1864.] On the Origin of the Hindvi Language. 509 



pronouncing French words correctly, and the Frenchman is rare who 

 can speak English like an Englishman. It is to obviate this difficulty 

 and secure uniformity in spelling and reading, that the " Phonetic 

 System" has been originated in England, and Ellis, Pitman and others 

 are trying to supersede the Eoman characters altogether. This prob- 

 lem of phonetic reform involves questions of mathematics, physiology, 

 and acoustics, besides those of convenience, easy writing, and ecconomy 

 of printing, which I cannot undertake to discuss. The system that will 

 satisfy all the requirements of the different languages that we have to 

 deal with, remains yet to be devised, and until that is done it would 

 be too hasty to take up the proposition in connexion with the Indian 

 dialects. The advocates of the phonetic system, who are making such 

 rapid strides in England, will, ere long, do away with thepresent arbitrary 

 and puzzling English orthography, and then will be the proper time to 

 think of romanizing the Indian vernaculars. At present the want of 

 uniformity of the Roman characters in the different countries of Europe, 

 has led to many dissimilar and often contradictory systems of roman- 

 ising ; and since every one of them is more or less defective, their 

 introduction in vernacular writing in India, where we have to deal with 

 several distinct nationalities having many peculiar sounds of their own, 

 cannot but prove most troublesome and vexatious. These sound, even 

 when stereotyped by a number of diacritical marks, will still remain 

 peculiar, and be quite as unintelligible as foreign letters to an ordinary 

 European scholar. No language unaffected by physical causes can 

 borrow sounds. Centuries of the Norman conquest failed to force French 

 sounds into English organs of speech,* and it is impossible therefore 

 to suppose that the European languages will ever receive foreign 

 sounds for the sake of a few diacritical marks : and if they will not 

 where is then the uniformity for which we are to sacrifice all the Indian 

 dialects ? If the familiar English c 9 the emblem at different times of s 



* Perhaps the real cause of the arbitrary character of the English alphabet is 

 due to the adoption of the Eoman letters by the Saxons for a Teutonic lanor U ao- e 

 the sounds of which they could not represent without assuming other" thin 

 the sounds which had been originally assigned to them. °Hence it is 

 that the Latin dentals t and d have become cerebrals in En°-lish tho ' 

 latter having no t and d sound at all. Translating from the Eno-lish a'oreaf 

 iiumber of foreign names are, in the vernaculars, written with cerebral t and 

 dwhen they should be represented by dentals. A ridiculous instance of 

 this occurs in a Bengali novel where an aping Young Bengal is made to ™n J* 

 father c^t<H^ instead of c$r^/w. 



