A DEFENCE PHONETIC SPELLING; DRAWN FROM A HISTORY OP THE ENGLISH ALPHABET AND ORTHOGRAPHY; WITH A REMEDY FOR THEIR DEFECTS. BY E. G. LATHAM, M.A., M.D., F.K.8. LONDON : FRED. PITMAN, PHONETIC DEPOT, 20 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. BATH: ISAAC PITMAN, PHONETIC INSTITUTE. 1872. BATH: BT ISAAC PITMAJT, PABSOSAGE LARS. A DEFENCE OF PHONETIC SPELLING. SECTION I. PBEFATOEY BEMABKS. The present contribution to the cause of Phonetic Spelling is separated from its predecessors by an interval of more than thirty- five years. Between the beginning of 1834 and the end of 1835 three short works upon the same subject were published in quick succes- sion.^) Signs of zeal of this kind stand in strong contrast to the silence by which they were followed. It is not, however, without a purpose that they are referred to ; for the dates are meant to show that I am neither a recent convert nor a laborer of the eleventh hour. Indeed I may truly say that, from first to last, the subject has rarely been out of my mind ; so that I have watched with interest what others more courageous than myself effected during the inter- val. Much was done then ; more, however, has to be done now : for the present time not only encourages additional exertion but imperatively demands it. It is not, however, as a mere observer that I trouble the reader with this introduction, though the difference between the state of opinion in 1872 and 1835 is sufficient to command our best atten- tion, and to awaken our most sanguine expectations. What I more especially wish to show is that, if I have not been able to form some- thing like a matured judgement on the question, it has not been for want of either time or opportunity. Again, I have no system of my own either to advocate or abandon. Taking these two facts together we have, perhaps, the elements of a dispassionate criticism. 1. " An Address to the Authors of England and America, on the Necessity of Permanently Eemodeling their Alphabet and Orthography," etc. By E. G.' Latham, B.A., Cambridge, 1834. " Abstract of Rask's Essay on the Sibilants, and his Mode of Transcribing Works in the Georgian and Armenian Languages, by Means of European Letters ; with Remarks." By R. G. Latham, B.A., Cambridge, 1834. "A Gramatical Sketch of the Greek Language. By R. G. Latham, B.A., Cambridge, 1835. 1059570 4 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. The interval has given us, 1. The construction and promulgation of a truly Phonetic Alphabet. '2. An able " Plea for Phonetic Spelling " by a writer who, even among professed scholars and practised logicians, is, undeniably, master of his subject. 3. A general awakening of public opinion on the matter, the result of which has been an incipient literature connected with the subject, and a free ventilation of opinion. 4. The arrival of a time when everything connected with primary education forces itself upon the mind of every man, woman, and child who speaks the English language. When once a question becomes one of economy it is sure to command attention : and the economy here involved is of two kinds. The money question I leave to the rate-payers, fully confident that it will not be ignored by them. This, however, is but a small part of the matter. To the child of the poor man everything that takes him away from directly remunerative employment is a tax upon his time, the stuff whereof life is made. And it is much the same, though in a less degree, with the sons and daughters of the rich. But in learning to read, every unnecessary obstacle is so much waste : and that the English language abounds and overflows with mischievous obstacles of this kind, is a point upon which it may confidently be said that every competent judge has pronounced a verdict. ' There is waste throughout, injurious waste, unnecessary waste, remediable waste ; waste which those whom it most injures will soon be constrained to investigate, to condemn, and to abate. The "Address," etc., which has just been alluded to, was written with a genuine rhetorical exordium, and with a motto for the re- formers of the day, 'Tis hard if 'tis not lawful to present Reform in writing as in Parliament. Byron, " Hints from Horace." and a prophecy of the great efforts in favor of progress, on the part of the writers of the age that of "William IV., the Guliel- mian age as it was called. These were, simply and innocently, called upon to do more than ever author did before, or will do hereafter ; inaugurate by example a reform of unparalleled importance and transcendent magnitude, by merely writing English in a manner which they had not learned, and never heard of till the time of the "Address." The treatise itself was, unfortunately, neither one thing nor the other. It was not wholly phonetic, nor yet wholly according to the old system. It was, rather, an expansion of some innovations ex- hibited in certain papers of the Cambridge " Classical Museum," proposed by one of the reputed editors, (possibly, sanctioned by the other,) which touched the ed of the past participle, and the 's of the Prefatory Remarks. '5 possessive, or genitive, case. It spelt plucked as pluckt, and father s, etc., as fathers. There was no want of good reasoning in favor of the change, which was indeed so far from being a radical or revolutionary innovation that it was a restoration of the orthography of a better age ; and, as such, wounded no one's con- servatism. Nevertheless, it was, after a short trial, abandoned by its distinguished proposers. One part of the paper in support of it was the absolute annihilation of the doctrine that the 's of the genitive was the his, in combinations like " Christ his sake." It clenched the last nail in the coffin of this venerable grammatical error. Now the interference on my own part with the received spelling was extended to 1 . C with the power of s. This was changed into Jc ; giving us such combinations as obskurest, kalkulate, and the like. 2. The substitution of kw for qu kwestion, ekwalli. 3. The same in respect tu gu langwages. 4. I final for y ekwalli, properti. 5. The substitution of the semivowel y for i in diphthongs ; one of the leading principles of the work being that the number of vowels in a word should in no case exceed the number of syllables neynteenth, descreybing, leyk, wreyters, leyf, etc. 6. The same principle substituted w for u in abowt, amownt, pro- nownce, etc. 7. For^> was written ff rases, filosofi. 8. For x, ks ekspress. 9. For probable, middle, probabl, middl. I am not now prepared to say that, if nine alterations were to be made, these were the best to begin with ; yet I think that, as a group, they made a legitimate collection of samples. My defence for thus investing my lucubrations with this parti- colored dress (or undress) was on the principle so well laid down in a short illustration of, I believe, Eastern origin: "If you have a handful of truths, open it by one finger at a time." This was prob- ably a mistake. For the introduction of the whole body of the wedge it was too little ; for merely the thin edge, it was too much. Of course, the body of the pamphlet consisted mainly of the antici- pation of objections, and the suggestion of the nature of the new signs required for the completion of the English Alphabet. From anything like the entire creation of a new letter I shrank, either from an acquired knowledge of its difficulty, or instinctively. In- deed, I had no inducements to aim at originality at all. For the u in but I proposed either the Greek n or an inverted v " A." For the a in fate, and the o in note, I suggested (the sign for/) is doubtful. What they really saw of this supposed aspira- tion which converted the sound of p into that of f, etc., was just nothing at all. And this was the very best thing that could be seen. They corrected no blunder. They rose above no confusion. They simply formed their alphabet before either blunder or confu- sion had taken birth. 8. They recognised the principle of compendiums ; for they wrote E | and "V for Ics and ps. The two signs, however, are not in the same class. E | belongs to the main body of the alphabet, for it stands in the place of the Hebrew samech, between omikron or ayn. V, relegated to the end of the alphabet, was a later addition. 9. Their crowning merit, however, was that, in the case of e and o they drew a distinction between the long and the short vowel : and well had it been had they gone further in this direction. As it is, the differences between the long and short o, t, and v, are unexpressed. 11. For expressing the shortness of a vowel of doubtful length or quantity they doubled the consonant that followed, Thalassa or QaXaffffa = sea. 11. The last great change made on the original alphabet by the Greeks, is, perhaps, one which outweighs all the other improve- ments. It has already been foreshadowed, but due prominence must now be given to it. Whatever may have been the actual sounds of the Hebrew vowels out of which a, e, i, o, and u origina- ted, they were not decidedly and universally vocalic. They were rather breathings, gutturals with the character of an exaggerated breathing, or nasals.- They were, perhaps, as much consonantal as vocalic. At any rate, we have seen that in the Hebrew Bible for ordinary reading they have the signs of the true and genuine vowel superadded. Whatever may have been its nature, there was a shortcoming in the orthography in this respect which needed amendment ; and this the Greeks made. The heth, which they converted into an unequivocal long e, is with us h. The other vowels, however, have preserved their character, and that to the infinite benefit of mankind. The Greeks have certainly done great things in the history of the alphabet. The incidental errors such as that of the V, the two breathings, and the expression of the shortness of the preceding vowel by the doubling of the consonant by which it is followed, are venial offences. The elimination of useless letters, the partial com- pletion of the alphabet by the formation of new letters, and above all, the unequivocal character given to the vowels are great and unmixed benefits. It is almost invidious to ask what they did not do : nor, with our imperfect knowledge of the more minute details of their system of 42 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. sounds can be we say with certainty how much" or how little they neglected, This, however is certain that, if the vowel o had a third power, if a i oru had a second, if the language contained the sounds of v, of the th in thine, of gh ; of the sh in shine, or of the z in azure, (and some of them, it doubtless, had) they constructed no signs by which they might be expressed. Thus far, then, and no farther, go their sins of either commission or omission. Let due attention be paid to the four letters & u, * , X x, * ' .. Phi (Fi) ... 600 ... x' . .. Chi(Khi)... 700 V .. Psi 800 0,' .. Omega *900 ^ Sampi 1,000 a __ 2,000 'fi ^_ 3,000, etc y 10,000 20,000, etc. ,K 100,000 ,P 2. Without the mark ( ' ) these signs are letters ; with it, numerals. Derivation of Alphabets. 43 The first language to which the Greek alphabet was extended was the Coptic or Egyptian ; the Coptic being the oldest language of Greek origin. It consists of thirty-one letters, of which the first twenty-four are Greek both inshape and name Alpha, Bita, Gamma, Dalda, etc. In respect to their power as numerals there is a curious change. The Greek sign for 90 was the letter which corresponded with the Hebrew Qo/, that is, Koppa ; but this, as the sign of a sound, was obsolete in the Greek. The Egyptians, then, who only adopted the true letters had no numeral for 90. So they expressed it by the second of their additional ones, that is, by the twenty-sixth, thus throwing the agreement between their letters and numerals out of form. It was as if in English we counted thus Letter 15 ... = 70 16 ... P = 80 Q, (Supposed to be wanting.) 17 ... R = 100 18 ... S = 200 19 ... T = 300 20 ... U=400 21 ... V = 500 22 ... W = 600 X (Supposed to be wanting.) 23 ... Y = 700 24 ... Z = 800 25 (In Coptic, no numeral power at all.) 26 90 The remaining signs having no numerical power at all, there is no letter expressive of 900. There was one in Greek : but like the sign for 90 it had dropped out of the alphabet as a letter before it was introduced into the Egyptian. This is the only clue we have as to the date of the Coptic alphabet. The two languages came in contact with one another as early as the seventh century B.C., when Gyrene was colonized by the Greeks. The only compositions however, which have come down to us are subsequent to the intro- duction of Christianity. The second alphabet formed after the model of the Greek was the Armenian : yet, if we look at the shape of the letters only we see no signs of the connexion. They are not Greek. They have no re- semblance to the Greek. They have no resemblance to anything of Greek extraction. Sign for sign, they are as unlike those of Greece as the Greek letters are unlike the Sanskrit. They are thirty-six in number. Their names, however, are of Greek origin ; and these, along with the circumstances connected with their history, point to Greece. Besides which, they are equally unlike anything else. If so, the system is that of an absolute metamorphosis or transmuta- tion ; so complete as to exclude the very notion of identity. Yet the Greek origin of the Armenian alphabet is universally admitted. These thirty-six letters are evidently the construction of a single 44 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. workman ; and he who made the signs, probably effected the analy- sis of the language to which they applied. But the great difficulty in doing this, as is abundantly shown by our numerous missionary alphabets, is only wonderful when it is done for the first time. Its great element is the conception that such a thing is possible. As for the letters themselves we can only say, when we look at them, that such a man as the constructor of the Armenian alphabet is just the very one that is now wanted : the man who would meet and rebut and perhaps anticipate, what Mr Ellis calls the strange-ap- pearance objection. It is certain, however, that he would disappoint our expectation. Miesrob, for that is the name of this Armenian Cadmus, had he an alphabet like the English to deal with, would probably have failed in constructing a single letter ; for he would have had to make it in harmony with those already made. It is possible that, individually, I exaggerate the difficulty of doing so. At any rate, I feel sure that Miesrob felt it. The whole to him seems to have been easier than the part. What, then, did he do? He made a whole alphabet of thirty-six letters at once ; and I firmly believe that, in so doing, he found his work comparatively easy. The Georgian alphabet, letter for letter, is as unlike the Armenian as the Armenian is unlike the Greek ; yet it is the Armenian on which it is founded. It has the same number of letters, for nearly the same sounds. In shape, however, the letters are curvilinear, whereas the Armenian are angular. Like the Armenian, it seems to be the work of a single constructor. These two alphabets, so far as the number and the adequacy of their letters are concerned, are two of the best in existence. The Armenian, however, is very try- ing to the eye ; the interspaces between the lines that form the let- ters being but little wider than the lines themselves. Of late, the Georgian has been used by the Russian philologues in their alpha- bets for the numerous, hitherto, unwritten languages of Caucasus. These abound in strange gutturals and sibilants ; and when the or- dinary letters and diacritical marks are exhausted, recourse is had to the Georgian. We now come to the alphabets of the Slavonic languages. Where the creed is that of the Eastern Church the Greek Church as it is often called the alphabet is of Greek origin. Such are the Cyrillian and the Glagolitic. The first belongs to the Servian and Bulgarian languages ; the construction of which is attributed to the missionary Cyrillus in the seventh century, and is the foundation of the Russian. The second is, at present, obsolete : since the dia- lects to which it applied, those of Dalmatia, Carinthia, and the Sla- vonic districts of the old Roman province of Illyricum, are Roman Catholic. The Slavonic alphabets of Greek origin are formed upon the capital rather than the small letters, and are by no means so plea- sant to read as the Greek itself. On the other hand they are all General View of the Four Classes of Alphabets. 45 formed on the principle of new signs for new sounds : so that they rank among the best for completeness. Notwithstanding this, the Greek alphabet itself has uot been adapted to the changes which several of its letters have undergone. Thus the Beta and Delta have long been sounded as v and dh, (that is, as the th in thine) : yet for b and d, when they occur in words of foreign origin, there are no better signs in modern Greek than M0, and NT. Again, certain vowels and diphthongs have merged their originally inde- pendent powers into that of the ee in feet ; nevertheless, the full number is still kept up. Hence, though we know how to sound a word when we read it, we doubt as to the spelling of it when heard. The Greek alphabet, with diacritical marks, is extended to the language of Albania. In like manner, the Servian is used for the language of the Danu- bian Principalities ; a language of Latin origin. Of the Moeso-gothic notice will be taken hereafter. SECTION XVIII. GENERAL VIEW OF THE FOUR CLASSES OF ALPHABETS THE PHOENICIAN GROUP. We may now look back and take a general view of the three pri- mary classes into which the alphabets of the world are reducible ; and, at the same time, by anticipating, take notice of the fourth ; though, as this last is the one which bears exclusively and directly on our subject, the full understanding will be best got from the working of it. To appreciate, however, its relations to the other three, some- thing must be said about it now. The characteristics of the Phoenician family are palpably con- spicuous. It is only in this class that we find, after their earliest infancy, the system of writing from left to right. Here, too, and here only, occurs the still more eccentric practice of writing rer- tically, or from the top to the bottom of the page. Here, too, do we find oftener than elsewhere alphabets consisting of capitals only, or of small letters only. Here, also, we find the earliest sylla- barium : at any time a rare form. Above all, here it is where we find an alphabet originally consisting of consonants, or imperfect vowels only, and, as a result of this, the whole system of vowels dele- gated to a system of supplementary (we must not call them diacritical) marks, points, dots, or what not. The details of this system are admirably given in theMasoretic text of the Hebrew Bible; indeed they have never been given better or so well. But their merits are more than counterbalanced by the mere fact of their being supple- mentary. They are no integral parts of the system of writing. They can be, and are dispensed with. In the derivative alphabets only, a few of them are retained. In fact, the recognition of the paramount importance of the vowels is exceptional throughout 46 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. the whole Phoenician family or group. The original defect of the alphabet, which was, at once, consonantal and incomplete even in its consonantality, seems never, except in one exceptional instance, which will be noticed hereafter, to have been remedied : for, though, as in the Arabic, the number of letters may be nearly doubled, there is no thoroughly new sign. One old one is made into two or more new ones, new enes by diacritical marks ; and these are so much part and parcels of the several letters to which they appertain that they can scarcely be called diacritical. SECTION XIX. GENERAL VIEW OF THE GREEK GROUP. There is no comparison between the Greek and the Phoenician in respect to the number of secondary alphabets to which they have given origin ; nor yet in respect to the geographical area over which they have spread. The single fact of the Arabic being the alphabet of the Koran, has extended its domain from the Straits of Gibraltar to Sumatra ; has carried it, as the medium of the Hindostani lan- guage, into the Very heart of India ; and, as that of the Turkish, into the South-eastern parts of Europe. The only language that has a tendency to increase in area, to which an alphabet of Greek origin has been applied, is the Russian ; and this is, doubtless, an important one. The Coptic language is no longer a spoken one ; while the Georgian, the Armenian, and the Albanian are spoken over small areas only. The difference in respect to the figures of the letters in the diff- erent languages of this group is great. The Coptic makes the near- est approach to the original. The Georgian and the Armenian re- cede the farthest from it. It is the Greek group in which the most new signs have been con- structed ; we may say, indeed, that it is here, and here only, that freedom has been the rule, and restriction the exception. So it was when the modern Russian, the latest member of the class, was constructed ; so it was when the signs T v, * , X x, V $, and & were added to the primitive Phoenician. So, too, it was when the distinc- tion betWeen the long and short es and o's was first indicated. SECTION XX. GENERAL VIEW, ETC. THE ALPHABET CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF WHICH OPINION IS DIVIDED. The class, in so far as it is characterized by a negative element, is convenient rather than natural. Neither is it, for the present question, important. The alphabets which belong to it are mainly connected with the Brahminic and Buddhist religions ; the Sanskrit and the Pali being the chief of them. Alphabets of Latin Origin. 