Letters an Embarrassment to Literature. 51 



tures rather, for the languages have almost formed themselves — 

 without the least regard to the sort of alphabet used. A single 

 language exhausts our score and six letters, and the next is forced 

 to fit this same garment to its altered proportions. 



Human speech is made up of the various phonetic effects of 

 the air passing through the mouth and nose, as modified by the 

 tongue, the teeth, the lips, the uvula, and the vocal chords. We 

 know, by the physical laws of phonetic change, that every modi- 

 fication of these physiological organs must produce a distinct 

 sound. No language uses nearly all the possible voice modifica- 

 tions ; but each one employs a certain definite number of them — 

 our own using about forty — and makes up for the deficiency of 

 symbols by arbitrarily assigning some group of letters to represent 

 the phonetic elements of each word of the language. One result 

 of this practice is, that in different languages, different powers are 

 given to the same letter. This is rapidly becoming a greater and 

 greater evil, as the study of the languages, especially the modern, 

 becomes more general and more necessary. It is not easy to over- 

 come the power of a fixed habit and give a new sound to a famil- 

 iar letter. Especially is this difiicult when the new power of the 

 letter differs but little from the old, as when, lor instance, we learn 

 the continental o — a simple sound — or when a student from the 

 Continent learns our o — a diphthong. I set this fault of the al- 

 phabet among the chief reasons why we come so far short of 

 mastering the orthoepy of foreign languages. The importance 

 of this feature of linguistic study cannot well be overestimated. 



The fact that there are less letters in the alphabet than there are 

 elementary sounds in our language leads to the fatal necessity of 

 employing the same letter in different capacities. This unsettles 

 the powers of the alphabet, and disturbs the logical order of edu- 

 cation, even for the children in our common schools. Unfortu- 

 nately the confusion thus necessitated does not stop with the limit 

 of the necessity. The demoralization consequent npon the un- 

 systematic use of letters with variable powers has greatly increased 

 the burden of a common educaiioo. The first letter of the alpha- 

 bet is given, by some careful orthoepists, nine distinct sounds, as 

 in a?e, any, care, pan, pass, arm, idea, luhat and all. The same 



