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CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



that he could recognize every word at sight, and without 

 some process of spelling as soon as it comes under the eye, 

 the whole mind free to attend to the meaning of it. 



IV. By the use of capital and italic letters and stops, a 

 degree of perspicuity and emphasis may be given to com- 

 positions in Singhalese, which their present mode of writing 

 cannot command. 



V. The saving in expense of printing paper and binding 

 materials will be immense, as Indian letters generally, and 

 especially the Singhalese from their complicated forms, 

 flourishes, delicate faces, and small loops, are very apt to 

 break or fill up, and to become very indistinct when they 

 are cut so small as to admit of being compressed into the 

 same space as the Honian. 



VI. The affinity of cognate languages being at once 

 visible, when they are all presented to the eye in the same 

 letters, additional tongues will be much more easily acquired 

 after any one has been mastered ; and different races of men 

 being enabled at once to see a fraternity in their languages, 

 will in this way be led to entertain a friendlier feeling to- 

 wards each other. 



VII. Although it were admitted to be impossible to 

 represent as precisely, and as uniformly in Roman characters, 

 the sounds of Indian words, as is done in Indian letters, 

 ( which however is not admitted) there is no great evil in this. 

 For besides that the pronunciation of its language, must ever 

 be one of the first elements to change in an active and pro- 

 gressive people, the use of writing is not to teach us to speak 

 but to enable us to read, that is, to recognise at sight, and 

 join together, words of which we already know from con- 

 versation, both the sense, and the sound. A page of English 

 seems to an Englishman just as transparent, and he can pro- 

 nounce it and understand it at sight as easily as an Italian 

 can pronounce and understand a page of Italian. Yet in 



