The present chapter is intended not to exhaust the list, but to illustrate the character of those orthographical expedients which insufficient alphabets, changes in language, and the influences of etymology engender both in the English and in other tongues.
CHAPTER X.
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ENGLISH ALPHABET.
[§ 256]. The preceding chapter has exhibited the theory of a full and perfect alphabet; it has shown how far the English alphabet falls short of such a standard; and, above all, it has exhibited the various conventional modes of spelling which the insufficiency of alphabets, combined with other causes, has engendered. The present chapter gives a history of our alphabet, whereby many of its defects are accounted for. These defects, it may be said, once for all, the English alphabet shares with those of the rest of the world; although, with the doubtful exception of the French, it possesses them in a higher degree than any.
With few, if any, exceptions, all the modes of writing in the world originate, directly or indirectly, from the Phœnician, Hebrew, or Semitic alphabet. This is easily accounted for when we call to mind,—1. The fact that the Greek, the Latin, and the Arabian alphabets, are all founded upon this; and, 2. The great influence of the nations speaking those three languages. The present sketch, however, is given only for the sake of accounting for defects.
[§ 257]. Phœnician, Hebrew, or Semitic Period.—At a certain period the alphabet of Palestine, Phœnicia, and the neighbouring languages of the Semitic tribes, consisted of twenty-two separate and distinct letters. For these see the Hebrew Grammars and the Phœnicia of Gesenius.
The chances are, that, let a language possess as few elementary articulate sounds as possible, an alphabet of only twenty-two letters will be insufficient. Now, in the particular case of the languages in point, the number of elementary sounds, as we infer from the present Arabic, was above the average.
It may safely be asserted, that the original Semitic alphabet was insufficient for even the Semitic languages.