Orthography in the Gold Coast

The formation has been recently announced of a Department of African Linguistics at the London School of Oriental Studies. ‘The new department’, it is stated in a recent number of Le Maître Phonétique, ‘is to apply phonetics to the analysis of the structure of African languages, and will no doubt be instrumental in furthering the movement for introducing phonetic systems of spelling into Africa.’ It may be useful in the early stages of the project to call attention to some of the difficulties which have to be overcome in carrying out the latter implied part of it, and to make a suggestion as to a means of overcoming them. It is therefore proposed to give an account of the introduction of a phonetic script into one African territory, and incidentally to advocate a slight but desirable revision of the Institute's memorandum Practical Orthography of African Languages.