Visible Speech, a system of alphabetic characters, each of which represents the configuration of the mouth that produces the sound. It is the invention of Mr A. Melville Bell (q.v.), and was first published in 1867. Mr Bell's grouping of fundamental sounds according to the shape of the resonant cavities of the mouth in speaking has been already discussed at PHONETICS (Vol. VIII. p. 140). A special characteristic of the system is that the letters or symbols used, of which about thirty are radical, are mostly to a certain extent pictorial of the action of the organs which produce the sound. Thus a simple circle o represents breath issuing from the open throat (aspiration); while the narrowing of the glottis which produces vocal murmur is symbolised by l, from which, by modifiers to indicate guttural, palatal, 'primary,' 'wide,' &c., all the vowel-symbols are formed. Contraction in the mouth is indicated by a c, and the part of the mouth in which the contraction takes place is shown by the direction in which the symbol is turned—thus c denotes contraction in the back of the mouth (Scotch and German ch in loch), o denotes lip-contraction. Complete stoppage is indicated by drawing a line across the opening, giving a symbol resembling d, which turned this way would represent the sound of p, while d would represent k. The symbols for vocality, nasality, &c. are similarly incorporated into the consonant symbols.
Visible Speech
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 10: Swastika to Zyrianovsk and Index, p. 494–495
Source scan(s): p. 0521, p. 0522