Page:Proposals for a missionary alphabet; submitted to the Alphabetical Conferences held at the residence of Chevalier Bunsen in January 1854 (IA cu31924100210388).pdf/57

But if we heard the same language spoken for a number of years. and by a thousand speakers, the natural variety of pronunciation would make our ears less sensitive, and more capable of appreciating the general rule, in spite of individual exceptions. We are not accustomed to pay attention to each consonant and vowel, as they are pronounced in our own language; and if we try for the first time to analyse each word as we hear it, and to write down every vowel and consonant in a language we do not understand, say Russian or Welsh, we shall be able to appreciate the difficulties which a Missionary has to overcome, if he tries to fix a language alphabetically, before he himself can converse in it freely. It has happened, that travellers collecting the dialects of tribes in the Caucasus or on the frontiers of India, have brought home and published lists of words gathered on the same spot and from the same people, and yet so different in their alphabetical appearances, that the same dialect has figured in ethnological works, under two different names. Much must be left to the discretion of Missionaries; for in most cases it is impossible to control the observations which they have made in countries hitherto unexplored, and in dialects known to themselves alone. But it will be found that Missionaries who know their language best, and have used it for the greatest number of years, familiar thus with all its sounds and accents, are least clamorous for new types, and most willing to indicate, in a general manner, what they know can never be represented with perfect accuracy. Too much distinction leads to confusion, and it shows a spirit of wise economy in the Phenician, the Greek, the Roman, and Teutonic nations, that they have contrived to express the endless variety of their pronunciation by so small a number of letters, rather than invent new Attempts have been made signs and establish new distinctions. occasionally, at Rome and elsewhere, to introduce new letters; but they have failed; and though we may feel no scruple to introduce new signs, and marks and accents into the African alphabets; though we, with our resources, may succeed for a time in framing an alphabet of our own where each letter, besides its simple value, has two or three additional values expressed by one, two, or three accents common sense, without appealing to hisAfrica will never bear what Europe has piled one upon the other, tory, should teach us, that found insupportable.