47 They are old ; the earliest application of an alphabet of the class dating from B.C. 280.( 3 ) With the alphabets of Latin origin, or those of the class to which our own belongs, they have no direct relation : except so far as the transliteration of the languages of India is ajmatter of importance to the rulers of India. With those of Greek and Phrenician origin the relations are closer. The Zend and Pehlevi, or Huzvaresh, the alphabets of the Parsee religions are so Sanskritic in respect to their vowel-system as to invest them with a character at variance with that of the class to which they belong, or the Phoenician. The Sanskrit is the only language of this class which will again be referred to. SECTION XXI. GENERAL VIEW, ETC., ALPHABETS OF LATIN ORIGIN. The alphabets of Latin origin are simply the Latin alphabet it- self, with certain omissions and modifications ; for genuine additions there are none. The diphthongs " as " and " ce " are the nearest ap- proaches to a new letter ; but they are only approaches. The cedillac " c " and other variations of figure are the same. Of these, how- ever, and the like of them, along with diacritical and other marks, there is an abundance. They are, in respect to their geographical distribution, the alpha- bets of Western Europe ; but this means the Europe of the West- ern division of the Roman Empire, which again means the Europe of which the Christianity is that of the Western Church. In this we have the reason of their uniformity. They were extended from one language to another on a system, and under similar conditions ; the influence being in most, perhaps in all cases, that of the Church. In writing then, we of course, take no cognizance of those languages and countries to which the extension of this alphabet is of wholly recent date ; the cases which here present themselves being mere details in the history of some modern language, Spanish, French, Dutch, or English, as the case may be. The languages which are thus represented belong to the following families 1. The Latin itself these being the Italian, the Spanish, the Por- tugese, and the French ; and, of less importance, the Provenal and the Eomane (Rumonsch) of the Grison districts of Switzerland. The Rumany of the Danubian Principalities belongs to this group. Its alphabet, however, is of Servian ; that is, of Greek, origin. An attempt to change it for a modified form of the Latin is going on at the present moment ; indeed it is in the Danubian Principalities 3. For the alphabet and the coins of this period in the north of Persia and the north-western parts of India, the reader is referred to Wilson's "Ariana Antiqua." 48 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. that the greatest experiments connected with phonetic spelling is going on. At the same time, it is an experiment in Transliteration, or Metagraphy, rather than in pure Phoneticism. 2. The British and Irish Gaelic of the Keltic class. 3. The German, Dutch, English, and Scandinavian forms of speech ; the class to which they belong being the Teutonic. 4. The languages of the Roman Catholic populations of the Slavonic family, that is, the Bohemians, the Poles, the Carinthians and Dalmatians, etc. 5. The Lett and Lithuanic of Livonia, Curland, and Lithuania. 6. The Magyar language of Hungary ; the word Magyar meaning Hungarian in the most limited sense of the term. The languages of Hungary, if we use the word in either its geographical or its po- litical sense, are. taken collectively, other than Magyar : and so are the alphabets. Thus the Slovak of the North "West is Tshek, or Bohemian, in respect to its writing, and nearly so in respect to its spoken language ; in other words it is a provincial form of speech of which the Bohemian is the standard. On the North East the Ru- thenians, whose language is that of Little Eussia are numerous. On the South East there is a strong Servian element; while, in Croatia the language is akin to that of Dalmatia, and, when it is written at all, written like the Dalmatian and the Carinthian. Be- sides these, there is the German of the towns, and the Wallachian of the country districts of Transylvania. The Magyar, then, is the language of the Hungarians Proper ; and it has long been known as a language of the Fin or Illyrian family ; with its nearest congeners in Northern Europe and Siberia. The alphabet, however, is more Slavonic than the language. Its letters are Latin ; but the principles by which they are combined into diagraphs is more Slavonic than aught else. In the use, how- ever, of the letter *, the Magyars stand alone. It is sounded as sh ; so that in order to denote the ordinary sound, recourse is had to a combination ; and this is sz. 7. Of the Fin, Lap, and a few other alphabets of this class, notice will be taken hereafter. SECTION XXII. THE LATIN ALPHABET. The Phojnician prototype from which the Greek originated, was also the original of the Latin ; the Latin, however, was only one al- phabet out of four, or perhaps five or six, which extended beyond the Adriatic. There are inscriptions in Spain which indicate what is properly called an Iberian form of the Phoanician. There was, probably, a similar modification of it for Gaul ; unless this, as is very probable, was simply the Greek of Marseilles. There was an Etruscan alphabet for Italy ; the language to which it was applied The Latin Alphabet the Order of the Letters. 49 being of uncertain origin ; but which, from no point of view, was Latin. Lastly, there were either three alphabets, or three modifi- cations of the same alphabet, for the allied dialects of the Oscan, the Umbrian, and the Latin ; and besides these, certain alphabets for certain inscriptions, the language and import of which have yet to be determined. The two points connected with the Latin which are, at one and the same time, sufficiently general and sufficiently separated from what follows to claim notice here, are 1. The separation of the numerical from the phonetic power of the letters. A was simply, in Latin, the sign of a sound. In Greek it was the numeral 1 as well. How much the notation of the number lost by the practice of the Italian method of substituting such clumsy signs as I, II, III, IV, etc. for letters, it is for the mathema- tician to decide. It was certainly a gain to the alphabet ; indeed, the alphabet for the first time, now came to be purely alphabetic. The result of this was, that, in the Latin alphabet, the condition of order or sequence in the arrangement of the A, B, C ceased to be im- perative. As the Latin arrangement is that of ninety-nine diction- aries and Encyclopaedias out of a hundred, we may say that the " dictionary alphabet " is the Latin alphabet. 2. The Latin is the alphabet of the printing-press. All beyond this will show itself as we follow the other character- istics of the Latin in the investigation of the details of its application. SECTION XXIII. THE LATIN ALPHABET THE ORDER OF THE LETTERS. Both the Greek and the Latin alphabets must be supposed to have originally ended with the letter tau, or t : for so the Hebrew alphabet ends. But beyond t there are the five additional letters T v, * in Greek. More important, however, than the consideration of the order, is that of SECTION XXIV. THE MERITS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET. The merits of the Latin Alphabet are as follows = 1. It emancipated itself from the connexion with the numeral system ; but the freedom thus created for the classification of the letters according to their affinities was never carried onward toward its legitimate results. A thorough classification of this kind is found in the Sanskrit only. 2. It improved the diacritical mark ( c ) as the sign of a breathing, or as an aspirate, into the truly alphabetic letter IT, h. This is the only, genuine new letter it has given us. It was, however, bought at a price. By gaining a sign for the aspirate they lost one for the short e (Epsilon.) 3. It kept the letter wanted thus preserving, for subsequent use in Western Europe, the letter F.f; which was the Hebrew Vau, which the Greeks allowed to become obsolete as a letter, though they kept it as a numeral. 4. It rejected, in the first instance at least, the compendium X, x : though, under Greek influence, it took it back afterwards. Upon Q, q more will be said hereafter. Subject to these reservations, all these were movements in the right direction. SECTION XXV. THE DEMERITS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET. The very fact of new letters being introduced from the Greek for the purpose of spelling words of Greek origin, tells us, in unmistake- able language, that the Etymological Principle has now been recognized. Tlie Dements of the Latin Alphabet. 51 The loss of the sign for the Greek Epsilon was, as has just been stated, the price of the letter H, h. The difference between the long and short O, o ; the Omikron and Omega of the Greek, was in like manner left unexpressed. The letter H h, so long as it kept its proper place, was a good servant ; when it got beyond it, a bad master. The misapplication of it has been the source of three serious evils ; for it has spread from the Latin to most of the languages derived from it ; where it has aifected not only the native words, but even such Greek ones as may have been introduced into it ; words in the spelling of which it is singularly inappropriate. 1. Simple misrepresentation. For this it is when we imagine that the sound of the ph in philosophy, etc., is really the result of a bona fide combination of^> + h, etc. That it is allied to the sound of p is true ; but it is equally true that, neither wholly nor in part, is it the same. Nor is the difference the result of any addition of h ; though the prolongation of the breathing has something (much in- deed) to do with it. The sound, in short, is a simple one ; one in- capable either of being decomposed into its parts, or built-up out of the combination of any two independent articulations. If it were otherwise, and if the letter h accurately represented the difference, the sound which stands in the same relation to b should be spelt on the same principle ; and v be expressed by bh ; in which case vase would be written bhase even asfase \s phase. We know that, practically, this is not the case with b ; but we should, also, know that it is not the case, theoretically, with^>. 2. TJie diversion of the combination from its real power. When the real sound of a consonant followed by h has to be represented, confusion arises. Such is the case in words like haphazard, inkhorn, nuthoolc and hogshead ; where the second element begins with anas- pirate. That this ambiguity can be abated by the insertion of a hy- phen between the two contiguous letters is certain ; for we can write hap-hazard, nut-hook, and the like. The expedient, however, simple though it be, is one which is unnecessarily forced upon us. In compounds where not only the second element begins with an h, but the first ends in one, the objection is stronger. In words like Sathampton (so far as the elements are Bath and Hampton), Southampton, the h does double duty ; and, in more cases than one, uncertainty as to the true elements of the compound has arisen. 3. The establishment of a precedent for digraphs. This is the head and front of the offending. The preceding evils have been mere matters of detail. The one now under notice is the establishment of a vicious and pernicious principle. The combinations ph, th, and ch, as the Latin equivalents to *, 0, and X, are the fathers of all subsequent digraphs ; the pro- toplasts of the famDy of the Makeshifts. fc* 52 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. SECTION XXVI. THE SUBSTITUTION OP THE LETTER C FOR K K AND S AS SOUNDS. How c came to be used in the Latin Alphabet to the practical exclusion of k is a matter connected with the history of the alphabet which need not at present be gone into. We shall best appreciate the full import of the substitution by seeing what it has led to. C by no means stands alone. This we cannot too closely attend to. What applies to c applies to other letters as well : in short, c as a letter, is pre-eminently a representative one. In both the compendiums of the English alphabet, q and x, the sound of c enters. In most digraphs we have either c or h, or both. In the system of orthographical expedients, c is more conspicuous than all the other letters put together. Let us begin with what is a good groundwork in all questions of the kind, provided that we can get it ; a fact of Language ; of Language itself as opposed to spelling, or the mere representation of language ; a fact in the history of speaking, not merely of writing. a fact appertaining to the real object rather than to the picture of it. Let the language be what it may, it is a fact that wherever we have the sound of the k as in king, it is always likely, sooner or later, to be converted into the sound of the s in sing ; or if not this exactly, into something akin to it, into that of the ch in chest, or the j in jest, or something wherein the sound of * or its fellow-sibilant sh, enters. For what is the ch in chest but tsh, and what is the j in jest but dzh ; and what is sh but s with a modification, or zh but a modi- fication of z which is a sonant s 1 To s, then, in some shape or other every sound of k in existence has a tendency to be reduced. The process may be slow, or it may be quick. There are words in which it has not yet been completed ; there are words in which it has not yet begun ; and there are words in which it never may be- gin, or words which will be sounded with k until the language to which they belong is extinct. Still there is the tendency ; while, on the other hand, there are words in which the k may have been changed three thousand years ago, or before the oldest alphabetical record in existence. The change, then, or the tendency towards it, is a fact in language ; the representation of it is a fact in orthography. The two may or may not coincide. If they do not, there is the risk of confusion sooner or later. At present, however, the fact in language is the only one under notice. The first step in the investigation of this lies in the difference be- tween the broad k and the small vowels a, o, u on the one side, and e i, (and y) on the other. We know what happens to these em- pirically. Before the broad ones, c is sounded as k ; before the small The Substitution of the letter C for K. 53 ones as $. But they were not always so pronounced. If they were, why was the s used in spelling ? The * sign existed. "Why was the c necessary ? Because words which once had the sound of k no longer retained it ; and because words which now have that of s had it not when they were first spelt. There is something, then, non- -natural in this use of c = s : and the reason of it lies in the fact that the change of sound and the expression of it in spelling have not coincided. At present, however, the difference between a broad and a small vowel upon the sound of the letter by which they are preceded is the question in hand. , K before a small vowel has a tendency to become s. Has Tc the same tendency before a broad one ? I think not. Kop will not directly become sop, shop, or tshop (chop) ; and the same applies to lea and kit not directly. But here comes in the influence of the semi- vowel y. Now there is a tendency to say kyard for kard (card) ; and kyind for kind, even with a small vowel. The result may be a vulgarism, a Cockneyism, or the like. But, be it what it may, the change may be either introduced or kept up by so many speakers as to constitute a difference of dialect ; and if that dialect happen to become the dialect out of which the literary language is devel- oped, it becomes an error which corrects itself, a wrong which, by precedent and prescription, ends in constituting a right. It is a prophecy which fulfils its own accomplishment. Such, with the letter h, is the case with no smaller a language than the Italian. The literary Italian is the Florentine or Tuscan. But the Floren- tines (so to say) dropped their h's (Aitches). Before, however, the practice was noted and condemned as a vulgarism the dialect had become predominant, and the practice established. Hence, while it is a shocking thing to " exasperate " an aitch in English, it is equally objectionable to sound one in Italian. But y after k comports itself as a small vowel ; so that, when once* kard (card) is sounded kyard, it is in the same predicaments kird. That the subsequent details of the change are different for the two combinations will be shown in the sequel : nor will the whole of them be exhibited. Kyard, does not, directly, become sard. It rather becomes ksard and tshard. It is submitted, however, that, as a fact in language, this is an adequate notice of the principle by which it is determined. What we have now to investigate is the result of these tenden- cies, and the extent to which they may affect a language. This depends, mainly, upon the proportion which the sounds of k and s bear to those of the rest of the alphabet. The greater the share they take in the formation of any particular tongue the greater is the amount of their possible changes ; so that here again we are about to be engaged with a fact of language as opposed to one of orthography. C has already been called a representative letter. But it is this mainly on the strength of its two-sided relations towards k and s. 54 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. * It is in these that we must seek the realities of the question before us. K and s represent actual articulations, true elementary sounds, genuine consonants. C merely stands for s or k as the case may be. C, taken by itself, has no reality ; and, except so far as its sounds are those of k or s it has no relations to any other letters. On the other hand, however, the relations of k and s are those of c also : and we shall now see that these are numerous. _SThas its congeners, and so has s, so that each forms part of a system. Herein, k stands to g (as in gate), as p stands to b, and as t to d.