ALP 



ALP 



the Dutch 265 the Spaniih 27; the Italian 20; the In ■ 

 dians of Bengal 21 ; the Rramas 19. 



Tlic Ethiopic has no lefs than 202 letters in its alphabet, 

 there being fcvcn towcIs, which they combine with each of 

 their 26 coiifonairts ; to which they add 20 otiier afpirattd 

 fyllables. Tlie like is faid of the Tartarian ; each of their 

 letters is a fyllable, having one of their vowels joined to its 

 confonant ; as la, U, 11, &c. 



The Chinefe have no alphabet, properly fpoaking ; except 

 ve call their whole language their alphabet ; tlicir letters are 

 words, or rather hieroglyphics, and are in number about 

 80.000. See Phil. Tranf. vol. lix. an. 1769, N" 66. 



In efFeft, alphabets were not contrived with defign, ac- 

 cording to the i\i(l rules of reafon and analogy ; but have 

 been fuccefTivcly framed, altered, &c. as occaiiou offered. 

 And hence have arifcn many grievous complaints as to their 

 deficiencies ; and divers attempts to ellablidi new and more 

 adequate ones in their places. Biihop Wilkins cliarges all 

 the alphabets extant with great irregularities, with refpcfl 

 to the order, number, power, figure, &c. As to the 

 order, it appears ijiaitificial, precarious, and confufed ; be- 

 caufe the vowels and confonants are not reduced into claffes, 

 with fueh order of precedence and fubfequence as their na- 

 tures will bear. Even the Hebrew order is not free from 

 this imperfection. As to number, they are both redundant 

 and deficient ; redundant, cither by allotting feveral letters 

 to the fame power and found ; as in the Hebrew p and J>^, 

 .ind the ordinary Latin c and i, f -AnA ph ; or by reckoning 

 double letters among the fimple elements of fpeech ; as in 

 the Hebrew y, the Greek | and 4^, the Latin y, cu, x, cs, 

 and the j confonant, or jod — Deficient in divers refpefts, 

 efoecially in I'egard of voweb, of which there are feven or 

 eight kinds commonly ufed, lliough the Latin alphabet 

 only takes notice of five ; wliereof two, 'uiz. i and u, ac- 

 cording to our Englifh pronunciation, are not properly vow- 

 els, but diphthongs. 



Add, that the difference among vowels, in refpeft of 

 long and fliort, is not fufliciently provided for : the ancients, 

 we know, uftd to exprefs a long vowel by doubling its cha- 

 rafter ; as amaciham, naata, . ree, pedes, fanS'iJfim'ns ; though 

 the vowel /', inllead of being doubled, was freq\iently pro- 

 longed, as jT^dIlis, pIso, vIvvs. The ways ufed in Eng- 

 lifli for lengthening and abbreviating vowels, w's. by add- 

 ing e quiefcent to the end of a word, for prolonging a fylla- 

 ble ; and doubling the following confonants, for the fhort- 

 ening of a vowel, as ivane luann, luare ivarr, &c. or elfe 

 by inferting fome other vowel, for the lengthening of it, as 

 meet met, read red, &c. are all improper, becaufe the fign 

 ought ever to be where the found is. 



As to their powers, again, thofe are not always fixed to 

 the fame fignification : the vowels, for inflance, are gene- 

 rally acknowledged to have each of them feveral founds : 

 vocales omnes plurifomt, fays Lipfius ; and Voffius afTures us, 

 the ancients ufed their vowels in very different ways, ali- 

 quando tetiu'ius extlhijque, nunc crcijjlus, nunc inlermedio fono. 

 Thus the pov/er of the vowel i is exprefTed in writing no lefs 

 than in ilx feveral ways, viz. bye; as m be, me, Jl:e, ye; 

 by ee, in three, free, lue ; by le, in field, yield, Jliteld, chief; 

 by ea, in near, dear, hear ; by eo in people ; by i in privilege. 

