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Several speakers urged that dots below the letters would frequently be omitted by Native writers and presented typographical difficulties.
ARCHDEACON SuaAw said that in his experience the Dinka who had been taught to use the two dots showed no tendency whatever to omit them.
Mr. HitteLson suggested that experience on this point was limited, as the number of Dinka literates and the amount of written
- matter in Dinka were still very small. The case of Arabic illustrated the danger. Here dots were essential for the differentiation of certain letters and great inconvenience was caused by the fact that writers constantly omitted or displaced them.
7 Mr. Gipson said that Archdeacon Shaw, who before adopting the dotted letters had used dh and th, was convinced of the superiority of the dotted letters. He did not know of any case in which the converse change had been made.
Further discussion referred to the fact that the combination of two letters to form the single sound th presented no difficulty to
English children. The inconvenience of changing over from an already established system to a new one was also discussed, but this was not held to be very serious. . THe CHAIRMAN then put the question to the vote, and the proposal to use the th, dh, and nh was carried by 24 votes to 12.
ARCHDEACON SHAW was unconvinced of the merits of this decision, but. expressed his willingness to accept it for the sake ot
uniformity. .
The Velar n.
The use of y for this sound had been recommended by the majority of Group Committees.
BisHor Kircnine drew attention to the fact that this symbol had not been adopted in the proposed Zande alphabet although the sound admittedly existed in the language. This was a violation of the principle. : It was generally agreed, however, that if there was no necessity to represent a sound when writing for Natives the symbol need not be included in the alphabet.
The Velar Fricative.
After a short discussion the use of ¥ (gamma) was adopted.
. AFTERNOON.
‘Open Vowels.
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It was generally agreed that for the use of Natives it was not necessary as a rule to indicate open vowels, but that it was necessary
to observe this distinction in the case of books intended for non- Natives learning the languages. . : ArcHDEACON SHaw maintained that, this being s0, marks on
the letters were preferable to the phonetic signs proposed ; such