^) But ^7 and b, t and d have, respectively, and as pairs, certain rela- tions toy, v and th (both in thin and thine). Such relations, also, have k and g to a specific pair of sounds, to which they stand, each to each, as p iof, and b to v, etc. These sounds are not found in the English language : neither are they the sounds of the so-called gutturals ch and gh. What they are will soon be seen. The P-series, as we may conveniently call it, runs through v into IP, and thence, into u and the broad vowels. The .fiT-series runs, through the two un-English sounds, intoy, and thence, into i and the small vowels. More than this, the aspirate h is allied to both k and g. In Eng- lish, then, we have the sequence ha, ka, ga, ( ), ( ), and ya ; allied sounds. They are five in number ; and, if we had the analogues of yand v, they would amount to seven. Now every member of this group shares with k its tendency to change according to the charac- ter of the sounds with which it comes into contact. S stands alone as little as k ; being part of the series sa, sha, za, zha. Followed by y, s and z have a tendency to become sh and zh ; as syoor=shure, zyoor=zhure. This is common in English, though the spelling conceals it. U, however, in sure, and z in azure, are sounded yoo. K+y, andy +y have a tendency to become ksh and gzh. This, nowever, is not well exemplified in English ; though the change is so important that it will command much of our attention in the se- quel. T+y has a tendency to become tsh. The u in nature=yoo, and the sound is na-tshur. D + y has a tendency (though not so strong as it was in the pre- ceding instance) to become dzh (ofj). The diphthong ew, when pro- nounced yoo, gives us not unfrequently the sound jew for dew. This is a vulgarism ; but the allied change in nature is very good English, or if not, the change by which it is brought about is a gen- uine process of language in general, and not a peculiarity of any one dialect or language in particular. Such, then, is the basis in philology of the changes which the sound of k may undergo, and of the extent to which an adequate or inadequate, accurate or inaccurate, representation of them by letters may affect the orthography of a language. It is manifest that in 4. Here, as elsewhere, there is sacrifice to conciseness. K,g, orp, etc., means the sound of k, g, orp, etc. The Substitution of C for jST. 55 k and s, taken separately, we have the elements of a series of changes which may extend itself to more than half the consonants of the alphabet ; a change which, without any additional elements of dis- order is one of vast magnitude. For the orthographical expression of this the one thing needful is simplicity and singleness of purpose ; by which I mean an absolute neglect of every secondary aim : such as that of indicating the his- tory or origin of a word as well as its sound. The simple represen- tation of this would tax the resources of the very best of alphabets. For anything beyond anything in the way of etymology, a price must be paid, and the little that is gained on the one hand is more than counterbalanced by a loss on the other. If k and s, then, even when they stand alone, create difficulties ; what will it be when a third letter, c, is introduced (so to say) be- tween them ; and, with no definite power of its own, is sometimes the equivalent of the former, sometimes of the latter ? It will rep- resent each of them in their numerous relations to the other mem- bers of the sound-system ; and, in doing it, it will just become a letter of more importance than all the others of the alphabet put to- gether. I do not wish to have either the credit or the contrary, of deducing that enormous amount of disorder and confusion which is the undoubted opprobrium of the English system of spelling, from any single cause ; or, indeed, from a few causes. I have no ambition of showing that everything which the orthographical re- formers complain of is the misfortune rather than the fault of our alphabet, which if it had not been derived so exclusively from the Latin, and if the speakers of that language had not been so preju- diced against the letter k, would have been a very tolerable one. Least of all do I imagine that by simply ejecting c. or by using it with a change of import, the thousand-and-one chronic and compli- cated evils of our orthography would be dispelled. All I pretend to indicate is the extent to which a single letter may contain within itself the faults and demerits of many. This means that having dealt with the power of k and * as sounds, we have now to consider f. as a letter ; by which, under certain conditions, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other of the two is represented. SECTION XXVII. THE SUBSTITUTION OF C FOR K C AS A. LETTER. "We shall see, to some extent, what c is as a letter by contrasting it with any of the ordinary ones, let us say with b. B is b always and everywhere. It is this at both the beginning and the middle of Babel. It is this at both the beginning and the end of blab. Having nothing to do with what it either precedes or follows, it is always a self-sustained and self-supporting letter, just what a letter should be. The most that can be said against it is, that it is some- 56 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. times silent, as in subtle, and debtor. Even here, however, it is either b or nothing : in other words it has nothing equivocal or am- biguous about it. C, on the contrary, is nothing of the kind. It depends on its place and its relations for its power : the letter with which it may best be compared being q. Q, if we take it as we find it, as a mere letter in the alphabet, (spelt cue,) is nothing as a part of a word. Its power, as such, de- pends upon what follows : and it is always followed by u. This is, perhaps, the only rule in English spelling to which there is no ex- ception. Q, then, is no genuine letter. It is merely a part of a combination. But it is scarcely even this. The u must be followed by a vowel. We can pronounce queen, or quick ; but we cannot pro- nounce qun, or quck. Q then is not exactly q + u. It is rather q plus half of to. Should this seem a piece of over-refinement, the main fact still stands out conspicuously. Q is no self-sustained and self-supporting letter. It is a part of a sign which depends upon what follows it. And so it is with c, though, of course, with a difference of detail. C, by itself, is nothing ; or, what is much the same, it is one of two things. Followed by a, o, or u (a broad vowel) or by a consonant, it is k. Followed by a narrow, slender, or small vowel, that is, by e, i, or y, it is #. It is nothing when it stands alone ; nothing without its determinant. C, writes Johnson, " has no determinate sound and never ends a word," a statement which has been enlarged on by JS'ares in his Orthoepy, and by Todd who criticises Nares. 2sares, after remarking that Johnson reduces his own theory to practice, and always writes frantick, musick, etc., suggests that the better rea- son is to be found in the old habit of writing e at the end of words as sticke, blocke, and musicke. But this does not account for the final e itself. In words of French origin it may be attributed to the e mute. In words of Anglo-Saxon origin it may be the sign of the dative case in substantives ; or it may represent the -an of the definite adjective ; for the adjective in the language of Al- fred and jElfric ended in -an when it was preceded by the definite article ; a point of great importance in the reading of Chau- cer. This became -en, and later still e. Eventually it became mute : but not till after the time of Chaucer. Still there was no final e in the nominative case, and in many other situations ; so that, when it is found here, it must be considered as the extension, by a false analogy, of the sign of the dative termination. How- ever, Nares writes, " As long as that vowel retained any sound, its regular effect, without the intervention of k, would have been the softening of the c, even if doubled." Hence, he finds in ck " a com- promise between the sound and etymology." ^Nevertheless, the principle, as he ventures to prophecy, is not destined to stand against the power of custom ; so that he approves the forms demoniac, pro- saic, music, antic, etc. The longer the word the sooner the change will prevail ; because in monosyllables, like stick, sick, etc., where The Substitution of C for K. 57 " a single letter forms the fourth or fifth part of a word, the eye is not easily reconciled to the loss of the k." He, then, gives a list of ^syllables, arrac, barrack, haddock, paddock, etc., observing that most of them end in -ock ; and that in trisyllables the k is wholly dropped : compounds like candlestick, laughingstock, planetstrucTc, etc., being, so far as the final s is concerned, monosyllabic. This, upon the whole, is sound criticism ; and, what is more, the remarks are suggestive. When Nares tells us that Johnson kept his own rule in practice, he tells us something of the extent to which the lexicog- rapher wrote as a logician rather than as a philologist. He is uniform in the use of the k after the c in words like " frantic^, music!', comick," and the like. The practice, of course, was what he found, but he applied it consistently. As a scholar, however, he did it with his eyes open. He well knew the valid philological reasons against it. He knew that, whether derived directly or not from the Latin, the words, as members of a class, were radically, fundamentally, and originally Greek. He knew that -ic was a Greek formative. He knew that, as the representative of a Greek sound, k was the right and c the wrong sign or letter. He knew that the 1 was short ; and that, on both Greek and Latin principles, the fact of its being followed by two consonants would make it long by position. Yet, for all this, he used the two letters ; one of which was a Greek one. It is impossible to say that he may not have thought that this was the best method of showing that the 2 was short : and that if he had written " coim'c, musz'c," etc., the words might have been read "comeek, museec ;" a danger by no means imaginary ; inasmuch as the French (Latin at second, and Greek at third, hand) orthography gave us " comique and musique." All this, I say, he may have'^thought. He appears, however, to have acted (as has been suggested) on the logical principle. If c has no determinate sound of its own, and if the doctrine to that effect is to be of general application, it must always be followed by something even at the end of a word : since c without a following is c with- out a determinant. Hence, even when not wanted, something must be tacked on to it : so that, when final or followed by nothing, it must not be allowed to exist. This seems to me to have been John- son's principle. At present, however, we write " music, comic, frantic," atfd the like ; having so far departed from Johnson's rule, as inferred from his language and practice (for we do not find it totidem verbis,) as to treat c when followed by nothing, as if it were followed by a broad vowel, i.e., as k. K, then, we may consider to be its natural sound ; as is, doubtless, the case. I have called N area's views suggestive; and the remark which has just been criticised suggests Johnson's way of looking at the question ; and the opinion of Johnson is no small matter. We should do our best to see what it rests on ; especially when, as in the case before us, his practice has been set aside. It is just possible that if some timid innovator, from the north of the Tweed, or from the sis- 58 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. ter island, had ventured to suggest that the simple c best preserved the etymology, and had received for an answer some such sentence as, " Nonsense sir ; clear your head of cant, sir ; you don't see your way, sir ; c has no determinate power as a letter, sir, and when there is no determinant there is no letter for you to talk about ;" and if such an answer had come down in the pages of Boswell, we might be writing " musie&," and " cornicle," and " franticAr," and what not, at the present moment. It is not what is right or wrong, but what certain men choose to say about them that (for a time at least) deter- mines greater events than the use of c at the end of a word. In his remarks on the combination ck at the end of a monosyllable, Nares saw something beyond the mere fact of the word in which it occurred being a short one. A vowel followed by a single consonant looks longer than one followed by two ; inasmuch as it constitutes a larger part of the syllable. In tic or tik the i is one-third of the whole combination ; in tick it is a fourth. It is only to the reader that it does this, and it is only to the eye that the difference is made sensible. To the ear, tic, tik, and tick are identical. It is to the eye, however, to which spelling, writing, or orthography, ad- dresses itself; and in the investigation of the origin of the practice of indicating the shortness of the vowel by doubling the consonant which follows, the visible relation of a vowel to the remainder of the syllable is a very important consideration. Whether Nares's sugges- tion applies to the particular words under notice is another question. Unfortunately for the reader the question is one on which there is much more to be said. It is necessary, however, to put the real conditions of it in their true form. There is something indeed, there is a great deal in N area's distinction between monosyllables and the longer words. It is referrable, however, to another class of facts. As a general rule the monosyllables and dissyllables in c or k belong to different languages, and are amenable to different rules in the way of grammar. As a general rule, the monosyllables are English ; and as a universal rule they are radical, fundamental, or (if we prefer the term) crude, forms : or in other words, they have no secondary elements attached to them. Yet to the attachment of such elements they are pre-eminently liable. The commonest of these are ish and y for adjectives ; ing (as in the present participle) for verbs. Now these three begin with a small vowel, and they constitute, with a few more, nearly the whole class. It follows then that if bleak or break be converted into " bleak-isA " or " break-ing," etc, and be spelt with a simple c, they run the risk of being read " bleas-wA, bre&s-ing-," whereas if they be written " bleach," or " breack," we have a conflict between the two opposing principles ; of that by which we indicate the longness of a vowel by either doubling it or combining it with another, and that by which we in- dicate its shortness by doubling the consonant which follows it. "When the vowel is actually short we must, perforce, do this, hence " thick, thick-i*A." The Substitution of C for JT. 59 The words of more than one syllable however, are, as a rule, of Latin or Greek origin, and the second syllable is non-radical : as (for example,) " com-z'c," the adjectival derivative of nypy. Here, then, we have the adjective ready made : and the only danger that lies before us is that of a secondary affix being required which shall begin with i or e. Such would be the comparative or superlative degree ; " coraic-er, comic-est " wherein there is a danger of their being sounded as s. The danger, however, is unreal. We abstain from such comparatives and superlatives. We eschew them. We ignore them. We say " more comic," or " most comic," instead. The degrees of comparison, however, are not the rocks on which we may possibly split. From every adjective we may get an adverb to match. What if it begin with a small vowel ? The danger threat- ens us again. But the sign of the English adverb does not so be- gin. It is the affix ly ; so that we may say if we like, comicly ; and that without fear of risks. But we do not, though we may, do this. We say "comic-ally;" taking as our basis, not the actual Greek form KUII.IKOS, but the possible Latin form comicalis ; a form which may or may not exist. There is nothing to fear then, in letting ^syllables end in c, but a great deal to fear in letting wzowosyllables do so. It is scarcely necessary to guard the reader against taking the last statement at more than it is worth. It is, in no respect, a de- fence of the c in words like " comic " in general. It neither states nor hints that c is as good a letter as Tc. All that it means is, that " comic " is a better spelt word than " comicfc :" and the illustration it supplies is one of the text of Nares exclusively. C is better than cTc. This is what applies to the particular question under notice ; and it applies to nothing else directly, So far as it has any second- ary application it must be taken with what accompanies it, and with much of what will follow it. It is an instance of what is required if the short-comings of the present manner of spelling are to be made good by the exposition of rules. That they are reducible to rules is admitted. But the rules themselves, even in the most compendious expositions, would take up more space than the whole of the rest of the grammar. Neither are they either applicable or intelligible without much previous knowledge of a wide and discursive charac- ter. Hence, when we get them, the only students whom they help are those to whom help is superfluous. So far, however, as the ex- position of the complex and unmanageable character of the system of orthographic expedients goes a system which first gives us c in place of Tc for the sake of indicating a fact in etymology, and then an artificial combination to prevent it being sounded like s, and then a host more of the same kind, we are far from the end of it. When the vowel is short, as in thick, we must use two letters ; since either "thic-wA" or "thik-zsA" would run the risk of being sounded " tbikeish." Akin to this are words like " convoke," " provoke," etc., where there is but one vowel and that a long one. Write 60 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. " convofc " (or " convoe ") " provofc " (or " provoc ") and the length of the vowel is uncertain. The result is the choice of certain expe- dients. You may double the o ; but the o so doubled has every chance of being sounded as a. You may prefix an a as in " coal ;" and so get " provoak," a form which has actually existed, though now obsolete. " Provoke," etc., has superseded it ; so that it and its congeners stand, at the present moment, as monuments of the vitality, usefulness, and indispensability of the irrepressible k. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. You may, however, take refuge in q, and after the French fashion, write " provoque," There are plenty of expedients. The best use, however, we can put them to, is to leave them alone to make our- selves independent of them. The real remedy for complications of this kind is the sign for a short vowel, as opposed to a long one. This relative or conditional power of c is a fact which affects other languages besides the English : indeed, the disposition to use it at the expense of k is no genuine characteristic of any German lan- guage. Taken by ourselves we have no prejudice against k. When we avoid it, it is because Latin influences have warped our natural impartiality. The extent, however, of this predilection for one letter, combined with the eschewal of the other, will show that, in some cases, at least, it has not been in favor with the etymologi- cal, derivational, or historic principle in spelling. In some languages the rule that c before a broad vowel, is k, and before a small one s, is absolute, or nearly so : so that " can, con," or " cun," is always " &an, &on," or " &un," and " cen, cin," or " cyn," always " sen. sin," or " syn." When this is the case all goes smoothly. But sometimes c before a is sounded as *, and sometimes before z or e as k. We have seen what comes of this in the French. In order to spell sa with a c, recourse is had to the cedilla " 9 :" and in order to spell ki at all, nothing short of qu will suffice, as in qui, quitter, etc. Such is our notice of c so far as it displaces k. But it also does the same with s, though only exceptionally, accidentally, and in. a few cases. The words which illustrate this change fall into two small classes : 1. Those like " once " and " whence." 2. Those like " mice " and " pence." Each of these divisions is subdivided. 1. (a) Once, tvoice, and thrice are simply misspelt forms of ones, twies, and thries, the ordinary genitive or possessive cases of one, two, and three. In syntax they are of course adverbs, but adverbs originating in cases have long been recognised. " Unawares, towards, backwards, needs," (of necessity, as in " Needs must go when the devil drives,") are words of the same class. (b) In like manner " whence, hence," and " thence " are from " whennes " (or " whannes "), " hennes " and " thennes," the only difference between them and "once," etc., being that the numerals The Substitution of C for K. 61 are derived from the root itself ; the words denoting direction in place from a previous case when, hen, and then. 2. (a) In mice and lice, the plurals of mouse and louse, the s which the c represents is not the s of " fathers, books," etc., i.e., not the s which stands as the sign of the plural number. The plural, or rather collective, character of the form is denoted by the i, or rather by the change of vowel in general : the c is the s of the root. (b) In " dice " and "pence " the origin of the c is different, for it is the sign of the plural or collective number, as truly as if the words were written dyes and pennies. The explanation of this substitution of c for s is not very distant. If the words under notice, after the loss of the vowel e, etc., were spelt in the ordinary manner, i.e. as on's, two's, three's, when's, hen's, thens, lyes, myes, dyes, and penns, they would run the chance of being pronounced on'z, two'z, threez, whenz, penz, thenz, lyez, myez, dyez, and pennz, like the sound, though not the spelling, of boys, hens, and a whole host of other words. Now c suggests no such confusion. But c standing alone is either k or nothing. To fit it, then, for doing duty, the mute e is appended, the result being that -ce spells s. The result of all this is manifest. The true pronunciation of the adverbs and the first two plurals is preserved, while dice and pence are, respectively, differentiated from dyes (for coining) andpennies : in other words, a collective rather than plural form is developed. Such being the results, we infer from them something like conscious contrivance on the part of some one ; yet so dark is the history of it that we are almost tempted to look upon it as the growth of language itself, working through some such abstraction as the soul, spirit, or organic force of its orthography : in other words, some such an abstraction as an orthography without orthographists. Now if this unnecessary use of -c- were abolished, it would not rise to the dignity of a Phonetic reform. On the other hand, it would be something better than the mere correction of a blunder. Upon ordinary principles the spelling is defensible : inasmuch as, upon ordinary principles, the only objection to it is that it is an unneces- sary expenditure of power. As it happens, se would have done as well ; for onse, whense, and mise, would have been pronounced like geese ; in which the s retains its true power. We do not call geese geeze, nor should we call mise mize. Most of these forms may be condemned at once, simply on the ground of being unnecessary and gratuitous. But we may go fur- ther, and denounce