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T u ls a i / 1 ^ rrKu - % D a. r Bos By FLORENCE LEE RUEAM That, ladies and gentlemen, is post-war global alphabet writ ing for, "Dear Boss: When may X have a raise?” X figure I need it after writing it—at least post war. Of course, raises may not be the fashion then, there may be no bosses, and the world may never adept global alphabet. But if the senate of the United States gives it enough considera tion, global alphabet, devised by Oklahoma’s former Senator Rob ert L. Owen, may be on the road to universal usage. Its • adoption would mean that dictionaries would be rewrit ten. Typewriters and printing presses would be chahged. And little children would be teaching the “old folks” how to spell. But, according to Mr. Owen, it would all be worth while. Global alphabet, he says, takes less printing space, would save paper and can be learned in a few hours. Webster’s 604,000 words in formal Roman characters would be outmoded. The "basic English” idea would be swallowed up In a form of communication which young and old of all the world’s 300 races and dialects could grasp. Dignified professors and comic strip Palookas alike would be passing notes reading, “ D er Jon: Hop u ar wel. Y don u kum se us?” For Mr. Owen's alphabet is strictly phonetic. It also is, he says, “mnemonic (memorizable), stenographic and universal." T r ib u n e - M arch Dff T - / u w e. n m < *T It's also very simple, in the 88-year-old Senator’s opinion. But whether or not Congress thinks so, is open to question. At Mr. Owen’s request, it was presented for adoption in Senate documents 49 and 133 as an easy way to make the English language a world lan guage. But the Senate, after seeing that he documents were printed, put them off on the Committee on Foreign Relations which, in turn, asked the State Department for its opinion. Although this idea has been taking form in the biind ex senator’s brain for several years, Pearl Harbor caused it to crystal lize. And now, with plans for re construction a n d rehabilitation corps to go into re-won countries, he feels it is indispensable. It would mean, he hopes, that the cause of the Allies would suc ceed more quickly. That each in habitant of the world, by becom ing literate in his own language, could then grasp new world prin ciples. And that one language would eventually be used by the whole world. " Then all our productive p ow er would be m ultiplied,” he says, “ and human brother hood and the good neighbor plan o f the W estern H em i sphere could be established as a world policy.” What Oklahoma's ex-senator has done (he served as one of the state’s first senators and re tired after distinguishing himself K f y s o. n V / i(m A basic phonetic alphabet with world-wide significance is no untried phenomenon. Moses him self, 2,700 years ago, used a sim ple method of phonetic writing consisting of 22 letters. And Rus n j ^ > A nyone knowing G r e g g shorthand will find the prin ciples of the system easy to assimilate, since both are pho netic. He discards four of W ebster’ s form s as “ unneces sary.” His 21 consonants are known their sounds. "B’’ is not Be, but “Bu,” with as little vowel sound following as possible. His other consonants, on the same principle, are “pu, du, tu, fu, gu, ku, hu, ju, lu, ru, mu, su, wu, yu, zu, following the standard alphabet. There are also forms for "ch” as in “chin,” “th” as in “thin," and "ng” as in “sing,” and “wh” as in ’why.” Forms similar to these last four also appear in Gregg shorthand system. Now for the vowels. The vowels as we know them are “a,” “e,”“,i,” "o” and “u.” Butbecuuse they have so many variations in pronuncia tion, Mr. Owen has created a form for each vowel sound. Hence his 19 vowel forms consist of four “a’s ,”— as in "at,” “ate,” "far,” and “all;” three “e’s,” as in “met,” “me,” and "her;” three “o’s” as in "go," “for,” and “got;” three “u’s ,” as in “rut,” "lute,” and “due;” plus “ou” as in "out,” “ow” as in "how,” and “ea” as in “near.” Here, for instance, is how to write "Saint Patrick's birthday” in global alphabet: ^O.V'C ;Y\S B yron S. Shepard, assistand superintendent o f the city school system , has turned the idea over as a possible e x perim ent to Isabel Watkinson Smith, Central high school language teacher. 1944 have. og r o b S for 18 years, because he “had ac complished all the good he could1’) is to devise a form of phonetic shorthand signs consisting of 21 consonants and 19 vowel forms. v j u While world-language profes sors praise the alphabet, the ex senator, convinced of its simplicity, gave it to a fashionable Chevy Chase elementary school to ex periment with. Reports are that the eight-and-10-year olds are now passing notes like mad in global alphabet. ROBERT L. OWEN 8 , \ y i b<2 V \ .r j y ^ o. n sia, with an alphabet composed of 30 letters, has in 20 years con quered illiteracy despite the 200 dialects once in use. Dr. Frank A. Laubach, whose book, “The Silent Billion Speaks," is helping to advance the cause of a global alphabet, found that native Moros learned to read and write in an hour through a pho netic system. Soon, Mr. Owen says, a book will be published which will give English-speaking people a quick conversational knowledge of pho netic writing of Spanish, Portu guese, French, Italian, Roumanian and German through 1,200 chosen words. It was prepared by Prof. Mario A. Pel, Ph. d., of Columbia university, in co-operation with 60 oth,er linguistic experts. Back in 1863, Lepsius, g r e a t G e r m a n linguist, published a SEQUOYAH book, “Standard Alphabet,” an alyzing 600 languages and dialects and proposed a universal alphabet for all of them. Mr. Owen, whose m other, Narcissa Chisholm Owen, was part C herokee, is not the first one of C herokee blood to de vise a phonetic alphabet. First was the great Sequoyah, who devised one of 85; characters. More than 100 years ago, Se quoyah (whom Grant Foreman has called the “illiterate Indian genius,” and “the only man in history to conceive an alphabet”) was first impressed by the way the white man “talked on paper.” He set about building an alphabet, started with innumer able characters which stood for words. But he was cleverer than the Chinese, who still labor with 7,500 word-characters, and soon turned to characters which stood for sounds. Indirectly, his alphabet came into being because of his trad emaking silver Jewelry. Impressed when white men had their names carved on the pieces he made, he wanted the same privilege for his tribe. * * * ¥ Mr. Ow en’s portrait, and that of his m other and o f Se quoyah, hang side by side in the halls o f the Oklahoma Historical Society in Okla homa City. Her own and that of Sequoyah w ere painted by Mrs. Owen.
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