Man, like every other animal, has a natural language intelligible to all of his own species. This language, however, is extremely defective, being confined entirely to the general expression of joy, grief, fear, and the other passions or emotions of the mind; it is, therefore, wholly inadequate to the purposes of rational intercourse, and the infinitely-diversified ideas of an intelligent being. Hence arises the necessity of an artificial or articulate language; a necessity coeval with the existence of man in his rudest state, increasing also with the enlargement of his ideas, and the improvement of his mind. Man, therefore, was formed capable of speech. Nature has furnished him with the necessary organs, and with ingenuity to render them subservient to his purposes. And though at first his vocabulary was doubtless scanty, as his wants were simple, and his exigencies few, his language and his intellect would naturally keep pace. As the latter improved, the former would be enlarged.
Oral language, we have reason to suppose, continued long to be the only medium by which knowledge could be imparted, or social intercourse maintained. But, in the progress of science, various methods were devised for attaining a more permanent and more extensive vehicle of thought. Of these, the earliest were, as some think, picture-writing and hieroglyphics. Visible objects and external events were delineated by pictures, while immaterial things were emblematically expressed by figures representative of such physical objects as bore some conceived analogy or resemblance to the thing to be expressed. These figures or devices were termed hieroglyphics[1]. It is obvious, however, that this medium of communication must not only have embarrassed by its obscurity, but must have also been extremely deficient in variety of expression.
At length oral language, by an effort of ingenuity which must ever command admiration, was resolved into its simple or elementary sounds, and these were characterized by appropriate symbols[2]. Words, the signs of thought, came thus to be represented by letters, or characters arbitrarily formed, to signify the different sounds of which the words were severally composed. The simplest elementary part of written language is, therefore, a letter: and the elements or letters into which the words of any language may be analyzed, form the necessary alphabet of that language.
In the English alphabet are twenty-six letters.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z.
Of these there are six vowels, or letters which by themselves make every one a perfect sound. The remaining twenty are called consonants, or letters which cannot be sounded without a vowel.
This alphabet is both redundant and defective. It is redundant; for of the vowels, the letters i and y are in sound the same: one of them therefore is unnecessary. Of the consonants, the articulator c having sometimes the sound of k, and sometimes of s, one of these must be unnecessary. Q, having in all cases the sound of k, may likewise be deemed superfluous. W appears to me in every respect the same with the vowel u (oo), and is therefore supernumerary[3]. The double consonant x might be denoted by the combination of its component letters, gs or ks.
It is to be observed also, that g, when it has the soft sound, is a double consonant, and performs the same office as the letter j; each having a sound compounded of the sounds of d and the French j. Thus, g in general has the same sound as j in join. J, however, is not, as some have supposed, resolvable into two letters, for we have no character to express the simple sound of the French j, of which, with the consonant d, the sound of the English j is compounded. To resolve it into dg, as some have done, is therefore an error; as the soft g, without the aid of the other consonant, is precisely identical, in respect to sound, with the consonant j. The letter h is no consonant; it is merely the note of aspiration.
Our alphabet is likewise defective. There are nine simple vowel sounds, for which we have only six characters, two of which, as it has been already observed, perform the same office. The simple vowel sounds are heard in these words,
Hall, hat, hate, met, mete, fin, hop, hope, but, full.