them as violations of the etymological system. This, however, at the first view, we are forbidden to do ; for of that system we are the impugners rather than the upholders. Be it so. We denounce them, nevertheless, as blunders ; as violations of the system to which they are meant to be subservient. But this is not all. It is not pretended that the etymological principle is an evil in itself. On the contrary, if out of two ways of spelling a word pho- 62 A Defence of Plionetic Spelling. netically, one will give us the etymology as well as the sound, the one which does so is the better of the two : the only condition being that nothing in the way of Phonesis be sacrificed to it. With the words under notice, however, there is not only a sacrifice, but an unnecessary one ; indeed one which, according to its own principles, has a tendency to mislead us. " Whose " stands for the genitive, or possessive case of who : the real spelling, according to existing principles, is " who'* " or (perhaps) " whoe* :" for 's is the sign of the genitive case all the world over, and it is, to say the least, a rery strange etymology to spell as if it ended in e. When c before a small vowel is preceded by s, the combination, so far as its sound is concerned, is simply that of ss, which is that of s singly. Sciatica, science, sciolist, etc., may, as sounds, be spelt with s alone, or c alone : i.e. either ciatica, cience, ciolist, or siatica, sience, statist. The function of c, however, is to suggest the Latin or Greek origin of the words ; though when the word is directly from the Greek it is out of place. The pronunciation here is pretty regular,'; indeed when the word is actually Latin, as in scire facias, scintilla, etc., the c is silent. The second letter, no matter whether c or s, is merely a superfluity ; and its presence is noted simply because it gives us a piece of etymological spelling with a minimum sacrifice of the primary object of orthography. It is an example of the com- bination of the two principles in its most harmless form : and as such it has been recognized. Even here, however, it involves the neces- sity of a rule. Is sc always equal to s ? Only before the small vowels. We can do nothing, then, without a qualification ; nothing even in the least obnoxious of combinations. This, then, though the simplest and the most innocent of all the agents in the etymological system, requires a preliminary statement of certain conditions before it can be put into operation. But, even here, there are complications. It is only in the more modern or- thography that this uniformity is preserved. When skeleton was spelt with a c, as it was in the days of men who were scholars as well as anatomists, and who knew that it came from the Greek word -t-o-r" and " c-l-i-m-b," letter for letter, see that the b was really in the way, and that, as it was an awkward sound to utter in certain situations, the easier forms dettor and clime took the place of the others. He might probably say " Just what I should do myself. If I were talking in a hurry, I should certainly drop the b." The omission, then, of the silent letter he could understand ; nor would it be diffi- cult to complete the explanation. It is not to be expected that the changes in spelling and writing can be accommodated at once to those of speaking and pronunciation : especially when it is not likely that all the people in England would agree upon a change at the same time. The process is gradual. The change in speech comes first, that in spelling follows after. I do not say that this is the clearest way of putting the matter ; nor yet that every learner would fix his attention upon the explanation at length. There are degrees on both sides. There are teachers who are indifferent at explanations, and there are learners who can never attend. I only submit that the difficulty is one in which a very simple appeal to the under- standing is sufficient. The same applies to the r in farther and the a in father ; though in this case it is possible that no questions would be asked. They are few who, in the first instance, are con- scious of sounding the two combinations alike. The eye misleads them ; and they believe in the difference because they see it, and because the meanings of the words are different. At any rate the answer is easy. It is simply true that the habit of identifying them is, by no means, general, and that, thousands and thousands, sound the r fully, and differentiate the sounds. Some, without doubt, do it with an effort, on the strength of their studies in orthoepy. But many do it unconsciously. Well, the answer to this is that the difference is real, but that so many people neglect it, that it looks as if the spelling were in fault. With slight variations, an explanation of this kind will carry us over nine-tenths of the difficulties created by these mute or silent letters, when the fact of their being obsolete is the cause of their being mute. Now this is the simplest explanation of a Tzcw-phonetic form of spelling in the whole domain of orthography ; and it applies to the consonants of the class under notice generally. On the other hand, no rule of equal simplicity applies to c and its congeners. Here the rules rest on two wholly distinct bases ; (1) the fact of three- signs being used in the expression of two sounds, one that, of itself, requires explanation ; and (2) the conditions under which each of them is used. That this is far more complex, and far less capable of being elucidated by a mere appeal to the common-sense of the learner than the other, is evident ; and it cannot be argued that the simpli- 76 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. city of details makes up for the complexity of the original question. In these the fact which carries us the farthest is the difference be- tween the broad and small vowels ; and, though it is not denied that perhaps every detail connected with them can be reduced to some- thing like a rule, the subject is so cut-up into divisions and sub- -divisions, and each rule covers so few instances, that the whole machinery is of little practical value. The character of a few of the orthographical expedients, the result of this system, has been already indicated. Now this applies to the present system of spelling ; and it is meant to show not only that there are degrees in its imperfec- tions, but that the imperfections are so connected with certain classes of letters, as to be susceptible of a natural arrangement : in- deed this is so natural that, we may to some extent, arrive at it a priori. We know upon what letters the chance of being dropped in pronunciation will fall ; for, independent of other causes, we know that certain combinations are practically unpronounceable, and that even out of combinations originally pronounceable the loss of a vowel may reduce them to an unpronounceable condition. Thus it is that condem-no becomes condemn ; and domino, if the i be ejected becomes domn. K is as subject to this as b or p ; and, con- sequently c, when it represents k, is the same, e.g., in " victuals." We know, too, that, let the third letter be what it may, when two sounds have to be distributed between three signs, something like a system of orthographical expedients will be the result. But the domain of orthographic expedients reaches far beyond the influence of the letter c. When we express the shortness of a vowel by doubling the consonant that follows, we betake ourselves to a make- shift, an orthographical expedient. When we denote its longness by doubling the vowel itself we do the same. When we use a sec- ond and a different vowel, as in coal or bait, we are again playing a variation on the same familiar instrument. So we do when we eschew such a doubling of the consonant as thikk, and, writing thick, yield to the interfering influence of c. When we affix a mute e, as in note, as if in love with variety and ambiguity for their own sakes, we apply a third expedient when one would be sufficient. When we keep up both systems, and, having one way ofindicatiiig shortness, tack on another to denote longness, we again abuse the variety and multiplicity of our resources ; for common-sense tells us that when we have one sign for either shortness or longness, (no matter which,) no second one is needed ; inasmuch as what is not the one must needs be the other. Yet we do all this : and when the very num- ber of our expedients makes one neutralise another, we get such combinations as antique and prorogue, and " all that ends in que or flue." And what, when we have done all this, if certain old com- binations lose their original power ? Why, then, we get such re- sults as the well-known powers, or want of power, of the combina- tion -ough, which may be sounded as in enough, cough, plough, through, and what not : the result of which is the English orthog- Demerits of the other Consonants compared with C. 77 raphy, (no harder name need be given to any form of cacography,) and that for the language of Hooker and Milton. It is plain, then, that the foregoing sketch of a classification of two classes in our system of consonants, though certainly natural, and, to some extent general, has no pretence, and is never meant to be considered exhaustive. Nor is it meant to be a mere vehicle of attack upon the unfortunate letter c ; still less as one upon the Latin language. One of the commonest letters that finds a place at the end of words in English is y. It is not the letter we expect when we treat it as a semi-vowel. On the other hand, as a vowel it has no very definite import. When sounded as 1, (the German ei,) it is a diph- thong. In French it is "the Greek y" "y Grec." In Latin it represents the Greek v rather than any native sound. In Danish it is the German il, where it is pre-eminently vocalic ; an exceptional circumstance in its application to language in general. In our tongue, its sound in quantity and quality is that of * ; or, as we write it, e. In quantify and qualify, it sounds as ei (in German). So it does in fortify, magnify, etc. With the first sound it rep- resents the French e : with the second, the French -ier : which points to the Latin fio, and the root offac-io. Whether, however, it giv^s us the substantive or the verb, the spelling is the same, though the sound is different. In mighty, twenty, and other words of English origin, it is sounded as in the substantive quantity, etc. There is something to reflect upon here. So far as it stands for the French e, it gives us an orthographical expedient ; inasmuch as the accented e is foreign to our language, while the unaccented e would run the risk of being dropped as a mute. But this is not the case with the verb qualify. Here, we ought, on English principles, to write i. But we do not. This is an orthographical fancy. Why do we es- chew i at the end of a word ? The English examples help us to our answer. The y in twenty, mighty, etc., represents a " g " (German zwanziy, machtig) : and the tail or flourish of the so-called y with which we round-off our final syllables is really the tail of the Anglo- -Saxon and old English " g " (in form " 3"). The precedent being thus established, seems to have extended itself to the substantive and the verb ; as an orthographical expedient in the former, as a piece of ornamentation in the latter. In some of the manuscripts of the fifteenth century, we find this " 3 " in the shape of " z " at the beginning of words. Here the tail is cut off, and it takes the shape of another letter, " z." Hence zong, which is, word for word, young, has been read as if it began with that letter ; and grave scholars have treated the change from " g " to z, as a real change of sound ; and attributed it to a peculiarity of some specific dialect. There are ambiguities then, in the form of, at least, one letter. Now in this use of y at the end of words, where e or i would be the better sign, we find something that bears on what Mr Ellis calls the " strange-appearance " objection. I think that if we ejected it, 78 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. and substituted for it the proper vowels, the eye would be offended. I think it would be as much offended as if we substituted a wholly new letter: provided always (and the proviso must not be under-rated,) that the substitute tallied with the other letters as well as i or e does. At present, however, I believe that such a new letter is impossible at first. After a time a worse sign might pass without shocking us. It is not, then, the actual form of any suggested letter, and its relations to the rest of the alphabet, that alone constitute the difficulty ; though it has much (very much) to do with it. The mere difference of the distribution of an existing letter would, to some extent, disturb our sense of sight. So much, then, for the prejudice against the two small vowels at the end of a word ; though the two which compose the class are in different predicaments. The exclusion of i is a mere fancy. For that of e there is a better reason. This is an expedient. The dan- ger of its being treated as a mute, so that quantity would be sounded quantile, is a reason of some kind or other ; not, indeed, a valid one, but still a reason. Be this, however, as it may, between the two between the fancy and the expedient both the small vowels (for y is a semi-vowel,) are forbidden to be final ; and, as this looks some- thing like a rule, it may suggest that the broad vowels are not so excluded ; in other words, that the prejudice or fancy is extended to only a certain division of the vowels. Let us ask how far this is the case ? Perhaps we shall find that the prejudice, fancy, or whatever else we may call it, extends to the whole system. We may limit ourselves, however, to the consideration of the monosyllables ; for what applies to the shorter, will apply to the longer words as well. And the monosyllabic combinations we may exhaust ; as ba, be, bi, bo, bu ; sla, sle, sli, slo, slu, etc. Now, read phonetically, nearly all these constitute real words : words as they are sounded, or as they are recognised by the ear. "What are they, however, to the eye ? Ba and bo, as extempore interjections, may be said to be capable of being spelt as they are spelt here ; but great authorities (if there are such things in so small a matter,) probably agree in writing baa, to de- note the bleating lamb, and say boh to a goose. Upon matters, however, of this kind, it behoves us to speak with caution. Now what are monosyllables that are really spelt with a vowel for their last letter ? We can take them in order. 1. Be, the verb substantive. In bee, the insect, the second e is the e in fate, or the mute e, rather than the e in seek, which is the double e. It seems to distinguish the two words from one another. This is, certainly, its use, and it may have been its object. 2. To, the preposition. In toe, the e is mute. The o in too (too much) gives the sound of " u." 3. .Do = the Latin facio. Here the sound is that of" u" as in too. The e in doe is the e in toe. Now here, if anywhere, there is a call for the principle of differentiation. Yet it is wholly over- looked. The do which = the Latin facio, is one word. The do Demerits of the other Consonants compared with C. 79 which equals the Latin valeo = be sufficient, be Jit, suit, ia another. He does this that he may succeed, gives us the first ; this does well enough, the second. The former is the German thun, the latter the German taugen ; and, also, the Danish duge. There is, in Danish, no such word as do =facio. The word in that language is gjore ; in Scotch gar ; as It gars me greet = It makes me weep. The past tense of thun is that = did. The past tense of taugen is taugede ; which in English is do-ed, a form which no longer exists. Yet, by analogy, it is a right word ; though he would be a bold man who either uttered or wrote it. The fact is that, in English, the two words have been hopelessly and irretrievably confounded. It can- not, however, be said that phonetic spelling would have succeeded in keeping them asunder. 4. 27*o exists only as short for though. 5. Go stands on its own merits. 6. 7, 8. So does the same, as do lo and no. Where two consonants precede, the vowel ending is never found. We write sloe and throe ; not slo and thro. It is safe, then, to say, that for some reason or other, the presence of any vowel at the end of a word is exceptional. There are, doubt- less, reasons why it should be so; and none better than that of the sound itself being rare ; in other words, there is a fact in language for it to rest upon. There is no doubt about this ; since even where the spelling gives us such forms as slow, blow, lay, say, and the like, the semi-vowel represents an original consonant ; and this is, perhaps, the fact which suggested the exclusion. Whether the retention of the consonantal element can be justified on the ety- mological principle is another question. On the first view we are inclined to answer in the affirmative. But, a fact which seems to be either overlooked or ignored is that of the etymological principle being an instrument which cuts in two wajs. It professes- to help us to the history of a word. But it does so in one direction only. By investing a dead sound with a posthumous show of life, it pre- serves likeness ; but by neglecting the record of a change it conceals difference. The assumption that the one object is to be studied to the exclusion of the other, is wholly -gratuitous. That we cannot get both, is self-evident. The real etymologist, however, can scarcely say which of the two should be sacrificed for the sake of the other. More upon this point will be said in the sequel. At pres- ent, it is sufficient to suggest that the phonetician has nothing to say to either process. He invests his alphabet and his orthography with only one function, that of representing the sounds of words as he finds them ; and, so long as he holds to this, his position is im- pregnable. All this prejudice, whatever may have been its foundation, is of comparatively recent origin. It is a growth rather than a fabrica- tion. In the Anglo-Saxon it was simply impossible ; since, in the Anglo-Saxon, a whole series of words, such as steorra, tunga = star, 80 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. tongue, etc., not only ended in a broad vowel, but is classed by gram- marians in a separate declension. Others formed their plural in u, as scip = ship, scipu = ships. Earlier still, certain verbs formed their first persons singular in o and u. In the Northumbrian dia- lect, the terminations in a were conspicuously numerous ; for one of the commonest terminations of the ordinary Anglo-Saxon of Wessex was -an ; and this, in Northumberland, became a. In both the north and south, however, as the language grew more modern, each ending changed into e ; and when the Norman Conquest in- troduced the French, and, with it, the mute e, the distinction between the original e of England which was sounded, and the exotic e of France which became silent, created a confusion ; the extent of which, known to many, is pre-eminently well known to the investigators of the 1 metres of our older poets ; and a great deal of trouble it has given them, as anyone who opens a commentary upon Chaucer may see. But neither the rarity of vowel endings (especially when the vowel is broad,) in the more modern stages of the language, nor the frequency of them in the older, is peculiar to the English. They are common in the Mceso-gothic, and in the Icelandic ; and here the spelling represents them clearly, visibly, and naturally. In the German and the Danish they are now fused into the sound of e ; and both in the Danish and the German, the letter e (not mute,) is com- mon ; though a, o, u, and i are rare. In the Swedish only, where the change has been less rapid, does the broad vowels appear at the end of words, and show their real strength and their true proportion to the other sounds of the language ; the result being that the Swe- dish looks to the eye as it sounds to the ear : a language of less massiveness than the German, but a language of more freedom, breadth, and volume. Of the semi-vowels little need be said ; indeed, one of them, y, has already had its full share of notice. "We have seen what it is at the end of words. Here it is either a vowel or diphthong, never a semi-vowel ; though often, as in lay, say, etc., silent. Here, however, it represents a consonant ; g or k as the case may be. At the beginning it is used invariably as a semi-vowel. In the middle it has no place except in words of Greek origin, where it represents v or hypsilon. W, like the mutes, is often silent ; as in write, wrist. C, or rather k, is the same, and under the same conditions, that is, at the beginning of words, knight, knife. In both cases their pre- sence is defensible on the etymological principle ; and can. more- over, as torite, rite, wright, right ; knight, night ; be defended on the principle of differentiation. At the end of words, as in blow, swallow, etc., it represents an obsolete consonant,^) , or g for the most part. It is in its proper place in the diphthongs, ow and eio, though not combined with the proper vowel. The vowels still stand over- for notice; and the vowels, as we Demerits of the oilier Consonants compared with C. 81 shall soon see, have a great deal to answer for. They are, however, best considered in detail when we treat this part of the subject historically. The little that need be said about them, at present, applies to the general character of their demerits, which, in the great majority of cases, are referrable to two heads. 