 So is the power of the vowel a, as in all, aul, aiu, fault, 

 caught ; which are only various ways of writing the fame 

 long vowel ; befides the other diflinft ways of cxprefTmg 

 the fame vowel when ufed Ihort : again, the power of the 

 towel is written five ways : 0, as in to, who, move ; oe, as 

 in doe ; 00, in J].oo, moon, noon ; on, in could, luould ; ivo, 

 iu two i and fo of the rell — Nor are the confonants of more 



determinate powers ; witnefs the different pronunciation of 

 the fame letter c in the fame word circo, and g in negligence. 

 — To fay no moi-e, the letters c, f, t, are ufed alike, to de- 

 note the, fame power, and the letter f is commonly ufed for 

 5; ; and, which is yet worfe, fome letters of the fame name 

 and ll'.ape are ufed at one time for vowels, and at another for 

 confonants ; as j, "u, w, y ; which yet differ from one an- 

 other, fays Bifliop Wilkins, _^rK/ corpus Cs* aninia. 



From this confufion ifi the power of letters, there arife 

 divers irregularities ; as, that fome words are diflinguifhed in 

 writing, which are the fame in pronunciation, e. gr. cejjlo 

 and fejjio, &c. and others are diftinguifhcd in pronunciation, 

 which are the fiime in writing ; as^rf, acquirire, ^wAget, ga- 

 gates, &c. Hence alfo the Latin male is a diffyllable, and ■ 

 the Englifh male is a monofyllable. * 



The names alfo, in moflt alphabets, are very improperly 

 expreffed by words of divers lyllables; alpha, beta, &c. in 

 which refpeft, the Roman and our Englifli alphabets, which 

 only name the letters by their powers, have a great advan- 

 tage over the reft. 



Laflly, their figures are not well concerted ; there being 

 nothing in the charafter:; of the vowels anfwerable to the 

 different degrees of apertion ; nor in the confonants, analo- 

 gous to the agreem.ents or difagreements thereof. Wilkin's 

 Eff. towards a real charatler, &c. b. i. c. 4. 



All thefe imperfeftions are obviated in the univcrfal alpha- 

 lets, or charafters, of M. Lodvirick, Biihop Wilkins, &c. 

 See Wr-vWr/rt/ Characters. 



In the French king's library is an Arabic work, entitled 

 Sephat /llacham, containing divers forts of imaginai-y alpha- 

 bets, which the author diftribiites into prophetical, mflicaly 

 philofuphical, magical, taUfman:cal, &c. 



Monfieur Leibnitz had in view to compofe an Alphabet of- 

 Human Thoughts. Mem. de I'Acad. Roy. an. 17 16. 



It is no wonder that the number of letters in moft languages 

 fhould be fo fmall, and that of the words fo great, fince, 

 from a calculation made by Mr. Preftet, it appears, that, al- 

 lowing only twenty-four letters to an alphabet, the different 

 words or combinations that may be made out of thefe twenty- 

 four letters, taking them firft one by one, then two by two, 

 three by three, &c. would amount to the following num- 

 ber, 1391,724288,887252,999425,128493,402200. See 

 Combination. 



It may be here obferved, that every combination may 

 make a word, even though that combination have not any 

 vowel in it ; becaufe the e mute, or quiefcent, infinuates it- 

 felf imperceptibly between the confonants, or after the con- 

 fonants, where they are but two, the latter of which would 

 not be heard without it. — The ufe of this Clent e is very 

 remarkable in the Armenian, Welfh, and Dutch languages j 

 wherein the generality of words have feveral confonants to- 

 gether. 



Nor muft it be omitted, that every fingle letter may make 

 a word ; which is very apparent, where the letter is 3 

 vowel ; words of that kind being found in moft languages. 

 Thus, a. and m make words in the Greek ; a, 0, in the La- 

 tin ; a, i, 0, in Englifh ; a, 0, y, in French ; a, e, i, 0, in 

 Italian ; a, y, in Spanilh ; a, 0, in the Portuguefe ; 0, in 

 moll languages, and even in the Dutch and Swcdifh. Any 

 confonant alfo becomes a word, by adding an e mute to it in 

 pronunciation. 



In fine, though a confiderable number of the poflible 

 combinations of twenty-four letters were retrenched, yet the 

 number remaining would itill be immenfe, and vaflly fuperior 

 to that of the words in any language known. 



Of all known languages, the Greek is looked upon as 



«n« 



