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law, and journalism, the papers unito in tlio com
mon purposgjjf analyzing the backgrounds of coun
tries engaged"ius thc present world conflict, each
from a different pbiqt o f view, but all directed
toward increasing the pdopjo’s understanding and
recognition of the problemilx^acing a postwar
world.
An extensive bibliography aeconip^nies the
series, to be mailed as a unit, and, in addition, to
those who enroll is extended the privilege of writ-_
ing in for further explanations or comment.
Owen’s Alphabet.
To the E ditor of t h e su n — Sir:
Tha Cherokee alphabet sponsored by the .
venerable Senator Owen £ron\Oklahoma was described in a SUN article.
If used to teach beginners, It woMd
make English a feasible international
auxiliary language. The primitive no
tation now employed makes EngUs
unfit for global use. However, it has
never been shown that Cherokee script
ia on Improvement on the international
alphabet now so widely used in FrenchEnglish and other language textbooks.
1PA can be adapted to English usage.
Pine Plains. J onathan H oldeen.
A NEW EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM FOR
INDIANS IN PERU
T he Office of the Coordinator of Inter-Amer
ican Affairs reports the institution in Peru of a
new rural-education program for the country’s
more than 4,000,000 Indians. The plan is to
teach the native population not only reading
and writing but methods of improving its liv
ing and economic conditions. The Indians will
also be taught how “ to exercise their rights
and duties as citizens of a 120-year-old nation.”
The project is already under way with the estab
lishment of ten teacher-training schools. Within
a year it is expected that 450 teachers, specialists
in rural and Indian education, will go into the field
to staff 65 rural schools, as the first step in giving
the Indians a new concept of their place in the life
of the nation. Nino such schools, in tho depart
ments o f Junin and Puno, are now in operation.
SUN
Global Alphabet
Sonator'O w «n'» Effort to Sp««d
Learning of Language*.
To
Up
56
T he S un — Sir:
Jonathan Holdeen is under a misappre
hension concerning what Senator Owen
advocates. The Cherokee syllabary (not
alphabet) has nothing to do with Owen’s
“ global alphabet,” which is a system of
straight and curved lines, hooks and
loops, somewhat reminiscent of short
hand symbols, representing not letters
but sounds. With a limited mimber of these phonetic symbols, the Senator
claims, it is possible to represent all
the sounds of the world’s m ajor lan
guages, provided one is not too finicky ^
about merging into a single symbol j
such slightly divergent sounds as the
English t and the French t, which the
International Phonetic Alphabet, a tool
for scholars and phoneticians, rightly ,
represents by two different symbols.
,
It is the Senator’s contention that by ‘
the use of his symbols applied to the f
world’s m ajor languages, language
learning for purely practical under- {
standing will be enormously facilitated; ^
that English, which is at present, so ^
'difficult for foreigners because of c
the divergence between sound and ^
spelling will become extremely easy,
and will have a splendid chance of be
ing adopted as an international lan
guage; and that our own school chil
dren, learning to read and write by
the global alphabet method, will not )
have to spend endless hours learning ^
how to spell.
Having visited the Senator in Wash
ington only a few days ago, I was J
shown the manuscript of his forthcom
ing book, which gives 1,200 basic words 1
and several hundred basic phrases in
English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and a
Portuguese,
all
transcribed
Into
"global” characters. The system will
later be applied to German, French, a
Italian and Japanese.
Global characters are easy to learn
and to read. They represent, of course,
only an approximation to the actual na- ^
tive pronunciation of the various lan
guages, but it Is an approximation that
is close enough for understanding. To
acquire the perfect native-speaker pro
nunciation and Intonation there is, of
course, no device save that of long
practice with native speakers.
the
editor of
Mario A. PEI.
Columbia University.
87
SCHOOL AND SOCIETY
A ugust 7, 1943
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