£34 TJiG Study of Limig Languages, [no. 4, new series^ 
ters that represent in the Tamil language the sound of our N, or 
some modification of it; onp, is precisely the sound of it, the tongue 
being placed in the same position as by us. This will be repre- 
sented of course by our N. The second is the same in sound, though 
represented by a different character, but it occurs only when pre- 
ceding and combined with a certain other consonant, this may also 
be represented by a simple English TV,* as the sound is the same. 
The third has the sound of Ny in English and therefore should be 
represented by those consonants, the sound is that of our N, in 
New. The fourth is a sound unknown in English : it is pro- 
nounced by the tongue being turned entirely "^-li^ack, so that the 
under part of its tip touches the roof of the m.euth. An /V, sound- 
ed ■vvith the tongue in this position is the sound required. This 
therefore should be represented by an TV, with a dot under it, the 
dot or dots being the invariable mark of a sound quite strange to 
an Englishman, so as to be the readiest warning to the student that 
the tongue must be placed in a position which is new to him. This 
is much preferable to the Native character itself, because there can 
be no mistake about it without any effort of mem.ory, whereas the 
foreign character will always require the student to consider which 
of the several sounds of N it represents. 
It may be observed here, that, in general, probably in all cases, 
the languages of semi-civilized people that are written, have an in- 
variable sound for each character, so that there is no such difficul- 
ty in representing them by the English characters as there would 
be in representing English by some foreign character, on account 
of the vocal sounds being represented in different words by differ- 
ent vowels; as, Hat, yacht, many, all, ^c, and grief , leaf, seed^ 
previous, Marine, receive, and homoeopathy. In writing English 
therefore in a foreign character, there would be no alternative but 
to use a certain letter for each sound, however that sound is repre- 
sented in ^English writing, and correct English spelling must be 
learnt afterwards. But these difhculties do not exist in applying 
the English character to represent the sounds of most of the writ- 
ten languages of semi-civilized nations. 
2nd, Begin with a restricted vocabulary. In the first place, 
