1838.] Roman Alphabet to Oriental Languages. 63 



hazard of a mispronunciation of the same letters applied in different 

 combinations to varying- utterances. But, he it remembered, that the 

 European has acquired his vernacular alphabetic sounds in infancy and 

 without effort ; by effort must he learn, in after life, to give other sounds, 

 say the French, &c. to the same letters. There is no danger whatever of 

 his corrupting those proper to his native tongue. There is to him only 

 the difficulty of fully acquiring and correctly applying the acquired foreign 

 enunciation. But to a native of India, the Roman alphabet is originally 

 unknown, as the expression of any system of sounds. He has therefore to 

 encounter the prodigious difficulty of applying foreign letters on two dis- 

 tinct vocal arrangements; first to his own tongue, to which it is inade- 

 quate, and then to a European one. Nor, let this difficulty be thought 

 exaggerated. For in eastern languages vowels at least are strictly invari- 

 able ; the same letter expressing ever but one sound ; and, with very slight 

 exceptions, this is equally true of the consonants : but, in English, and but 

 in Bengali, are severally, an adversative conjunction and a noun meaning a 

 species of corn ; and the same vowel u is equivalent to the native sr and a 

 both, vowels never confusible or interchangeable ! 



To all which must be added the conclusive consideration, that were the 

 Romanizing innovation, by any chance, to succeed in throwing out of use 

 the native character among European students of the native languages, 

 and among any considerable number of the youth of the country now edu- 

 cating in our Schools and Colleges, one of the most singular and fatal 

 consequences of such an unparalleled anomaly in educational philosophy, 

 would be the setting aside, at one fell swoop, of the whole indigenous 

 literature of the land, the entire writings of its purest and most valuable 

 original authors, and the reduction of the native library of the rising 

 literati and the European student, to a few miserable volumes of Roma- 

 nized exotics, a Primer or two, the Pilgrim's Progress, and one or more 

 similar specimens of a foreign idiom in a foreign dress ! How monstrous 

 a consummation ! 



I might indefinitely enlarge, but must yield to the restraint imposed 

 by the limits to which the small space afforded in a periodical confines me. 

 Enough has been stated I should hope to shew — 



1st. That it is a manifest fallacy to represent the Roman alphabet, as 

 modified in the Romanizing system, as a fitter expression than any other 

 alphabet, under the same plan of modification, of the sounds of eastern or 

 of any other languages. 



2nd. That the attempt, futile as it really is, to substitute the Roman for 

 the native alphabets, were it actually to succeed, must be pregnant with the 

 most mischievous results to the philology of the native languages ; both as 

 to the etymological distinctness of words, (on which the clear perception 

 of their sense and the perspicuity or obscurity of construction so much de- 

 pend) and as to the purity of native pronunciation. 



I will only in conclusion observe, that, as applied to the expression in 

 European books, and for the information of Europeans, of native words and 



