Art. IV.—Alphabet for Languages not yet reduced to Writing

Abstract

The subject of Transliteration has lately occupied the attention of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society. After careful consideration they gave their approval to the system for transliterating the alphabets of Oriental languages into the Roman character, which had been recommended by the Oriental Congress at Geneva in 1895; and after suggesting a few emendations, with the object of securing consistency and harmony in some comparatively unimportant details, commended it to the favourable attention of those Oriental scholars with whom they are connected, and over whom they have any influence. This seems, therefore, a good opportunity to make an effort for the introduction of a similar system among those who are engaged in the very arduous labour of reducing hitherto unwritten languages to writing. The number of such languages is great, and work among them is annually increasing. It is, perhaps, more necessary that an attempt at unanimity should be made in this instance even than in the case of languages which, like those of Oriental nations, themselves possess old and venerable alphabets. The characters of these alphabets have come down to us from a remote antiquity, have borne the tests of time and use, and have satisfied several generations of men who have long employed them; and, as a general rule, it is far better that they should be learned and used by European students and scholars than that they should be transliterated into the Roman or any other character. But the case of “illiterate” languages, if we may be allowed the terra, is quite different.