Until we have stopped to think about it, few of us realize what it
means to have an alphabet--the combination of a few straight lines and
curves which form our letters. When you have learned these, and how to
arrange them into words, you have the key that unlocks all the
libraries in the world. An assortment and arrangement of black lines
on a white surface! These lines mean nothing in themselves; they are
not symbols, nor pictures, nor hieroglyphics, yet the mastery of them
is one of the touchstones of civilization. The progress of the race
since the dawn of history, or since the art of writing has been
invented, has gone forward with leaps and bounds. The prehistoric
races, and the barbarous races of our own times, had and have only
picture language.
The Chinese have no alphabet. It is said that they are now accepting a
phonetic alphabet. The Chinese system of writing comprises more than
forty thousand separate symbols, each a different word. It requires
the memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and write
their language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixty
distinct characters that answer to our twenty-four. These characters
embrace every verbal sound of the language, and in combination make up
every word. The progress of China has been greatly hampered by this
want of an alphabet.
Coleridge says about the primary art of writing: "First, there is mere
gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then
hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,"--the last an evolution
from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an
alphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than there
is of man in a crinoid.