lly.

s. 171. It is this precedent which accounts for the absence of any letter
in English, expressive of either of the sounds in question.

s. 172. Furthermore, our alphabet has not only not increased in proportion
to our sound-system, but it has _decreased_. The Anglo-Saxon th = the th in
_thin_, and dh = the th in _thine_, have become obsolete; and a difference
in pronunciation, which our ancestors expressed, _we_ overlook.

The same precedent is at the bottom of this; a fact which leads us to--

s. 173. _The Anglo-Norman alphabet._--The Anglo-Saxon language was
_Gothic_; the alphabet, _Roman_.

The Anglo-Norman language was _Roman_; the alphabet, _Roman_ also.

The Anglo-Saxon took his speech from one source; his writing from another.

The Anglo-Norman took both from the same.

In adapting a Latin alphabet to a Gothic language, the Anglo-Saxon allowed
himself more latitude than the Anglo-Norman. We have seen that the new
signs th and dh were Anglo-Saxon.

Now the sounds which these letters represent did not occur in the
Norman-French, consequently the Norman-French alphabet neither had nor
needed to have signs to express them; until after the battle of Hastings,
_when it became the Anglo-Norman of England_.

_Then_, the case became altered. The English language influenced the Norman
orthography, and the Norman orthography the English language; and the
result was, that the simple single correct and distinctive signs of the
Anglo-Saxon alphabet, became replaced by the incorrect and indistinct
combination th.

This was a loss, both in the way of theoretical correctness and
perspicuity.

Such is the general view of the additions, ejections, changes of power, and
changes of order in the English alphabet. The extent, however, to which an
alphabet is faulty, is no measure of the extent to which an orthography is
faulty; since an insufficient alphabet may, by consistency in its
application, be more useful than a full and perfect alphabet unsteadily
applied.

s. 174. One of our orthographical expedients, viz., the reduplication of
the consonant following, to express the shortness (dependence) of the
preceding vowel, is as old as the classical languages: _terra_, [Greek:
thalassa]. Nevertheless, the following extract from the "Ormulum" (written
in the thirteenth century) is the fullest recognition of the practice that
I have met with.

And whase wilenn shall this boc,
Efft otherr sithe writenn,
Himm