The Application of the Roman Alphabet to All the Oriental Languages Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: mixed and compounded of the whole or any number of these tongues. The superiority of the Roman letters may be inferred from the circumstance of their having gradually been adopted, in spite of every opposition, to express the languages of so many different nations in different parts of the world, and notwithstanding the continuance of the same opposition, they are still spreading to a degree far exceeding any other character. One main cause of the superior distinctness of the Roman character is that the vowels are expressed, instead of being either entirely omitted, or distinguished by diacritical points, which are continually liable to be misplaced and left out, and even when every precaution is taken, it is more difficult to read Hebrew, Arabic, or Persian, in which the vowels are represented by minute points, placed above or below the line, than any language printed in Roman characters in which they are denoted by a separate letter standing in its place in the line. Another reason is the extreme neatness of the printed Roman character. The art of printing has been carried to a far higher degree of perfection in these letters than in any others. As they are the universal character of the civilized world, they have been more extensively used in printing than any other, and, from the first invention of the art to the present day, they have been gradually elaborated and improved in the manner which has been found by experience best adapted to meet the difficulties which from time to time have suggested themselves. They have the result of nearly three hundred years experience in their favour, and I put it to the Committee whether it be most desirable to adopt the Roman character, thus perfected and improved, or to go on with the tedious process of elaborating Nagree and Persian by a...Read More