The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-07-02
NUMBER 9.
Alphabefs.


A writer i'm Leisure Hour thus analyses
the alphabet and furnishes very curious
and entertaining article:
have before me copies of some four
score alphabets, classified into eastern and
,oestern As / compare these different
sets of phonetic symbols, the question
arises, why does the letter A stand first
in almost every one of them? Why is it
followed Immediately by b? Whence
the shape or form of both these charac-
ters? In answer to the first question,
Jacob Grimm in his "Deutsches WOrter-
buch," says:----" A is the noblest and
earliest of all sounds, issuing full from the
chest and throat, which the child learns
first and most easily expresses, and which
the alphabets of most languages rightly
place first" Let me also quote Noah
Webster -" A is naturally the first let
ter, because it represents the first vocal
sound naturally formed by the human
organs, being the sound uttered with a
mere opening of the mouth without con-
straint, and without any efforts to alter
the natural position or coniguration of
the lips" Other writer's go so far as to
ascribe, not only the sounds, but the visi-
BILE forms of the letters, to the same
origin. Each side of a child's mouth,
when uttering this sound, gives likewise
a copy of A. The lips are apart, forming
an acute angel with sides of equal length.
The perpendicular position i'm present use
is not the Oldest mode of writing this
symbol. The oldest Eastern forms ace
nearly horizontal. do not here takr
into account the little a, which is evil
IDENTIFY modification of o. The first
sounds puts the lips apart----in antithesis;
the second, b, shuts them--causes syn
thesis. Now, look upon the side of
child's face, and you see b formed by
the closed lips; not, however, the we'll
rounded letter of modern Typography
this belongs to higher degree of art
but slender form, such as may be seen
on old gravestones, or in copies of old
Greek and Italian inscriptions. The
Phenician and old Hebrew shapes are
still nearer the scrawl which children
make in their first attempts at writing.
Let us see now what the child can say
what these vocables, keeping in mind
that M and D are merely notifications of
b, both in speaking and in writing. Long
ago, in the East, it learned to name its
father db and its mother am. These are
pIODaDly IHc OlucSJ WOIus III Huiudu
speech. They are monosyallbles, the
natural results of child's capacity of
articulation, an historical necessity.
Names of the objects nearest aud dearest
to it are the child's first words. But
these one-syllable names are soon doubled
they become "abba or papa" and
Gamma or mamma" As sacred name
applied to the Supreme Being, "abba has
its historical rise in Assyria. 1t travels
westward, and becomes an epithet of
ecclesiastical superiors. AS "abba" it
passes to the Bishop of Alexandra, it
comes to Rome in the form of "papa,"
holy father. 1t is used by Jew and Gen
tile as secular name for father. In the
Russian language, without an alphabet
till late in the ninth century of our era,
it appears as "baba," but means an old
woman. In Spanish it is likewise "baba,"
and signifies saliva, or slavOr, such as
issues from the mouth of child. In
short, it becomes "babe, baby" Father
and child, "papa and baby" are compile
ments one of the other, mutual cOrrela-
tives i'm word or fact. Let me remark
here that the form of the word Babep
is worth reconsideration. Horne Tooke
showed, more than eighty years ago, that
call our words, even those that are ex-
pressions Of the incest operations of our
minds, were originally borrowed from the
objects of external perception" Well,
if words are borrowed from things, there
arises a presumption atleast that symbols
or letters employed to represent words,
are also borrowed from things. In point
of fact, our ten fingers have determined
our decimal system of arithmetic. These
same fingers have been used as copies for
the primary elements of the Roman hota-
tion. We have l, ii, iii, iii, as on
clocks and watches--plain limitations of
the four fingers. But how did V come
to indicate five? Look at your open
hand, with the thumb on one side, dis
tended from the four fingers kept to-
gether on the other, and you have
natural V. So much for the left hand.
Proceed now similarly with the fingers
of the right, and they lead us up to ten,
represented by X, or two V's. A basis
of number is thus obtained from our own
bodies, which basis may be amplified and
modified to an indefinite extent. ] Ineed
scarcely observe that the mode ofwriting
toW and nine----IV and * in our
Bibles for instance, were after improve
ments.