1. The common, indeed, the universal fault of the vowel system, in England, as in other countries, is its primary and original incom- pleteness. Of a and o there are the three sounds, allied, yet different ; capable of being exemplified, described, and classified. They are, also, susceptible of being named ; though there is so little uniform- ity and system in the terms applied to them that I hesitate to use them. The a and o in fat and not are called short ; the a and o in fate and note are called long : and these are words which are pretty generally adopted. But the difference between the a in father and aw in bawl, when compared with the a va. fate and the o in note (with which it agrees in being long.) is not very uni- formly denoted. Let us call it, for the present, the open sound of certain vowels ; though the term is one which, in the French and Italian languages we must either abandon or use in a different sense. Now for each of these three modifications, a separate sign is required. It may be a wholly different letter, or it may be the original letter modified in form. We have, however, nothing nearer than eta and epsilon, and the omega and omicron of the Greek. This is as much as need be said about the original incom- pleteness of the vowel system. It is less deficient in some languages than in others, but, more or less, it is deficient in all. So far, then, as it occurs in English it is, by no means, a fault peculiar to that language. It is rather one which we share with the rest of the world. This is not the case with the faults of the second group. It is one thing to have no signs at all for a pair of allied sounds ; it is another thing to have, and to misdistribute, them. Thus, the Greeks have the four signs 17, e, , and o for e, e, d, and o, and they know how to use them. What, however, if t\ were treated as the long sound of o, and e as the short sound of <> ? This would be an abuse, a blunder ; a blunder and an abuse arising out of a misconcep- tion of their true affinities. Now some languages make this blunder, and some do not. What orthography is the freest from it, is doubt- ful. It is certain, however, that English is the most affected by it. The best example of it is our treatment of the sound in " fine." It is really a diphthong, as in the German feine. With us it is the long form of the \ \o.fin. Now, in calling combinations like these orthographical expe- dients, I do not say that they are contrivances ; or, at any rate, that they are always such. I hold that, in most cases, they were not framed with a definite sense of their future functions, or, that they were not consciously constructed as means towards an end. merely state that their effect and operation is just what it would have been if they had been so constructed. They are expedients to 82 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. all practical intents and purposes. They need not have been meant as such ; they need not have been made at all. They seem to have grown : though how we get the results of design with nothing but the mere growth of a system of spelling as the designer I do not pretend to say : nor do I think anyone could explain it without getting within the region of abstractions. In like manner, I do not consider that in calling these expedients non-natural I make them artificial. In many cases their oriiu has been, as has just been stated, spontaneous. They developed them- selves under certain conditions of language ; rather than out of the conscious working of any particular individual ; though of this they may be instances. The process by "which letters become mute is one of a much simpler character, and the explanation of them may generally be found within the words wherein they occur. Most of the expedients are connected with the letter c. That part of our spelling which lies within the immediate and remote influence of this exotic and unnecessary letter we may liken to a tree of foreign origin and southern growth, transplanted on the soil of England : that has brought with it a parasite, by which it is encumbered. The para- site may not be without its uses ; for it may indicate to the observer the original country of the tree. It may serve, too, for some subor- dinate purposes of ornament. But it checks the natural growth of the tree ; warping, nipping and distorting both trunk and branch, and weakening their fibre till the whole tissue becomes fragile, cor- rupt and mouldering. On the other hand, the parts constituted by the original consonants, though neither undying, nor self-renewing, are free from such an incubus as this. The worst that can befall them are the ordinary evils of growth, old age, and decay. Here and there a branch loses its vitality, and, so long as it remains in its place, encumbers the tree. The remedy, however, is occasional in- spection ; and a clearing away of the dead wood is all that is needed for a strong, healthy and natural revival of their true vitality. We have thus exhibited, in a general way, the characteristics of two classes of letters according to their use and power in the spelling of the English language, as illustrative of the principles of the present ortho- graphy; in doing which great stress has been laid upon the fact of each group being a natural one : inasmuch as the faults of each division not only differed in number and gravity according to the letters upon which they were charged, but were referrable to a different origin, and amenable to different remedies. There were degrees, then, of faultiness, and, in these degrees, varieties as to the extent to which the faults were more or less easily abated. Nevertheless, under the most favorable view of the more favored of the two classes there was a certain amount of deficiency, redundancy, and inconsistency, of which the best that could be said was that there were certain principles at the bottom of them ; that, on these, certain rules could be constructed ; and that, above all, there were connected with the system, certain secondary advantages which might be considered as Dements of the other Consonants compared with C. 83 a set-off to the admitted evils of the system. That there are some such advantages is admitted by the advocate of the Phonetic system ; just as his opponent admits that there are some demerits in the existing system. The demerits are both numerous and im- portant. Hence, the question is one of comparison. What is the price at which the advantages of the present system are bought P The phonetician insists that there is no equality, nor even an approach to it, between them. Now, however much it may be the case, that the complexity of the present system is different for the different parts into which it is divided, and that in one of them it may be much less than in the other, the phonetic system is wholly free from complexity of any sort. In this it differs from the existing orthography not merely in degree but in kind. The extent to which this is the case is so great that it almost degrades the Phonetic principle to a truism. It is too simple, and too natural, to be really a system at all. And, perhaps, such is actually the case. Yet it is purely, simply, and absolutely neither more nor less than the present system divested of its extension to secondary and subordinate purposes. It is simply a translation of the audible sounds of which the ear is the organ that takes cognizance, into the visible signs which appeal to the eye, and which, by so doing, are made permanent. Surely this is sufficient. Surely this is something that can be allowed to stand or fall by its own merits. Surely this is an aim and object which wants no recommendation from any secondary aims to which it may be made subservient. If it cannot stand alone it cannot, and ought not to stand at all., Let, then, the simplicity and singleness of this aim be the charac- teristic ; and, as an expansion of this, let the utter absence of all secondary aims be taken as the result. Under these conditions spelling is reduced to the three following operations : 1. The resolution of any word, as the speaker utters it, to its ele- mentary articulate sounds. This, however, as far as the speaker is concerned, is already done ; and the signs which denote them are letters. 2. A familiar knowledge of the forms of them. 3. The way of putting them together. The result is a spelt word : the spelling of which is as pure a matter of certainty as the sum in a series of numbers in arithmetic. This process with letters as the symbols, is not, does not profess to be, easier than the corresponding process in arithmetic. It requires care, and a sustained attention ; probably to the same degree. It is not learned with equal ease by every learner. But it is equally simple, and its results are equally sure. Does it then make bad spelling impossible ? It does so in the way that bad addition is impossible. The operator may be careless ; or he may manage his tools in an unworkmanlike manner. This, however, is his fault ; not that of the system : and for faults of this 6* 84 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. kind we must allow in our teaching just as we do in the teaching of the rule of addition. Can as much be said of the present system ? But the learner may pronounce his words wrongly. Be it so. All that the phonetic system requires is that given the right pronun- ciation of a word, the right spelling of it shall follow as a matter of course. With a learner from the provinces there are many pronun- ciations, which, as a matter of standard orthoepy, are wrong. With the best educated men in England the pronunciation of a certain number of words is doubtful. Phonetic spelling does not profess to teach pronunciation or orthoepy. It merely professes to supply an orthography. It takes a certain pronunciation, whether right or wrong, and represents it. The present system does the same ; but it misrepresents it. The difference between the two is a matter not of degree but of kind. SECTION XXXII. THE PHONETIC PRINCIPLE. We have hitherto considered the principles of phonetic spelling exclusively in respect to its opposition to the existing systems now prevalent, 'both in England and elsewhere : and it may, probably, have struck some of our readers that it is only so far as it is antag- onistic to something else that it has any existence, or, at any rate, any claim upon our attention. This, however, is far from being the case. If phonetic spelling were as prevalent as it is now excep- tional, indeed if it were dominant throughout the whole domain of language, and if the opposite systems were non-existent, there would still be more than one question of some practical importance con- nected with it. The rule that the representation of the sounds of language is not only the primary but the exclusive function of or- thography, though it carries us far, does not carry us all the way. Lpon the analysis of sentences into words, of words into syllables, and of syllables into their ultimate elementary articulations or breathings the whole basis of spelling and writing rests. No analy- sis, no letter. This is the rule. But analysis, wherever it occurs, or whatever it may be applied to, is essentially a matter of degree. It may stop after the first subdivisions of the subject matter, or it may be carried onwards and onwards, and farther and farther, until not only nothing remains to be separated from anything, but until the last sign of composition has disappeared. At the same time, it by no means follows that this extreme form of analysis is necessary : and, when this is needless, the extension of the phonetic notation is equally so. Now the reduction of a sentence into its constituent parts may stop at words ; or it may go on to the analysis of the constitution of an elementary sound. How far, then, are we to follow it in our notation ? There may be sounds that, while they vary from one The Phonetic Principle. 85 another, vary so slightly as not to be worth the sign that should ex- press their difference. There may be sounds that though manifestly compound have their parts combined with different degrees of closeness. In the one case there may be contact, and contact only. In another the contact may amount to continuity, unity, conflu- ence, or fusion : so that when two sounds come into juxtaposition, the combination, to borrow an illustration from chemistry, may be either mechanical or chemical. There are limits, then, to the appli- cation of the principle under notice ; and it is better that they should be indicated by an upholder of the system than by an impugner. We must not expect to get much out of any definition of the term phonetic ; neither must we argue too much from its derivation. In ordinary conversation, in controversial discussion, and even in scien- tific investigation, the several derivatives of the Greek word q> 28. ... 29. ffi The Anglo-Saxon Alphabet. 115 The sufficiency, or insufficiency, of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet must be measured by the number and nature of the sounds which it had to represent. This is scarcely to be done without a certain amount of hypothesis and speculation. The opinion of the present writer who, unwillingly, differs from many of his predecessors, is that the proportion of letters to the sounds is not below that of the average alphabets ; certainly above that of Irish ; and, perhaps, comparable with that of the Mceso-gothic. But this view implies that about the seventh century the sounds which we now represent by j and z, were, then, either non-existent or rare : in other words that they have been developed in the interval. With the sound of tsh the same is held to have been the case ; and, unless several of the preceding sections have been written in vain, the process by which a word spelt Ceaster has now become Chester has been fore- shadowed. But this is not even now spelt with a single letter. J and z at the beginning of words, are now confined to those of for- eign origin : and z, which is only a common sound as the sign of number in the plurals like stagz, and the existence of which is ignored in the present spelling, has been accounted for. Y, prob- ably, existed in the oldest forms of our language ; but the differ- ence between such a combination as ee-o and yo is of the slightest. Besides this, y grows out of g. So much for the sibilants, both simple and compound. The guttural sounds of kh and gh, have, probably, been lost : at least, in the literary English. !F as a semi-vowel seems to have been unknown. As a vowel it appears interchangeable in spelling with i and e, &s in gyt=yet, qehyrsam and gehirsam (in German gehorsam) = obedient. Whether it had the sound of the French u, German ii, and Scandinavian y is doubtful. The analogy of the allied languages is more in favor of this than the orthographical conditions under which it occurs. So far as it is a semi-vowel it seems to have been represented by e eow=you, eorl = earl = Danish jarl, where the j=y. This is a point upon which I unwillingly differ from Mr Ellis. He argues against the semi-vowel power of e from its interchangeability with ea. But this assumes that it had only one power. He also argues against it from the small number of words beginning" with e, fol- lowed by a vowel, where the sound is now that of y. This is true. But it is not from e as an initial that the point is to be deter- mined. It is rather from the combination ofe with *, c, and sc preced- ing it as in seo = she ; sceat = shot, (as in pay your shot ; in scot and lot, the k sound is preserved,) and Ceaster = Chester. It is on this that the present writer mainly insists. Mr Ellis, however, is so far consistent that he thinks that the change to sh and tsh can be accounted for differently ; by what he calls palatisation. This is the point upon which we are at issue. Q, was expressed by cw ; and k, in the original alphabet, was nowhere. The difference be- tween/and v was not represented. Though q was ejected as super- 8* 116 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. fluous, x was not. It had its present power of Ics ricsian, being sometimes written rixian. The unsteadiness of the two sounds by which we denote the th in thin and the th in thine is a serious charge. So far as the signs were separate from one another, and both single, all was well. There were two sounds, and each of them was a simple one. There were, also, two letters ; and each of them was simple also. But there was no steadiness in their import : inasmuch as either sign might be used for the expression of either sound ; so that, of the two continuants of t and d, each had two signs. This is the very last inconsistency that we expect ; for the origin of 6 is, evidently, the letter d. Yet so it is. Of the two sounds the sonant is, in the present stage of language, the rarer : being, at the beginning of words, nearly limited to the words that, these, those, thy, they, theirs, them, then, there, and the article the. Yet in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic the spelling is with" \>, as \>ii = thou, \>&r there. Are we to suppose, then, that the sound has changed ? Eask answers in the affirmative ; for he remarks that though \>at, = that, when written at length, is spelt both ways (i.e., \>cet and $ is always found at the beginning of words, and that both in Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, is more important : but even this fails to carry us over the whole difficulties of the question. " Some," writes Eask, " have considered one of these letters as super- fluous, and Lye, who, however, bows to the opinion of Spelman and Somner, that 5 was the b.ard (surd), and \> the soft (sonant) th, nevertheless considers them as the same letter." Later, indeed within the last two years, Mr Ellis admits the difficulty of the ques- tion. "What," he writes, " were the precise meanings of b, 5, or rather how the meanings (th, dh) were distributed over them, it does not seem possible to elicit from the confused state of existing manuscripts." If these views be true the demerits of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet are, so far as the consonants go, not above the average. In the vowels there seem to be some very serious deficiencies, both of omission and commission ; and one, probably, as serious as all put together in the matter of mistribution ; by which I mean classing two widely different sounds under the same head ; or as the (so-called) long and short sounds of one another. This ap- plies to the vowel t. I said probably ; because as the case stands it is, by no means, certain. If we only knew how the contempor- aries of Alfred sounded such words as tid and win, all would be clear : but he would be a bold man who would answer the question in either one way or another. Individually, I think that the words were sounded as we now sound them ; or as tide and wine. So they are sounded in Germany zeit and icein. But in Scandinavia the pronunciation is teed, and veen ; or tid and vin, tid and v'm. In the Scandinavian languages the diphthong (ei in German, / phoneti- The Anglo-Saxon Alphabet. 