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Portuguese, and yet another, the French and so on;—we can, rightly affirm, that the alphabetic characters, above indicated, have been, as a rule, considered sufficient and quite apropriate to the phonetic usages of the Brasilian language.[1]
Consonants
13.—We preferred this letter—s, instead of —c before e, i, and ç, which have been adopted by some writers.
It is observed, that the hissing of s is contrary to the savage's pronunciation. But we cannot admit of such a reason, as a good one; because it cannot be denied, that the syllables ça, ce, ci, have the same phonetic value, as, sa, se, si, in Latin pronunciation.
Moreover, the s has in itself the advantage of replacing the two characters—ç, c, ( the latter before e, i), and, therefore, it will be used in this book, as representative of the sound c, in the word city.
- ↑ Cf:— A. G. Dias, Dict. of Tupy Lang; Montoya, Arte, Vocabulary and Treasury of Guarany Lang; Figueira, Gram. of Brasil. Lang; Dr. Couto Magalhães, The Savage; Mamiapi, Gram. of the Kiriri Lang., etc, etc.
