Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-09-17
OUR ALPHABET FOR JAPAN
The Yankees of the Orient to UseI
 Roman Script

The Yankees OI the aOTatln U OSS
 Roman Script
 Japan seems toLbe about to take onel of the most remarkable and not leaSLl important of all her steps toward har- moniZing herself with the highest civ ilization of Europe and America That is nothing less than the adoption or Roman script-our own English alpna- bet-parl pasSu with, if not as 8 SUD- situte for, her own ancient system or ideOgraphy. For the last dozen years a knowledge of Roman script has beenI increasing in Japan among the most highly educated. But now it is pro-| posed by the most influential educa- tionad organization in the empire toI make the teaching of our alphabet anal of our mode of word formation com pulsory and universal in the public schools. It seems probable that theI government will adopt the proposal.
 in which case, of course, all private
 schools will have to do the same, with
 the result that all the children of Ja-
 pan will presently be learning, not ne-j cessarily the English language, but at
 least to write and read their own lan-
 guage in English fashion
 That will be a great thing for Amer
 jeans and Europeans who want to
 learn the Japanese language, It will
 make that language little harder to learn than French or German. and
 will enable people to learn it in the
 same way that they learn the Euro pean tongue. At present the great stumbling block in the way of master ing Japanese is the necessity of learn | ing multitude of different ideo- l graphs. Once Japanese words are l expressed in letters like our own the l task of learning will become immeas- ! urably easier It will then also be | much easier for the Japanese to learn our language, for of course our alpha l betically formed words seem as l strange to them as our ideographs do I to us. Moreover it will cause a i change amounting almost to transfor- 1 nation in the Japanese mind, Or in the | linguistic functions of that mind The l Japanese Will for the first time regard 1 words not as indivisible integers of l speech, but as composite things formed l of letters. Perhaps we can partly 1 realize the magnitude of that change I by ourselves trying to regard words as not formed of letters. but as indi-
 visible units.
 Nor is that all Dual systems of language are abominations. Where fore it is to be expected that, having
 adopted alphabetical script by the side
 of ideography, the Japanese will soon l substitute the former for the latter al-
 together. It will be greatly to their advantage to have them do it. But it will none the less be an extraordinary 1 thing. For the mother tongue, in all 1 it's details. is one of the things to
 which men cling most tenaciously.
 We need, to convince ourselves of that, | to recall only the language controver-
 sies in Canada, in Bohemia, in South l Africa, in Malta and elsewhere, not to | mention the recent cIamor about the 1 teaching of German in New York pub 1 lie schools We may also recall Bis
 marckss memorable opposition to the 1 introduction of Roman script into Ger l many in place of the far less legfble l German characters. That the Japan | ese should voluntarily make this revo- | lutionary change in their national | script indicates their possession of an | exceptionally high ambition to place l themselves abreast of the best civiIi- zation of the world-and all this emer- l gence from savage sec1usion within the memory of men not yet grown old 1 New York Tribune.