New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-08-16
OUR ALPHABET FOR JAPAN.

Japan seems to be about to take one Of the
most remarkable and not least important of all
her steps toward harmOnizing herself with the
highest civilization of Europe and America
That is nothing less than the adoption of
Roman script-our own English alphabet-pari
passu with, if not as Il substitute for, her own
ancient system of biography. For the last
dozen years a knowledge of Roman script has
been increasing in Japan among the most
highly educated. But now it is proposed by the
most influential educational organization in the
empire to make the teaching of our alphabet
and of our mode of word formation compulsory
and universal in the public schools 1t seems
probable that the government win adopt the
proposal in which case, of course, all private
schools will have to do the same, with the re-
emily be learning, not necessarily the English
language, but at least to write and read their
own language in English fashion.
That will be great thing for Americans and
Europeans who want to learn the japanese Ian
guage. 1t will make that language little harder
to learn than French or German, and will ena-
bic people TO learn it in the same way that they
learn the European tongues At present the
great stumbling block in the way of mastering
Japanese is the necessity of learning a multi
tude of different ideographs. Once Japanese
words are expressed in letters like our own. the
task of learning will become immeasurably
easier. 1t will then also be much easier for the
japanese to learn our language, for of course
our alphabetically formed words seem as
strange to them their ideographs do to US
Moreover, it will cause a change amounting al
most to transformation in the Japanese mind
or in the linguistic functions of that mind. The
Japanese will for the first time regard words
not as indivIsible integers of speech but as COM
posite things formed of letters. Perhaps we can
partly realize the magnitude of that change by
ourselves trying to regard words as not formed
of letters, but as indivisible units.
Nor is that all. Dual systems of langua ges
are denominations. Wherefore it is to be expect
ed that, having adopted alphabetical script nv
the side of biography, the Japanese will soon
substitute the former for the latter altogether
1t will be greatly to their advantage so to do
and also TO our advantage TO have them do it.
But it will none the less be an extraordinary
thing, For the mother tongue, in all its de-
tails, is one Of the things TO which men cling
most tenaciOusly. We need, to convince our
selves OF that, to recall only the language con-
troversies in Canada, in Bohemia. in South
Africa, in Malta and elsewhere. not to mention
the recent clamOr about the teaching of Ger
man in New-YOrk public schools. We may also
recall Bismarck's memorable opposition 10 the
introduction of Roman script into Germany in
place of the far less legible German characters
That the japanese should voluntarily make this
revolutionary change in their national script in
dicates their possession of an exceptionally
high ambition TO place themselves abreast of
the best civilization of the world-and all this
emergence from savage seclusion within the
memory of men not yet grown old,