of abiding interest which has persisted in maintaining 

 prominence in my thoughts from my earliest days until now. That 

 subject has been " Speech and Alphabetics." 



I had hereditary leanings to the profession of teacher of vocal 

 physiology, which no doubt influenced the current even of my 

 boyish thoughts; and when, in 1841, I began to prepare myself for 

 independent work, I sought to supplement what I may call the 

 family knowledge which I possessed, by the study of all available 

 books on the subject. I found, however, that but little assistance 

 was to be obtained from this source; for the art of treating defects 

 of speech had been shrouded in secrecy by nearly all its practitioners. 

 My father was, in fact, the first to repudiate occult methods in the 

 cure of stammering, and to practise his system openly. At the 

 time I speak of, there did not exist in print, so far as I could dis- 

 cover, any precise directory for the processes of articulation. I 

 aimed at teaching these processes, but could not find a single work 

 that gave specific guidance as to what to do, or how to do it, in 

 any given case. Under these circumstances, I had to investigate 

 from my own organs and the organs of my pupils. I had many 

 pupils, exhibiting wide varieties of defects and peculiarities, and 

 the observations on these by day became the study of the night. I 

 may add, however, that my night-work never interfered with day- 

 work ; that it invariably terminated not later than two in the morn-* 

 ing, while the day-work invariably began not later than ten. This 

 was very nearly the philosopher's division of the twenty-four hours, 



— one third for work, one third for recreation, and one third for 

 rest. But my work and recreation were inseparable. Work was 

 one half recreation, and recreation one half work, on the principle 

 that " the labor we delight in physics pain," or, in other words, is 

 recreative. 



Years of this pleasurable devotion to one subject ultimately de- 

 veloped what I had sought in vain to find as a legacy from profes- 

 sional predecessors. In 1849 the first results of my labors were 

 published under the title of " A New Elucidation of the Principles 

 of Speech and Elocution," forming the kind of directory which I 

 had desiderated before I began to teach. But this work was far 

 from exhausting my phonetic material, which was still, moreover, 

 increasing. I had become experimentally acquainted with a cate- 

 gory of sounds far exceeding those in any language. The peculiar 

 elements in Gaelic, Welsh, Scotch and Irish dialects, provincial 

 and metropolitan English, American English, French, German, etc., 



— as well as those accidental sounds produced by stammerers, lisp- 

 ers, persons with cleft palate, deaf-mutes, etc., — were familiar to 

 my ear and my vocal organs ; and I sought long to incorporate 

 them into one phonetic scheme, where each sound should find its 

 place in due relation to every other sound. The process was the 

 converse of that which had been tried for the collation of a univer- 

 sal alphabet. Eminent linguists had endeavored to collect from 

 all known languages the sounds of each, and from these to frame 

 an alphabet by which all tongues might be uniformly written. But 

 no success had attended the efforts, because the identities and dif- 

 ferences among the elements could not be satisfactorily determined. 

 At a conference held in 1854, the object thus aimed at was finally 

 abandoned, and declared to be impossible. 



'Address by Professor A. Melville Bell, delivered in Washington, D.C, Jan. 28, 



A different basis, however, seemed to me to promise a different 

 result. My aim was to find a physiological instead of a linguistic 

 basis for the desired universal alphabet. I therefore sketched out 

 mouth-regions, divided as it were by lines of latitude and longitude, 

 and endeavored to locate in my chart every sound which I could form 

 or which I could distinguish, whether linguistic or not, so as to bring 

 under review all the varieties that could be produced by the organs 

 of speech. From such a category, I reasoned, the phonetic ele- 

 ments of any and every language might undoubtedly be selected 

 and identified. The undertaking was an arduous one, filling up 

 the night-work hours of many years ; but it was at last accom- 

 plished, in the system of " Visible Speech" published in 1867. 



Naturally, you will perceive, some aspect of my life-topic must 

 still be one of the principal subjects of my thoughts. " Visible 

 Speech " furnishes, in a universal alphabet, the necessary vehicle 

 of a universal language, whenever, if ever, such a bond of human 

 brotherhood shall become an accomplished fact. In the mean time, 

 the system, as an educational implement, performs services both 

 novel and valuable : so I might leave it now out of my thoughts. 

 But I have recently been invited, from an influential quarter, to 

 prepare a popular manual on the subject; and, in working at this, 

 I have developed some new points, which will, I think, add greatly 

 to the scientific value of the system. 



The phonetics of our own language have lately claimed my chief 

 attention. Our words have settled into forms irregular, incon- 

 gruous, and bristling with difficulties to the learner. Every lover 

 of the English tongue must wish that some means should be 

 adopted to render it more easy of acquirement. To us who have 

 mastered the difficulties, each word has, by association, become a 

 thought-picture, of which every letter is a necessary part ; and we 

 look upon any disturbance of the orthography to which we are. ac- 

 customed as we would upon distortion in a drawing. What is 

 called " spelling-reform " is therefore, to perhaps nine persons out 

 of ten, an abomination. If no other means were possible to lessen 

 the labor of learning to read, the objectors to spelling-reform would 

 no doubt yield to the inevitable, and lay aside prejudices and predi- 

 lections, from philanthropic motives; but they cannot be asked to 

 do so while any method remains for obviating the tyro's difificulties 

 without offending the educated, by changing the aspect of our lit- 

 erature. 



Thinking on this subject, the idea occurred to let spelling alone, 

 and make a perfectly phonetic version of our common alphabet by 

 limiting each letter to its one most usual sound, discarding unneces- 

 sary letters, and designing new letters for unrepresented sounds, so 

 as to form a separate initiatory system for children and foreigners. 

 One primary object was to preserve such a resemblance to ordinary 

 letters as might enable any person to read the new as readily as he 

 does the old. By means of the amended alphabet, the time of learn- 

 ing to read may be reduced to a fraction of that required with com- 

 mon letters, while the exact sound of every word is deduced front 

 the writing of the word itself. 



There can be no doubt that^a child, or a foreigner, who has 

 learned to read from phonetic letters, will, with little or no further 

 instruction, read also from common letter-s ; and he will learn 

 spelling by the mere contrast with phonetic writing. Spelling is 

 thus always learned pictorially, by the eye, and not mentally, by 

 rule. 



One other point. English grammar, as compared with olher 

 grammars, is so simple that any alteration in it can scarcely be 

 considered necessary ; nevertheless the few existing irregularities 

 may be removed from initiatory books without affecting standard 

 English. I have pointed out elsewhere how this may be done. 



English is already the most widely used of all tongues ; and the 

 adoption of the amended alphabet will facilitate its diffusion, so 

 that it may speedily become the general medium of international 

 communication throughout the world, — in briefer phrase, world- 

 English. 



Interest is hard to be aroused, except when some selfish object 

 is to be attained. We have no personal benefits to be derived from 

 the system which I advocate ; but coming generations have, and 

 so has all the outer world. Indifference is not a proper mental at- 

 titude in reference to such a subject. National pride, if no higher 

 motive, should urge to effort, and liberality in furtherance of effort. 



