OCR Text |
Show I N T R O D U C T I O N TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. BY J. W. POWELL, CHAPTER I. ON THE ALPHABET. The study of an unwritten language should begin with committing it to writing. In this manner only can the student become so acquainted with its elements and characteristics as to be able to discover its grammatic structure and its philologic relations; and the language must be written to place such discoveries on record. A language cannot be written until its sounds are mastered, and this is no easy task. The number of distinct qualitative sounds that can be uttered by the human voice is very great, and without long training the ear cannot properly discern and discriminate them all. In the English language there are more than forty simple or elementary sounds, and each one is made by a more or less complex adjustment and movement of the vocal organs, so that in fact no one of these so- called elementary sounds is strictly simple. In the study of the sounds of a savage or barbaric language the simplest elements into which each can be resolved are oftentimes even more complex than the elementary sounds of the English language. The com-l s i L |