117 cally) is rare as an independent sound : though it is common enough as an educt from -eg : but this is only a secondary diphthong. We know that it has originated in a combination of a vowel and a consonant ; and we know what the consonant is. We have no knowledge of the origin of the i in tid and win : and there are numerous words besides of which we may say the same. Whether, however, the mistribution be Anglo-Saxon or not, it is certain that we have it in the present English and a very grave one it is. Then there was a minor sort of confusion between i and y, already noticed ; and another, also already noticed, between i and e. With all three of the broad vowels there was also confusion. Whether the language, or whether the ear of the framers, or up- holders of the alphabet was at fault is uncertain : but between either the actual sound of the vowels or the representation of them, there was great indistinctness somewhere. It, probably lay with the language. In respect to a, the Scotch say bane and stone, the English bone and stone. In the Anglo-Saxon the spelling was ban and stdn. When the vowel was short, there was the same in- distinctness, and hand was, and has long continued to be, written hand and hond. In one of the latest contributions on the pro- nunciation of the Runes, the late Professor Munch of Christiana has shown that, even in the oldest, there was the same ambigu- ity. In both the present Danish and the present Swedish the sound of what is meant to be the genuine o is spelt with a in Danish staae, in Swedish sta, bal. Meanwhile the ordinary o is intermediate to the English o and oo. A notice of the Latin alphabet as the foundation of either the Anglo-Saxon or the German of the continent would be incomplete without a recognition of certain letters to which influential authorities have assigned a higher antiquity, and a more independent origin, than is here allowed ; though, here and elsewhere, considerable importance is attached to them the German and Scandinavian, or Norse, Eunes. The Runes (and it is in Scandinavia where they are best studied) fall into two classes ; those which are anterior to the introduction of Christianity, and those which are subsequent to it. The former are sixteen in number. The latter are the same as the older ones so far as they go ; but with certain additions to make up the number of the letters of the Latin alphabet which they are coined to represent. They are formed out of the earlier ones by diacritical marks, generally dots ; so that the older alphabet con- sists of the unpointed, the newer of the pointed and unpointed, Runes. As Run means a secret, or something whispered in the ear, it is probable that the art of reading them, was, at first, known to but few. The earliest are assigned to the ninth century A.D. The original Runes consist solely of straight lines ; as if they were meant for inscriptions and for nothing else. Of the Runes the most important is the third : fc = th ; by name Thurs ; and also Thorn; for out of this grew the Anglo-Saxon 118 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. letter \> = the Greek e, the English th ; as we have already seen. The sign for w is also believed to have a similar origin. The Ogham characters, which in some degree bear the same re- lation to the Irish as the Ktraic does to the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, inasmuch as both are invested with a certain halo of mystery and antiquity, are of a very artificial construction 5 and are more truly of the nature of cyphers in the way of cryptography, or secret writing, than their German analogues. The Ogham characters, moreover, remind us of musical notation rather than of ordinary alphabetic writing. There is a long straight horizontal line, like those we see in copybooks ; and upon, under, or across (i.e., both under and over) this are certain short ones, equally straight, which according to their grouping by ones, or twos, or threes, etc., and by their rela- tion to the base line, take their import as letters. Of those that lie both above and below the line some lie across it at right angles, others obliquely. The two alphabets which have commanded the most attention are (1) the Beith-Luis and (2) the Bobel-Loth ; named after the letters with which they, respectively, begin. These letters are twenty-four in number, like the Latin ; indeed, in this respect more so than the genuine practical vernacular one. So far. then, as this goes, the old Irish had two alphabets. The names of the letters are extremely fanciful. Beith =birch, and Lv.is = mountain-ash ; and as these, so are the rest of the letters named after trees. The Bobel-Loth, on the other hand, takes its names from the Bible ; and Bobel, Loth, Foronn, Davith, Talemon, Qualep, etc. = Babel, Lot, Pharaoh, David, Solomon, Caleb, etc., figure as the names of letters. Add to these the numerous inscriptions, both in Latin and Greek characters, sometimes found on stone monuments, but oftener on coins, (where we also get a date.) and we have a fair view of the condition of the alphabets of Western Europe between the middle of the fourth and the middle of the seventh century. The little that need be added concerning that part of the Anglo- -Saxon orthography which relates to accents I give in the words of Dr Bosworth, than whom no one has paid more attention to the subject. The evil influence of the French system of spelling, intro- duced by the Xorman Conquest is here indicated ; and certainly it is not exaggerated. As the simplicity of the Anglo-Saxon accentuation has frequently been over- looked, or involved in a complicated system, it will tend to remove false impres- sions and to make the matter clear, by recollecting that the Anglo-Saxons only used one accent, which always indicated the long sound of the vowel over which it is placed. Our complicated system of English vowels arose from the Norman scribes, who first confused the Anglo- Saxon accents, and then attempted to supply their place by a multiplicity of vowels, which we have adopted, as will be seen by the following examples: Cw4n, a cween; f6t,feet; %6s,gee$e, etc: Die, < lie, like; lim, lime ; win, wine; etc: B6c, book; {(it, fore, before; god, good; g6s, a goose; etc: Du, thou, hii, how. hus, house ; in us, mouse; etc: Bryd, a bride; fyr, -fire; mys mice. In all the instances the Anglo-Saxon is quite History of the Anglo-Saxon Alphabet. 119 plain and consistent, expressing the same sound by the same accented vowel, while the English employs different vowels for the same purposes as in cween, geese; good, goose, fore; thow, bow,, house and mow.se. The greatest complica- tion of vowels is seen in our expression of the long open sound of o, heard in no and bone. We use oe, oa, and o with a silent final e, while the Anglo-Saxons, in all cases, merely accented the o as Da, a doe; f6, a foe; ta, a toe. Bat, a boat, dc, an oak, fain, foam, etc. Ban, a bone, stan, a stone, etc. The super-abun- dant employment of English vowels is troublesome to natives and most perplexing to foreigners. On the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon system of accenting the long vowels is plain and definite. SECTION XLI. HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON ALPHABET. In Dr Bosworth's remark upon the ignorance of the Norman scribes, we shall find nearly the whole of the remainder of the his- tory of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet and orthography. We have in- dicated the faults in the original construction of it ; we have seen how old a system it is ; and we have hinted at the inordinate amount of wear and tear to which it has been exposed. This constitutes its history, as what we call a working alphabet ; and, in tracing it, the single event of the Norman Conquest is all in all. It plays much the same part in the history of English spelling as the well-abused letter c does in the construction of the alphabet. I am not so much in love with two great landmarks, and the simplicity with which they invest our examination, as to distribute the whole mass of the or- thographical mischief entailed upon the present generation under these two heads exclusively. There are certain faults common to all systems of spelling, and such when they occur in English, can- not, of course, be imputed to either of these causes. But so long as our spelling has nothing worse than these, it is no worse than that of other countries. It is by the inordinate amount of faultiness pe- culiar to itself, that it especially afflicts our language ; and of this, I think that nine-tenths, at least, are due to these two causes. We must understand this. There are other countries in which they use c instead of Ic ; but there are none in which the antagonism of the two letters exists as it exists in England ; and the antagonism, be it re- membered, is that of two systems, the Latin, and the German. There are other countries too, which have been conquered by an army of foreigners, and have, therefore, had their languages inundated by words of foreign origin ; but such a history as that of the British Islands during the two centuries which followed the battle of Hast- ings, we find nowhere except in England. There is not much to be said about the influence of the Danes. In the charters of Canute and Edward the Confessor, the use of the k becomes conspicuous. For this there are two reasons. (1) the original Frank influence dating from the beginning of the seventh century, or the introduction of the Christianity of the Frank mis- sionaries as opposed to that of the Irish, or British church ; and (2) 120 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. that of Northern Germany upon Denmark, and through Denmark upon Scandinavia in general. Between these two we explain the difference between the orthography of the charters immediately pre- ceding the death of Edward the Confessor and those of Alfred, Athelstan, and Edgar. We are not always sure of the date of the Anglo-Saxon Charts. We may learn, however, by mere inspection, that the derivations from the original spelling are numerous in pro- portion as they approach the time of the Norman Conquest. We must be careful, however, not to overvalue the Danish influence. There is adequate evidence of this in the Codex 2Evi Saxonici. But it must be read with the caution that, though Kemble, as a general rule, marks the chartas of doubtful antiquity with an asterisk, he, so far as he is other than wholly unexceptionable, favors antiquity. Then comes the Norman Conquest our great epoch and, after that, comes a break. For nearly two centuries there is but little written in either English or French. Latin prevails. The excep- tions are well known. There is the continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This comes down to the death of Stephen. This is cer- tainly Anglo-Saxon, as opposed to English in its orthography. But it must be remembered that it is the continuation of an Anglo-Saxon work ; wherein the spelling of the earlier parts may have served as a model for that of the later ones. Under Henry I., however, the English was depressed ; while the French was rather in a state of formation than formed. The court, however, the nobles, the priests, and the lawyers were French. We must see how, in the reign of Henry II., the English emerges after its period of disgrace and abeyance. It still passes, however, for Anglo-Saxon rather than English ; and, though it is doubtful whether the language of the few compositions we have of the twelfth century be that of the com- mon people, it is certain that their spelling is that of the bookmen, who looked backwards, rather than that of the speakers, whose natural tendencies were to take the language as they heard it. But we may now consider the history of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet from a different point of view. We may ask what it would have been if left to itself. I believe this view to be one that has either not hitherto been taken ; or, if taken, not considered historically. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxon orthography into an orthography so unlike its former self as the present English, is not the only con- tinuation of its history. It was what we call a mother alphabet ; one out of which others were formed ; or, to say the least, one by which others were largely influenced. For the first of these we must look to Westphalia, This is because, in Westphalia, we are in the old Saxon country ; in what is called Lower Saxony. The Franks before the time of Charlemagne were Christians. The Saxons, after his time, were Pagans. England, meanwhile, had been Christianised. It was the business of these Christianised En- glishmen to send missionaries into the old country Westphalia, Friesland, and Northern Germany in general. And here their ef- History of the Anglo-Saxon Alphabet. 121 forts were successful. In England the Northern Germans were called the Old Saxons ; -EWrf-Seaxan, Antiqui-Saxones ; their in- structors being the Anglo-Saxons. These last took with them their own proper alphabet ; and out of this grew a comparatively credit- able body of compositions. Some of them hardly deserve the name of literature ; for they are mere muniments, or rolls of certain con- vents, i.e., of Essen and Frekkenhorst. But the Heliand, Healer, or Savior, a metrical harmony of the four Gospels, giving us the history of Christ during his ministry on earth, is a work of no small importance. Being written without any metrical divison of the lines, it was, at first, mistaken for a narration in prose, and for one com- posed in the Danish parts of England ; by which supposition its divergence from the ordinary Anglo-Saxon was accounted for. It is now known to be a poem. As for its language it is amply ex- plained by the doctrine that it was the Old Saxon of the original mother country in Germany. Add to this the fact that it is that of the rolls and muniments of the Westphalian convents already men- tioned, and the evidence is complete. Here, then, we have the Anglo-Saxon alphabet in Germany, where it may re-act on that of the Franks, just as that of the Franks acted upon the English. It is essentially Anglo-Saxon with differences. The Anglo-Saxon w is uu. The c is strictly adopted. The only word I remember as spelt with Jc is the proper name Isaak. The same claim, of having supplied either an alphabet as an actual model, or a standard to which writers might refer, may be made upon Scandinavia. In the present Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish we know that the Jc is paramount. C appears oftenest in the Swedish ; but it is only when it precedes a k, for the sake of indicating the shortness of the vowel which it follows, as drivka, in Danish drikke. Here the function of c is just what it is in thick. But in the older Icelandic manuscripts, though c is non-existent in the print, k is exceptional ; or rather it is found subject to the rule we can so easily anticipate : the one connected with the broadness or smallness of the vowel by which it is followed. Thus while the print of the Voluspa runs : Hljo'Ss br3 ec allar Helgar binder, Meiri ok minni, Mogue Heimdallar, Vildu at ek Valfodre Vel framtelja, Fornspjoll fira, }>au er e fremst um man The manuscript on which it is founded runs : H Hefts bift ec allar binder meiri miNi maugo heimdalar vildo at ec ualfaj> uel jryr telia j - orn spioli jrira J>se e' jremst u man. But, even here, when two vowels follow, the spelling is with c as 122 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. Sol sein sunnan A' salar steina, \>a var grund groin Groenum laui. in the manuscript Sol scein suNa a salar steina >a var grvnd groin grSno lauki.^) The earlier Anglo-Saxon prototype and the latter modifications of it are here manifest. In the Codex Begins, assigned to the begin- ning of the fourteenth century, Ic appears before n as Tcna. Upon this, however, Munch remarks that " c is used oftener than k." In the Arne Magnusson Codex the k is exclusively used. From the Icelandic, or Old Norse, the present alphabets of Den- mark, Norway, and Sweden are derived. They are of average merit ; and such we may suppose the English would have_been had there been nothing to interfere with it. SECTION XLII. HISTORICAL SKETCH OP ENGLISH SPELLING SUBSEQUENT TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST. THE MUTE E. Though the mute e is mainly of French origin we must not sup- pose that it is wholly and absolutely foreign to our language. It appears, for the first time, after the Norman Conquest ; and, at present, it is in words introduced from France that it chiefly occurs. So far, then, as it is conspicuous and prominent it is French ; but it is probable that, even if no such an event as the Battle of Hastings had occurred, we might have mute e's to some extent at least, of na- tive origin and independent growth. In all words where the penut- tinate vowel is long, and the-last is the letter e, (which in this case is sounded.) there is always a chance of the e becoming, sooner or later, obsolete ; in which case it drops out of the pronunciation. If then, as generally happens, the spelling fail to keep pace with the pro- nunciation, and if the vowel be preserved in writing after it has been dropped in speaking, a mute e is the natural result ; and as the syllable which precedes it is already long, the connection between the two vowels in the way of orthography, is invested witha characterto which it has no claim. The two vowels look as if they belonged to a system, or a method, or had some connection with a principle, or a function, namely, that of indicating longness. The combination, however, has, as we have seen, a different origin ; and is in fact, so far as the expression of quantity is concerned, merely accidental. Now the extent to which a final e became thus obsolete in the earlier stages of our language was inordinately great ; greater, per- haps, than in French, as may be seen by the merest inspection of an 5. Den Jildre Edda P. A. Munch. Christiania. 1847. Historical Sketch of English Spelling. 123 Anglo-Saxon grammar. In our language anterior to the Norman Conquest, there was a whole declension of substantives, in which the nominative case ended in -n, and the oblique cases in -e ; an e which was as clearly sounded as it is in the present German, or Danish. This was the case with heortan, tungan, eage, hearts, ton- gues, eyes, etc. Here the first step in the change was the ejection of the sound of the final consonant ; then came that of e ; which was long preserved in writing. Besides this, there was a double inflection of the adjective. When it followed the definite article, -n or -e was the ending. Hence, there came a Definite, as opposed to an Indefinite, Declension ; and this, also, at the present moment occurs in German. So important is this real and organic -e with its subsequent disappearance in speech, that it gives us one of the rules for the pronunciation of the adjective in Chaucer ; where (whatever may be the case in other words) we are safe in treating it, for the purposes of metre, as sounded where it is Definite, or preceded by the. In this, then, to go no farther, we get a measure of the degree to which the Anglo- Saxon orthography had, within itself, the germ of what we may call the mute e system ; for it is the doctrine of the present writer that the final vowel was written, at least, as long as it was pronounced, and the hypothesis (we may almost say the certain fact) that it was re- tained in the writing after it had been dropped in the pronunciation are equally legitimate deductions from the history of our orthography. Hence, when, from two different causes the one derived from our own language, and the other from the French, the two modes of spelling became confluent or united, the predominance of what looks like a very artificial way of expressing the length of a vowel, is ex- plained by the very natural process of a change in language preced- ing the appropriate change in spelling ; or the retention of a letter in writing after its proper function had become, both literally and figuratively, a dead letter. Then, when e final was made mute, the necessity of expressing it when sounded, led to orthographical expe- dients ; and this, (as was shown in our remarks on the words quantity, quality, etc., which are spelt in French with an accented e, whereas with us, the accent was not recognised,) to say the least, favored the practice of writing y at the end of words ; a thoroughly non-natural termination. As for the mute e itself with a consonant between it and the vowel with which it was supposed to be associated, the orthographic pro- cess in which it plays its part is so exceptional, that the English and the French are the only two languages in which it is found. Its origin (as has been shown) was, to some extent, natural. It soon, however, became artificial ; consciously, and designedly artificial. One of the worst instances of this is the word whose. The Anglo- Saxon was hw(Bs. Here, the e presented itself in the diphthong. Then came htcaes ; then the transposition ; in which there is nothing natural ; nothing even French. It is purely and simply artificial ; 124 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. and when considered with reference to its natural import, a combin- ation of which the true signification is as different as can be from its conventional ; in other words, it is an artifice of the worst kind. Pence is much such another word as whose, i.e., an example of the mute e in its most objectionable state. SECTION XLIII. HISTORICAL SKETCH, ETC. (continued). THE APOSTROPHE (') AS A SIGN OF THE GENITIVE CASE. The e mute, which presented itself at the end of words was dropped ; or fell off. The e which preceded the s in words like scipes = ships, and served as part of the sign of the genitive case, was elided ; i.e., it lay in the middle of two other letters and slipped out from between them. Hence, it became obsolete as a sound .