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His difficulties are not always ours; we are to remember that our views on orthography are always hopelessly restricted by the historical orthography of our European languages. Let me give an example. We are inclined to regard the close and open o (0 and 9) as almost identical sounds, simply because we happen to write them or rather seem to write them by the same letter : and we are inclined to do the same in African languages in order to make reading and writing easy for the African. Now there are languages in which the distinction between the close and the open o is unessential, e.g. Swahili, but in others the distinction is essential, and a distinction must be made, just as we do make the distinction in English ; cf. words like “‘ hope ”’ andenenope’ ss note: ands nat’; ‘“‘road’* and “reds No “one would seriously suggest that, as the final e in “note” and “ hope ” and the a in “road” are not pronounced, these vowels should be dropped in order to make reading and writing easy for the English child, and then strengthen the argument by saying the context would always show which pronunciation and meaning was to be attributed to a given word. The vowels e and a are essential to demonstrate the value of the 0. The same is true in many African languages. To neglect an essential vowel quality is not making reading and writing easier, it makes it more difficult.

We should try to find out which sounds are essential in each language and language group, and we should express each of them by a proper symbol (letter). The script must be simple, we all fully realize that, but simplicity does not mean neglecting distinctions that are felt by the Africans to be important.

The basis of our script will, of course, be the Roman alphabet. To this we may have to make a few additions to express sounds peculiar to our group of languages. As Mr. Matthew has already said, there are two ways to express these. One is by using diacritical marks — added to Roman characters. This system was designed as early as 1850 by Professor R. Lepsius, of the University of Berlin, at the request of British Missionary Societies. It has undergone in the course of time some alterations and is to a certain extent in use in Africa. The second is the so-called phonetic script, as originally proposed and introduced by the Association Phonétique Internationale and adapted to African languages in the Memorandum on Orthography published by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. The principle of the phonetic script is to use new letter forms instead of diacritical marks. The reasons for adopting new letters in preference to diacritical marks are set forth in the Memorandum just mentioned, and I need not dwell upon them here. These reasons seem to me to be convincing. They are confirmed by my personal experience, and therefore I recommend the adoption of this system and the principles laid down in the Memorandum.

The script has been adopted for the languages on the Gold Coast ; books have been printed in it and are being printed now. It has also been adopted for Nandi-Kipsigis and Jaluo, both in Kenya. The adoption seems to be sure for the two main language groups nm