to distinguish between kh and k-h. The missionary, except in India, will hardly ever suffer from this ambiguity; and if the scholar should insist on its being removed, we shall see immediately how even the most exaggerated scruples on this point could be satisfied.
We have still, if we examine the alphabets hitherto proposed or adopted, a whole array of dots and hooks before us; and though we might, after gaining our point with regard to the h, get through gutturals, dentals, and labials, we have still formidable enemies to encounter in the palatals.
How to express Palatals?
Palatals are modifications of gutturals, and therefore the most natural course would be to express them by the guttural series, adding only a line or an accent or a dot, or any other uniform diacritical sign to indicate their modified value. So great, however, has been the disinclination to use diacritical signs, that in common usage, where the palatal tenuis had to be expressed, the most anomalous expedients have been resorted to in order to avoid hooks or dots. In English, to represent the Sanskrit palatal tenuis, ch has been used; and as the h seemed to be too much in the teeth of all analogy, the simple c even has been adopted, leaving ch for the aspirated palatal. On the same ground, the Germans write tsch for the palatal tenuis, and tschh for the aspirate. The Italians do not hesitate to use ci for the tenuis, and perhaps cih for the aspirate, though the latter I have not met with. Still all, even the German tschh, are meant to represent simple consonants. That in English the ch, in Italian ci, and in German tsch, have a sound very like the palatal tenuis, is of course a mere accident. Not even in English has ch always the same sound, and its pronunciation in the different dialects of Europe varies more than that of most letters. Besides, our alphabetical representative of the palatal sound is to be pronounced, and, as it were, understood, not by a few people in Germany or Italy, but by all the nations of Africa and Australia. To them the ch would prove deceptive; first, because we never use the simple c (by this we make up for the first alphabetical divorce introduced by the libertus of Spurius Carvilius Ruga), and, secondly, because the h would seem to indicate the modification of the aspirate.