- and so long as it was used in spelling was, as a letter, mute. In the plural number where there was the same termination in -*, the orig- inal vowel which preceded it was a ; as wulfas = wolves. Both vowels, however, suffered elision : the result being the use of the so-called apostrophe ; as in the mans hat, the children s father, the ships' sails, three different forms, each of which is a bad one, and each bad in a manner peculiar to itself. They deserve, however, notice : because of all the orthographical expedients with which the English language is overloaded, this use of the apostrophe has the least foundation in anything like a philological fact ; while it pres- ents on the other hand, the most decided signs of a conscious adap- tation, invention, or construction. It is not, however, a mere sign of elision in general ; for, if it were so, we should find it in the nominative and accusative plural as well as in the genitive singular. But in the plural it is conspicuous from its absence ; and is meant to be so : for it is a sign not only of elision but of differentiation or distinction between two elided sounds. It is not, then, so much the sign of a vowel in the genitive case which has dropped out, as that of a difference in case and number between the word lions in such clauses as the following (1) the lions den and (2) the lions are let loose. Now in respect to this expedient we may fairly say that, supposing an expedient of any kind to be needed, it is, as we here see it before us, one of more than average merit. All expedi- ents, in the eyes of the Phonetic speller, are bad. But this is among the least bad. As a construction it is simple and natural ; and as a sign adequate to the work it has to do ; so that the only objection to it is its superfluousness. Here, however, we must stop. Its extension to the genitive plural is utterly indefensible. Except in the few words like men, women, children, oxen, where we actually say the men's memories, the women's children, the children's parents, the oxen's horns, the s has no real Historical Sketch of English Spelling. 125 existence : and as there is no genitive in 's there is no elision ; and that for the simple reason that there is nothing to be elided. Hence the s' represents nothing. No one supposes that there -were ever such words as ships-es,fox-es-es and the like ; or that such a sen- tence as " the genitive plural is formed from the nominative by the addition of -es " ever existed as a real rule. The Anglo-Saxon geni- tive plural ended in -a, and when this became narrowed into -e, and the -e became mute, there was no sign of any case in the plural num- ber except the nominative. This, however, is by no means, an intol- erable condition for a language to be reduced to. The French has no sign for a genitive case in either number ; and, by means of the preposition de, does very fairly without one. By a similar applica- tion of q/Ve might have done the same : indeed, it is the opinion of the present writer, that in nine cases out of ten this is what we do. Still we have such constructions as the children's bread and the ships' sails ; and the explanation of them is easy. Taken by itself, the notion that the genitive plural may stand to the nominative of that number in the same relation that genitive and nominative cases singular stand to each other, is one which when a language is (so to say) in difficul- ties and reduced to an alternative, naturally presents itself. The ac- tual formation, however, of the new cases is, by no means, so simple. Thus the English nominative plural has already a sign ; stone, stones, just like the Latin lapis, lapides ; and before we can substi- tute another for it (for the the process is one of substitution rather than of addition) this sign has to be got rid of; for, it is clear, that we can no more say stones-es, than the Latin can say lapides-um ; though something like it is done with the word its ;- where t is the sign of the neuter gender, and s, the sign of the genitive case, is tacked on to it. Let this difficulty, however, be got over, a second remains. The signs of the cases, the nominative plural and the genitive singular, are alike ; both ending in s. Yet we do not say ships'es, and still less fox-es-es. What then does this 's re- resent ? The best that can be said of it is that it represents a con- fluence, fusion, amalgamation, or unification of two ss'es, with dif- ferent powers, and belonging to different numbers, and though this, being a purely historical fact, is not capable of being represented in speech, it is the high prerogative of orthography, in cases like these, to make good the want of a real distinction by an artificial one ; and that, in the case before us, the apostrophe of the genitive singu- lar with its change of position in respect to the s, does this. With the few words in n (men's, oxen's) the addition is real ; and, so far as there is a genitive plural at all, these are the words in which it occurs, Here, however, no (') is wanted. There has been no elision ; and there is nothing with which the forms can be confounded : the singular genitives being man's, woman's, child's, ox's. The apostrophe, then, in the genitive plural is much less defensible than that of the genitive singular. Neither is laudable ; though the latter is less blameworthy than the former. It is the misfor- 126 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. tune, however, of this unlucky sign to have been woefully misinter- preted. We all know what it was for a long time supposed to rep- resent ; viz. : the pronoun his. We know, too, the chief texts, (" Christ his sake " and others,) upon which this belief rested. The rectification of this error took place by degrees. The objection that lay closest at hand was, of course, the fact that it was only for the masculine gender of the singular number that this explanation was available. We do not, it was urged, say " The Queen, her Majesty " nor yet "the children, their bread." This, however, was soon con- demned as insufficient : inasmuch as, though nothing like so common as his, both their and her are used in the corresponding constructions. A better objection, however, was found in the word hi-s itself; because, here, the s could not possibly be made (so to say) out of itself. The most conclusive argument, however, was, at the same time, the shortest, and this was the fact of the s in " father's " being simply the s in the Latin " patris," the Greek irartpbj, the s, indeed, of all the Indo-European languages. This is as much as need be said about the two most prominent conventionalities which followed the Norman Conquest. The rest may be considered more briefly : indeed they need only be indicated. (a) The doubling of the vowel, as in feet, to show that its sound is long, is one which is so natural that we only wonder at its not having become practical and prominent at an earlier period ; i.e., in the Latin stage of the alphabet. It is foreshadowed by the Greek Omega fl, , which is, really, a modified, lengthened, and en- larged Omicron, O, o. The whole doctrine of the Greek Isochron- ism, or Equality of Time, pointed in the same direction. The statement that two short syllables, equalled one long one, and vice versa, had only to be extended to the vowel, and the doubling of the vowel as a sign of longness followed. The Anglo-Saxon, though imperfect and inconsistent, promoted this result. (b) The combination of different vowels in the same syllable is due to other, and less simple causes. The Anglo-Saxon combina- tions ea and eo (though here the smaller vowel preceded the broader one, and was often semi-vocalic) had the effect, to say the least, of accustoming the eye to the presence of two vowels in the same syl- lable : and be it remarked that, in English, the sequence is that of the Anglo-Saxon stage ; i.e., e comes before a. I, however, is rarely found in the same place : and this is because it was, when followed by a vowel, diphthongal ; or, in the eyes of those who failed to recognise its diphthongal character, long ; and, as such, less likely to suggest coalescence. In Dutch the e follows the broader vowel ; and here is, so far as mute letters are tolerable, the mute e in its right place ; or would be if it had a place at all. (e) Combinations like oa as in coal are probably due to another cause, and have no connection with the expression of longness. They seem to be the result of the original indistinctness (already noticed) between the sounds of a and o. Dialects of the Anglo-Saxon and Old English. 127 (d) The same applies to oo = u, an indistinctness which has also already been indicated. (e) I after a, (as in snail,) in words of English origin, almost always indicates an original g (sncegel), which is first changed into^, and then, being eliminated, brings the two vowels in juxta-position. There is enough in these examples to show that in the actual con- tact of two vowels in the same syllable, much as it may offend against one of the primary laws of Phoneticism, there is little non- -natural or arbitrary. But is this all ? No. We have written as if these anomalous forms of spelling were only detrimental so far as they were anomalies. But this is not the fact. They are inconsis- tent as well ; for the oo in foot is short : and that either the second vowel as the sign of longness, or the second consonant (as in spotted) as a sign of shortness is superfluous, has already been stated. Hence we have, in addition to an inordinate amount of anomalies, a notable amount of inconsistencies and redundancies as well. SECTION XLIV. DIALECTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON AND OLD ENGLISH. These redundancies and inconsistencies might have been prevented by a certain amount of rigidity or uniformity in the practice of our spelling. But no such conditions existed. It is still a matter of uncer- taintyas to the particular dialect which the orthoepy and orthography of the present literary English represent. It was not that of the lit- erarjr Anglo-Saxon ; not that of the dialect which prevailed anterior to the Norman Conquest. Nor is it unnatural that such should be the case. The present High German is not that of the parts which most especially constituted the Germania of Tacitus. The Castilian of Spain is not that of the great mass of the Spanish peninsula. The Italian is that of Florence rather than of Rome ; the French that of Northern France ; anything, indeed, but that of the district wherein the first language of Gaul was both spoken and written ; indeed, so far as the place of its first successful cultivation is concerned, the French originated in England rather than in France. Just, then, as it would be a mistake to suppose that the present Italian was a continuation of some Sicilian or South Italian form of speech ; the Castilian one of the Catalonian or Valencian ; the German one of that of West- phalia or the parts about Cologne, and the French that of Provence ; so it would be an error to suppose that, between the language of Alfred and the language of Dryden, there was any literary continu- ity. In short, in England, as elsewhere, the points which coincided with the cultivation of the earlier and the later English literatures shifted. Now the cultivated dialect of the Anglo-Saxon period was the West Saxon, or the Saxon of Wessex ; the English of the counties 128 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. of Dorset, Wilts, Berks, and Hants. The nearest approach to a concurrent literary language was in Northumberland. We may call this form of speech, if we choose, Angle rather than Saxon, though the term is anything but unexceptionable. Both, however, were English. Then there was the great intervening tract formed by the Midland and Eastern counties, which we may call Mercia and East Anglia. Of the Mercian, however, and the East Anglian dialects the cultivation was, practically, nil. The little we know about them tells us. that they differed from one another less than the West Saxon and Northumbrian, and that they differed in small and nega- tive, rather than in great and positive, characters. Now as an origin of the present literary English, the claim on the part of Northumberland is no better than that of Wessex. Nor is there one for East Anglia as opposed to Mercia. Individually I hold, with the generality of investigators, that the Mercian is the dialect which the present written language most especially rep- resents : and to Mercia 1 assign London. I prefer this to fixing upon any particular county as the district from which we are specially called to deduce it. Mercia gives us the counties wherein we find the smallest amount of provincialism, and, also, those to which the two Universities 'belong. Be this as it may, the history of our literature gives the West Saxon dialects a predominance until the middle of the fourteenth century. Over and above the writers of the proper Anglo-Saxon period we have for Wessex, Layamon, and the author of the Ancren Riwle, Nicholas of Guildford, the author of the Ayenbite of Inwit (a native of Kent, but a writer whose language is nearly as Devonian as that of Devonshire itself,) Robert of Gloucester, William of Shoreham, Langland, the author of Piers Plpwman's Vision, Trevisa, (both these somewhat later than their predecessors) and others, either anonymous or of less importance. Against these there is little to be set, except the conclusion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is assigned to the parts about Peterboro' ; the Onnulum, and Havelok the Dane, which are assigned to the Danish parts of En- gland ; Robert Manning, or Robert of Bourne, a Lincolnshire man ; and Rolle, or the Hermit of Hampole, the author of The Prick of Conscience, a Yorkshire man. Chaucer and Gower and Mandeville, in the latter part of Edward III.'s reign were Londoners. Wycliffe's language was probably that of the university of Oxford, rather than of his birthplace, Yorkshire. Bv the beginning of the fifteenth century there is a fair proportion of writers from the more central districts London being included herein. Great changes now take place. The most Northern dia- lects of Northumberland, which, philologically, extended to the Forth, are now the dialects of a literature of no ordinary merit ; for just while the English is in a degenerate and chaotic state, the Scotch is advancing. But we must not call it Scotch, not even Low- land Scotch. We must call it what the speakers themselves called Extension of the Phonetic Principle. 129 it, English. They were constrained, perhaps unwillingly, to do this ; but they had no choice in the matter. It had to be distin- guished from the Gaelic of the Highlands ; even at the cost of some national distaste to the name. The English, however, of Northern England is not the English of our classical writers. In other respects, too, the first three quarters of the fifteenth cen- tury form a notable epoch. The antagonism between the English and the Norman French has ended in the predominance of the for- mer. The age, too, is an age of manuscripts. Printing is about to begin ; but just in proportion as the vocation of the copyist ap- proaches its end, the mass of materials has accumulated ; for the manuscript stage of our literature and orthography is now in its ninth century ; and there is more than ever there was before to be trans- cribed. Neither are authorship and transcription limited to any" particular districts. We have now manuscripts from the borders of Wales. We have now, in Capgrave and Lydgate, writers from East Anglia ; and both these, Shropshire and Norfolk, are quarters to which, hitherto, but little has been assigned. There is, indeed, a diffusion of the practice of both composing and copying to an ex- tent hitherto unknown : of uniformity, or any directing authority, very little. It was no part of the business, then, of the transcriber of a work in a dialect different from his own to adhere to the very words and letters of his author. Translation from one local form to another is too strong a word. But, though the transcriber did not translate, he accommodated the minor details of spelling and grammar from one part of England to that of another the one to which he himself belonged. That this was done largely we know from ample evidence. How much confusion it created we can more easily imagine than calculate. SECTION XLV. EXTENSION OF THE PHONETIC PRINCIPLE AND SUBJECTS ALLIED TO PHONETIC SPELLING, AS SPECIALLY APPLIED TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The Phonetic Spelling, so far as it has hitherto been discussed, is that of the English language. The term, however, has a wide im- port ; and, there are certain varieties in the application of the pho- netic principle which are sufficiently akin to the subject of the present treatise to call for a slight notice. The first of these is Metagraphy,( 6 ) or Transliteration. This 6. This is a derivative from [Afra, in its sense suggestive of action and reaction, or interehangeableness, and ypdipw = I write. I can safely recommend the word, inasmuch it is not one of my own construction ; but one suggested nearly forty years ago by one of the best scholars in Cambridge. It is not held that, except so far it is somewhat shorter, Metagraphy is a better word than Transliteration : and it is admitted that Transliterate is a much better word than Metagraphize. On the other hand, however, Metagraphic is a better word than Transliterational. There is room for, and need of, both. 130 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. means the substitution, sign for sign, of some letter in an alphabet comparatively known (say the English, or any one of "Western Europe) for one in an alphabet comparatively strange ; as for in- stance the Sanskrit, or the Hebrew ; indeed, any Oriental alphabet whatever. If the latter be, itself, phonetic, the two principles coin- cide. This, however, is merely a nappy accident. If the English alphabet were transliterated into the Greek it would be no more phonetic than it is at present. The Greek reader would get a series of letters somewhat less unfamiliar to him than the English are at present. The faulty spelling, however, would still remain. As be- tween a Greek and an Englishman this would be but a small boon. Where the orthography, however, is of a moderate badness, and where the difference of the letters is considerable, the boon is a great one : and, in all cases, there is some advantage. We have now only to ask whether a letter which will stand for a sound in one language, can stand for the same sound in another ; and, if the answer be given in the affirmative, the question of a Universal Alphabet dawns upon us. What the answer is, and what it may lead to, is another question. The three questions have been suggested for the sake of showing how they are connected, and how they differ ; and further than this we are not called to go. Out of a mixture of Metagraphy and Phonetic Spelling we get the most difficult of the problems connected with our subject ; namely, the transliteration of dead languages so far as their pronunciation is known, combined with the attempt to represent the true sounds of the letters and combinations of which the import is doubtful. In the Latin, where the letters are the same as our own, this is merely phonetic spelling. In the Greek it is phonetic spelling with meta- graphy superadded. Important as these questions are, they need not, in a treatise like the present, detain us beyond the mere indi- cation of their place in a full view of the general system of Ortho- graphical Reform. For a different reason I say nothing about the extension of Long- hand Phonography to Shorthand. I know so little of it that I am constrained to take its merits upon trust. Nor is this the place to publish the unanimous verdict that I have heard in favor of the ex- tension. It is part, however, of the system, and those who know it best put the highest value upon it. Lastly comes the notice of what, when it was done for the first time, was the greatest benefit ever conferred on mankind ; namely, that analysis of sentences into words, and of words into their articu- late elements, without which the sign that speaks to the eye is im- possible. Here there is nothing but Progress to report. Not a year goes by without our hearing of some language, barbarous as it may be, being reduced to writing, generally by the missionary, but sometimes, from the mere love of his subject, by the philologue. To bring the results of all this into harmony, is the duty and pleasure of the systematic student. The English and the Russian languages Review of the Question. 