210 THE LANGUAGES OF THE INUIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
any rough system occurring on the spur of the moment, will be 
found greatly to facilitate the process of interrogation both to 
the querist and respondent. An abridged well-selected list, not 
exceeding a thousand words, would greatly assist the traveller. 
Orthography. 
Many systems of orthography for the exact expression of 
the sounds occurring in Eastern languages have been propos¬ 
ed and used by different writers. It is obvious that in a mat¬ 
ter which is arbitrary, the taste and fancy of each scholar 
may take exception to any scheme that can be propounded. 
At present every writer is at liberty to follow what pleases 
himself, and the consequence is that those, who begin by tak¬ 
ing the trouble of understanding the systems of others, end by 
inventing new ones ; while most writers, ignorant and careless 
of all systems, mangle words and stifle sounds, each after a 
variable and often rude fashion of his own. It cannot be ex¬ 
pected that travellers will forego this prerogative, until some 
authoritative body of philologists promulgates what we may 
term an ethnic alphabet, or rather an alphabet for each natu¬ 
ral family of languages. But as it is not likely that this task 
will soon be undertaken, nor perhaps desirable that it should, 
it will be useful to inquire whether the arbitrary variation of 
orthography cannot be checked in some measure by attention 
to a few rules, the reasonableness and propriety of which will be 
recognized by all. The most obvious seem to be, 1st, that the 
Roman letters unmodified should be adopted as far as they 
extend; 2nd, that when these are not sufficient, the accentual 
and prosodial marks in common use should be first availed of, 
as far as possible, to increase the number of symbols ; 3rd, that 
any new signs which it may then be found absolutely necessa¬ 
ry to introduce should be of the least strange and obtrusive 
form ; 4th, that the most common sounds should be expressed 
by the unaccented and unmodified letters ; and 5th, that the 
different tones and modulations of simple sounds should be 
denoted by diacritical marks. To these rules, which have for 
their object the preservation of the Roman alphabet from 
unsightly excrescences and incongrous additions, and the 
adaptation of our systems to every fount of Roman types, we 
think most other considerations ought to yield. Subordi- 
nately to them, it should be made a rule, 6th, to adopt, in all 
arbitrary matters, any practice that has gained a considerable 
prevalence, or been recommended and adopted by philologists 
of eminence. 
