414 Defence of Sir William Jones' [Aug. 



Professor Rask also advocates the making of the Roman substitutes as nearly con- 

 sonant as possible to the original ; — " in his vero, me quidem judice, hoc prrecep- 

 tum semper servandum, ut quam proxime ad mentem ijysius nationis exprimantur 

 ejus literce." On this score the Jonesia.n far surpasses the Gilchristian scheme 

 of vowels, the long and short vowels of the same class being expressed by the same 

 character : — but we must allow Mr. Trevklyan to speak for himself. 



" Sir Wm. Jones' plan is systematic and complete in all its parts, so that in 

 every case in which an analogy exists between different sounds, a corresponding 

 analogy will be found to pervade the signs by which they are represented. Thus 

 the long sound of a is & ; of i, i ; and of u, u ; and the diphthong ai, which is com- 

 pounded of a and i, is represented by those letters, and au (ow) which is com- 

 pounded of a and u, by au. The consequence of this strict attention to preserve 

 an analogy in the sign corresponding to the variations in the sound is, that the 

 acquisition of the Alphabet is greatly facilitated to the learner, who in fact has to 

 make himself acquainted with only five elementary signs which are the representa- 

 tives of as many original sounds, and the remaining five are only elongated form 

 or composites of these. 



" In Dr. Gilchrist's plan, with a single exception, there is no analogy whatever 

 between the long and short forms of the vowels, and between the diphthongs and 

 their component vowels. Thus in his system a is the long form of u, ee of i, and 

 the diphthong ai is represented by we, and aw by w o. It is needless to dilate on 

 the confusion which this want of system must produce in the mind of every learner. 

 No help is here provided for him, and instead of being guided from step to step 

 by a change in the form of the character, sufficient to distinguish the modification 

 in the sound, while enough is retained of the original letter to mark the elementa- 

 ry connexion, he is perplexed by a variety of characters between which no kind of 

 analogy is capable of being traced. In short, instead of having only five signs to 

 get by heart, he has no less than nine. In tracing the analogy between cor- 

 responding modifications of sound, this plan is worse than if no assistance were 

 afforded him. In this eccentric system of letters long vowels are actually 

 divorced from their partners and so disguised as to render it impossible to recog- 

 nize the original connection between them, and diphthongs are in like manner 

 kidnapped from their parent vowels, and disfigured worse than Gypsey children. 

 Who would suppose that u is the legitimate husband of a, that ee is the devoted 

 wife of i, that we is the interesting offspring of a and i, and uo the eldest hope of 

 a and w. This is not a system of orthography, but if I may be allowed to invent a 

 word, of kakography ; of confusion, mystification and absurdity. It is singular 

 that when a man sat down with a carte blanche before him to invent a system of 

 letters, he was not able to devise something better than this ; and it is still more so 

 that having the labours of his learned predecessor Sir W. Jones to profit by, 

 when he altered he should have altered so much for the worse. 



" Another advantage of Sir William Jones' plan is that, besides being complete 

 in itself, owing to the perfect analogy which exists between the different letters, it 

 bears a strict correspondence throughout to the great Indian or Deva N&gari 

 alphabet. All the alphabets derived from the latter are very systematic, and a 

 scheme which is otherwise cannot properly represent them. But Sir W. Jones 

 does it exactly, as will be seen from the following table : 



^ a in above ^r d in art 



X, * in T i police 