131 show the greatest amount of admirable work in this field ; the En- glish and American missionaries from every quarter of the world, the Eussian savans from the Babels of Caucasus and Siberia. I am unwilling to travel beyond the wide domain of the Anglo-Saxon tongue ; but, with accumulations of new material, in all cases re- quiring a phonetic representation, it is impossible to abstain from the expression of a hope that it is not too late to put the whole sys- tem of Phonesis on as broad a basis as possible. For the leading languages of the world a universal alphabet is but the dream of an enthusiast. For the languages recently reclaimed from barbarism, and, still more, for those where the reduction of an alphabet is either in progress or prospect, some approach to harmony and unity may be effected. SECTION XLVL KEVIEW OF THE QUESTION. Such is the exposition of that part of the subject which the writer has thought himself best justified in laying before the reader ; and it is plain that it forms but one division of the question. Upon the general character of the defects of the most insufficient system of writing in the world, there are works both old and new ; not, in- deed, in excess of the demands of the subject, nor yet proportion- ate to them ; but still numerous enough to form a small literature ; one, however, of which it is certain that the dimensions must in- crease. Few who have written on the matter will feel themselves disparaged by a special reference to the work which, in conjunction with the earliest Journal printed in phonetic types, first succeeded in fixing public attention on the reform of which the writer was the advocate, Mr Ellis's " Plea for Phonetic Spelling." This was, mainly, a classification of the actual, and an anticipation of many possible, objections to it. Between these and its successors (for the greater part, contributions to our periodical literature) little is now left to be done, either in the exposure of the thousand-and-one faults of the present system, or the exposition of the advantages of a pho- netic one. It is probable, that, as so many matters of simple fact, they are admitted by even the foremost defenders of things as they are. If so, the time for the enumeration of them is going by. At any rate, I have considered myself justified in taking them for grantea. Neither have I cared to go out of my way to denounce them : for it is possible that, flagrant as the demerits of our spelling may be, they have been stripped and whipped according to their deserts. I have, then, taken them, as aforesaid, for granted. Considered as obsta- cles in the way to knowledge no one thinks worse of them than I do ; yet I am sensible that, at the first view, the present treatise, may be mistaken for a palliation, perhaps, for a defence, of them. It tries to account for them ; and to account for them is to show 9* 132 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. that they are neither less nor greater than we should expect to find them ; or, in other words, that, given the conditions under which they arose, they are only what they ought to be. This, however, in the most decided way that an admission can he made, admits their existence, so that if further proof of it were required, it would be found in the criticism that explains it. And this method carries us farther than it seems to do. The great theoretical objection is the Etymological ; and this, the historical view of the origin of the present system, most especially enables us to meet ; for what is the etymology of a word but its history ? what its history but its etymology ? Important, however, as this branch of the question may be, it is not the one which touches us the nearest. The mere theoretical objections to a change are a trifle. The " lion in the way " is the existing system, and those who should assail it are those whom it most aflects the million, the masses, or whatever else they may be called; thethousands of the present, the tens ofthousands of the rising generation, those to whom time and money are of importance, and that to such an extent that even a boon like primary education may be purchased too dearly. It is these who are, or ought to be, most in earnest in favor of a change ; and there is far more danger in their apathy. than in the opposition of the learned. There are sev- eral facts by which Phoneticism may be recommended ; just as there were several upon which objections could be founded. But, just as there was one objection, the etymological, which outweighed all the rest as a point for theoretical discussion, so is there, also, one rec- ommendation which for the class now addressed is all-in-all ; and that is, its value in primary education, or, to put it in humbler lan- guage, the teaching of reading. Symmetry and consistency, and the rational representation of articulate sounds, and other matters of the same kind, may gratify the scholar and the etymologist. Etymologists, however, or comparative philologists, as they best like to be called, unless they have either to teach the alphabet to their own children, or have grown-up sons who may be plucked for dictation, care much more for Metagraphy than for Phonetic Spelling per se. Anything like enthusiasm must be got from them in their character as educationists ; and the two attachments by no means, of necessity, go together. The enthusiasm of Mr Ellis and the still unabated perseverance of Mr Pitman, are not likely to be again combined. Not but what everyone of these subordinate applications, and these amateur tastes, has its value in the promotion of the greater end. They are the smaller springs, the ornamental rivulets, which help to swell the impetus of a grand stream which must owe both its main waters and its definite direction to a more unfailing source, and to a stronger power. It is the business and the interest of others to make it both broad and deep, and to direct it towards the machinery for which it is most specially demanded. The The Working Alphabet. 133 Glossic system of Mr Ellis is, in this respect, a good help, though a bad substitute. Of the Shorthand Phonography of Mr Pitman I know less ; but I can easily see that, when Mr Ellis tells us that those who have learned shorthand phonetically, will not learn long- hand on the present system of spelling, he simply tells us the truth. Metagraphy, and the aspirations for a universal alphabet help us in the same direction ; but the paramount power is the one which, founded as it is in the value of Phoneticism for the purposes of pri- mary education, must be derived from the union and the sagacity of the vast masses which it interests. SECTION XLVII. THE WOBKING ALPHABET- It has been no part of the present writer's aim to exhaust the sub- ject ; still Jess has it been either within his aim, or his authority, to wi-ite in the character of a director or an adviser. What he has done is to exhibit the faults of the present system from a point of view which is, to some extent, a new one. He has assumed that they exist ; and that, to an extent which those who have most earnestly impeached the current orthography have not over-rated. He has assumed their existence, and, to a certain extent, excused it. But the excuse has been a condemnation. How these inordinate faults, both of omission and commission are to be rectified, is a matter for the consideration of those whom it affects most. These are not the learned Few who have got over difficulties which they have for- gotten, but the unlearned Many who have yet to learn : and to say this is to say that it is, solely and wholly, as a matter of Primary Education in other words the arts of reading and writing that the question has been treated. The treatise itself is, probably, that of an etymologist. The object, however, is that of the educationist that of one who looks to the value of the phonetic system in primary education only. The working-out of the special details of such a change as those involved in Phonetic Reform is as different from the theoretical part of it as Administration is different from Legislature ; the aptitudes for one, being, by no means, synonymous with the aptitudes for the other. Hence, I have never presumed to give advice advice, at least, of a positive kind. " Do this " or " do that " are forms of the imperative mood which have not found a place in the treatise ; nor will they. At the same time there are certain things which may be recommended not to be done. The first, and foremost of these is- (a) Don't do nothing. It is implied in what has preceded that, bad as is our present orthography, it is no worse than the present generation has a right to expect. If, however, with its full know - ledge of all these deficiencies, the present generation bequeath it to the next ; if those who are most concerned in amending it, either 134 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. leave the work to be done by others, or to do itself, no such extenu- ation can be pleaded. If we not only take it as we find it, but are satisfied to keep it as we take it, it is pretty clear that, bad as it is, it is as good a one as we deserve. (b) Dont Tteep out of the water till you have learnt to swim : this meaning, Don't wait until you have got a Phonetic Alphabet which pleases ei^erybody. An Alphabet is, of all things in the world, the most equivocal. It partly belongs to Science ; partly to Art. It is, to a large extent, dependent upon the powers of analysis and comparison, on the part of the constructor ; to an extent equally large on his taste for the harmonious and the symmetrical. How often, or rather how rarely, these two qualities in the highest degree are combined in one and the same individual, the history of human thought tells us very plainly. Of the two great divisions, however, the latter presents the more important difficulties. The decompo- sition of the several words into their articulational elements is a point upon which, in all the cultivated languages of Europe, the work is already done. What remains is the choice, or the invention, of the particular signs by which these are expressed. Now, in its most general terms, an Alphabet of this kind is one of which a cvnical sciolist might say that it is an achievement which anyone above six years of age can accomplish. " He could," he might say, "dash down three dozen different combinations of straight lines, curves, and dots, and the thing would be done." He might, per- haps, if he meant to be very contemptuous, say that " the aid of color could be invoked, and that, with only twelve original signs, he might draw them in red, blue, or brown, by making one color de- note one dozen of articulations, and another another, and do the whole thing out of twelve combinations. He might, too, by bringing in all the colors of the rainbow, reduce the number of really invented (or applied) signs to a minimum, and so bring printing to the con- dition of painting." We know that this is neither more nor less than puerile trifling, but there is excuse for introducing it ; inasmuch as it shows how easy the construction of an alphabet is from one point of view. Al- phabets, under such a freedom from limitations, may, possibly, be constructed at the rate of a letter per minute. Let us, however, take the opposite view. Then, the difficulty be- comes as conspicuous as the ease has hitherto been. Paradoxical as it may sound at first, the statement that, so far as the question of new signs (letters) is concerned, construction is easier than improve- ment, is both true and important : important because, without seeing its full bearing on the present question, we cannot duly appreciate the difficulties with which the modern reformer must contend. With (say) between thirty and forty letters, all coined out of his own brain, he can ensure a due amount of symmetry or harmony among them ; so that he has, consequently, nothing to fear from the perception of incongruity on the part of the reader. With a frame- The Working Alphabet. 135 work, however, of (say) twenty characters as parts of a well-known alphabet already in use, he has the unsatisfactory task of adapting the new to the old ; to avoid what Mr Ellis has called the Strange- -appearance objection ; an objection which of all the ones that have ever been made against Phonetic Spelling is the hardest to refute. Where a character is too complex or too cumbrous for writing ; where it is too indistinct in its outline to be a good indicator of dif- ference ; where, from being either so unlike the letter to which it is allied in sound, or so like others with which it has no such affinity, as to suggest an incorrect view of the Phonesis of the language to which it applies, (not to mention other shortcomings of less import- ance,) there is something definite and tangible upon which an ob- jection may be made, or a defence founded. But the Strange-ap- pearance objection is mainly a matter of taste ; and when, of two disputants, one says that such or such a combination of lines dis- pleases, and the other that it pleases, his eye, there is little more to be said on the subject. There is something, indeed, that a dispas- sionate looker-on might suggest ; for he might urge that familiarity or unfamiliarity with the combination might have more to do with its congruity or incongruity than the actual details of its outline. This, no doubt, is true ; but the proportion which the two elements bear to one another is not a matter that we can either weigh or measure. Neither is the system itself with which a new letter has to be brought into conformity a simple one : inasmuch as it gives us a great deal more than the mere twenty-five or thirty letters of any particular alphabet. The number of these, whatever it may be, has to be multiplied by four i.e., for capitals and for small letters, for printing and for manuscript. Kespect, too, must be had to the al- phabets of other languages ; though this is not one of the more im- portant complications : for, upon the whole, our motto in England should be, " English principles for English spelling." Still, where the original orthography is so peculiar as to be exceptional and ec- centric when compared with that of other countries, a derivation from the national principle in its strictest form is not only pardon- able but imperative. In no part of their work have the constructors of the Phonetic Alphabet shown a sounder judgement than in their treatment of the English vowels. Of a, i, and u, as letters, our pro- nunciation is pre-eminently exceptional. There is no better proof of this than the abnormal way in which we pronounce what we may call English- Latin, or Latin as it is taught and read in England. General, however, as this eccentric pronunciation may be within the Four Seas, it has been ignored ; and the ordinary power given to the exceptional vowels on the Continent has been recognised. There is, in this, not only an anticipation of the charge of imperfect schol- arship, but sound sense and legitimate conservatism. When the English is spelt properly, English-Latin will be pronounced, so far as the vowels go, in the only way in which, out of England, it is pronounced at all. 136 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. Be this, however, as it may, the preceding instance tells us that there are cases where " England for the Enslish " is not an absolute rule. It leads, however, into further complications : for it enlarges the sphere of the system to which every new letter may have to adapt itself. In an alternative, for instance, between two signs, the con- structor who holds that, if one letter has a certain currency in certain important languages, while another has not, the latter should go to the wall, there is much to be said on both sides. For what are the langua- ges which are of sufficient importance to demand this abatement of the original rule ? Is the practice of the French, the Italian, the Span- ish, the Portugese, and. above all, the Latin on one side, sufficient to outweigh that of the German, the Dutch, the Danish, the Swedish, the Icelandic, and the Greek on the other supposing that c or k be the letter in question ? We know that on this point doctors have disagreed ; and, individually, I have a strong opinion that the de- cision in favor of k is the right one. But the question is a complex one. Now the more comprehensive and more ambitious a reformer's view may be, the greater the amount of the complications that em- barrass him. No one doubts as to the advantages of a Universal Al- phabet optandum magis quam sperandum. Other things, then, being equal, the spelling that favors it should prevail. For the present purpose, I am neither comprehensive nor ambitious ; but, if I were so, I should certainly be perplexed in more cases than one, as to my choice of a sign or letter. Then there is another complication. It seems to be a matter of almost instinctive unanimity that vowels within the same degrees of longness and shortness (so called) should be represented by signs of some appreciable similarity. No one would propose a letter like the Greek xi (H ) for a vowel. How far is this principle to extend ? for it if a principle, though no definite reason for its existence or its limita- tions has been given with any adequate exposition. "What are we to do with sounds like the ih in thin and in thine 1 Are they to be t and d with a difference ? for such is the phonetic relation : gr are they to be as unlike as^and^, v and b 1 I can only say, that though it is not upon any a priori principle at all that this or that sign will be constructed, the very suggestion of a principle of any kind sug- gests a corresponding choice of alternatives. Again and as I am only writing for the sake of illustration, and that for the third and last time, what are we to do with our superfluous letters, such as c, x, and j, which even the ordinary grammarians admit to be redundant ? Are we to eliminate them altogether, or are we to use them up utilise them as the word is as old signs with a new import? " Utilise them, by all means," says A, " because it will save the excogitation of a new letter." ' Fling them away off-hand, and have done with them," says B, " because the new power will give us the trouble of unlearning the old one." The Working Alphabet, 137 Who will decide on the .comparative value of these two recom- mendations and the two reasons by which they are accompanied ? Surely, then, if from one point of view the construction of an al- phabet is a light matter, it is, from another, a very grave one. But all this may, possibly, be got over ; for every one of the preceding questions can be reasoned on. So can certain points connected with the forms of the several letters. -A printer may decide that one of a pair is better for the press ; a copyist that it is better for the pen ; a reader may say whether it is or is not sufficiently distinct. But what are we to say to the Strange-appearance objection ? We have al- ready said that next to nothing can be said about it by any third party. The common sense of the body of readers must decide upon it ; and the decision cannot be delivered extempore. An alphabet must have had a certain amount of existence, must have lived so long, must have been submitted to so much trial, must have undergone so much wear and tear before a single vote can be given either in confirmation or condemnation of it. The inference from this is self-evident. We must take the best working alphabet as we find it. To wait for one which will, on mere inspection, satisfy all the world is to wait, like the clown at the river, till the water be- comes, of its own accord, and for his special accommodation, dry land. This is, naturally, the introduction to what follows, viz., the prelude to the only working alphabet, that, lying ready for us, precludes us from any excuse for waiting till some other alphabet which shall please everybody is constructed. To wait for this is to fold our hands and live in expectancy sine die. It was not extemporised. On the contrary, it is the result of much consideration and practice extend- ing over a quarter of a century. It does not pretend to be a con- struction which, by mere inspection, satisfies every inspector upon every point. And this the constructors tell us implicitly ; for they say with truth that the test is to be found in the attempt to make a better one. It is needless to say that the primary details of the analysis of sounds is complete, and that there is no room whatever for improvement in this matter. Of the rest the reader must judge for himself. It is perfectly impossible for one reader to say how such or such a character may strike the eye of another. He has only to urge three cautions in the criticism of the general character of the alphabet as it is about to be presented to him ; or, rather, he has to repeat (and the caution will bear repetition) (1) the difficulty of improvement ; (2) the fact of the alphabet being not only ready - -made to his hands, but in actual use ; and (3) the simple fact of novelty and unfamiliarity ; which has nearly as much to dp with what is called the Strangeness of Appearance, as the individual forms of the several new letters themselves. 138 A Defence of Phonetic Spelling. THE PHONETIC ALPHABET. Tie i likt coli P B T D e j K G F V E a S z E S M N I ihone ' the tmn < CO* p b t d j k g Co f V $ d s z J 3 m n )IPH as tic letters in the italic letters in the contains the names [SONANTS. Mutes, rope pi robe bi fate ti first c icords of the L W Y H A R E 8 I T, O O IS er u HI tJu, new, lll.l tilt let 1 r ( w y h a i; e e i .i o er u ui /run are pronounced it follow. TJie last 'ers. Liquids, fall el rare .... . ar loalescents. wet .... . we fao'e di J 8 . ke . ge .ef yet. . Ye cheap . . edge . . . lee. . . . league. . ntinuants. safe . . Aspirate, hav . . . ec VOWELS. Guttural. am. . . . , 0^ at alms . . . . . B save. . . . . vi ell et wreath . . wreathe. .ii . di es ale . . e ill . . it eel . i hi* . zi Labial. on . ot vicious . . vision. . Nasals, seem. . . . seew. . . . - 1 ! em en all UTO . . . st ope . . . . er Ml . ut food .... . m THONGS : heard in * I* ty, U ou, OI oi. now, boy. Elementary Education. 139 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. The writer of the following letter, which appeared in the School Board Chronicle for 2nd September, 1871, is Mr Edward Jones, master of the Hibernian Schools, Liverpool. Dqrig de disk's Jonz whiq presided de pasig ov de Elementari Edvjkejon Akt, de Rjt On. W. E. Forster, Vjs-Prezident ov de Edqkejon Department, med de folerig stetment az tu whot qildren ov de WOTkig popqlejon ot tu bi tot in prjmari skuilz beferr enterig a Ijf ov lebor : It me ba teken for granted dat wa ot not tu rest -sntil in dis (land ov ourz everi IggliJ qjld haz an elementari eduke/on.