^m A = ^^S o = i 1 '- ( ) 3 ^ 5 ^ 2 = — '" CD n = U = 8 i 6 1 3 Simplified Spelling Society, London Breaking the Spell ,^' THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 'il\°D Ex Lihris C. K. OGDEN A N -^"Juj^i m P'f^]^ ^( ■•— *^ LEAKING ^HE SPELL iS A>J APPEALTO COMMO>4 SEMSE r 7/^e S?mj)L/leJ^SpeJlm^Ooo^^ Breaking the Spell AN APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE WITH A PREFACE BY REGINALD VV. MACAN M VSTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD SIMPLIFIED SPELLING SOCIETY 44 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON, W.C. I. 1917 C. p. HODGSON & 80N. Printers, 2 NEWTON STKEET, KINGSWAT, LONDON, ^.0.2 p PREFACE SPELLING shotdd be the siniplest of all arts : as easy as A, B, C, with nothing to remember but the names, or sounds, of the letters; and, for reading, their shapes, or appearance. In some living languages — Spanish, Italian. Welsh, Dutch — and in dead Greek and Latin (if properly taught) reading and spelling are as easy as that. But English — a tongue in the simple spelling of which one quarter at least of the human race is directly {interested, and the rest woidd gladly learn to spell it if they cotdd; English, with its grammar the simplest, with its vocabtdary the richest of living languages — presents in its ortho- graphy, or orthodox spelling, a mass and maze of anomalies and difficulties, which make the acquisi- tion of the correct pronunciation and the conventional spelling an insoluble problem to native and foreigner alike. The majority of our own people never acquire mastery of the language. Even the educated mm of business writes with a dictionary at 10. elbow. Correct spelling and pronunciation are the aristO' cratic privilege of the few. The orthodox spelling of iv PREFACE English has, in course of time, owing to well known historical causes and for want of authoritative read- justment to the unconscious but inevitable changes always at work in pronunciation, come to have so little relation to the audible speech that every man, woman, child, who would fain read, write, and speak a tolerable English must set out to learn two distinct and independent languages — the one, English as spoken; the others English as printed. Our spelling has become a mystery, a convention, without rules or reason; a constant exercise of memory, a constant recourse to the dictionary, a perpetual setting of conundrums, a tiresome game of hide and seek, an exasperating waste of time and material and energy, which might be very much better employed. No mortal can tell at sight how an English word is to be pronounced, nor how to write an English word, heard for the first time. The chaos of English orthography is unscientific, inartistic, unbusinesslike; and every competent judge, be his interests educational, or scholarly, or simply commercial; be he teacher, or student, or manufacturer and merchant, is in favour of reform. Why, then, tarry the wheels of the Reform-chariot ? Every attempt at reform, in this department, en- counters two tremendous obstacles. In the first place, spelling reformers are up against the apathy, the ignorance, and the prejudice of the adult popida- PREFACE V tion, the grown-ups, educated or semi-educated. Those who have acquired the technical trick of spell- ing, and forgotten, or never considered, what their proficiency has cost them, are apt to say, with becom- ing modesty, that what they have done others can do likewise: are apt to protest, having learnt to spell after one fashion, against being asked to unlearn the lesson and start afresh; are apt to declare that, to re- print English prose and poetry in a new fashion, how- ever simple and scientific, woidd destroy for them all the charm of reading and all facility of writing the language. They will seldom consider the educational interests of the rising generation, or the commercial interests of the nation, twenty years hence. Having no desire or intention to amend their own way of spelling, they fail to appreciate the damnosa here- ditas — the costly and ruinous legacy — they are be- queathing to their children and their children's children. The educational argument for a reform of our spell- ing ought alone to carry the day. Every child who learns to spell correctly has, on the average, wasted a thousand hours of school-time in acquiring this precious accomplishment. That figure, multiplied throughout the nation, the Commonwealth, the Empire — to say nothing of other lands and peoples — might give some idea of the sheer waste of time and energy in the education of the young. The indirect vi PREFACE reaction of an irrational spelling upon growing and inquiring minds should not he forgotten. The pro- verbial incuria of the English mind — its indifference to the application of scientific intelligence and method to the problems of life — is, in my opinion, not uncon- nected with the irrationality of our spelling. If we had had a reform in our spelling we should not still be clamouring for the adoption of the metric system in our weights and measures. Our orthography de- feats the attempts of foreigners to learn English; it is a bar to the wider, perhaps the almost universal, employment of English in the intercourse, commer- cial and spiritual, of mankind. Spelling reform becomes, from this point of view, a business proposition, if not for to-day, at least for to-morrow, and every day after. Economy of time, substance, and labour, facility of comtnunication as well without as within the strictly English-speaking world, contain a promise of wealth " passing the dreams of avarice," if not for this or that individual, yet for the nation, as such, and for the generations to come. English men of business, the merchant, the manufacturer, have incurred many reproaches of late for their want of faith in science, in up-to-date methods, for their short sight, and failure to adapt themselves to the needs of the market, actual and potential. Can one defend them from such re- proaches, in view of the fact that the English busi- PREFACE vn ness world has not yet insisted on the adoption of the metric system and on the simplification of English spelling? But here crops up the second chief difficulty en- countered by Spelling Reform. -the Reformers are not agreed among themselves as to the reforms to be adopted; there are half a dozen^or more competing schemes, and the plain mmt is driven back upon the established dictionary. But at least all Reformers agree in condemning the existing orthography ; and it has been well said that any one of the competing schemes would be more scientific and more satisfac- tory than the present muddle. Every expert must ad- mit that for a completely adequate and truly phonetic reform a good many letters must be added to the alpha- bet; and this prospect is one of the most alarming features of some of the proposed solutions. It is just here that the scheme of the Simplified Spelling Society comes in. Few, if any, members of the Society would deny that, for a fully scientific orthography, which would also be the simplest orthography, of English, some increase in the alphabet is necessary; but, for such a reform. Governmental and Parlia- mentary authority will be necessary, and such au- thority is hard to obtain. There are no votes in phonetic spelling as an electioneering crv. Mean- while, Simplified Spelling makes a good beginning with the existing alphabet, and has come wonderfully viii PREFACE 7iear the phonetic canon: " one sign, one sound." It gets rid of most of the anomalies and confusions of the established tyranny ; it offers a fairly self-consis- tent method; it is rational, economical, and easily acquired; it can he adopted in toto or by degrees; it it has been proved a success in school teaching. Should it but serve ultimately as the pioneer of a still more complete and radical reform, should it succeed in dissolving some of the prejudice against every reform, by the sweet reasonableness and moderation of its claims, it will more than justify the pains and labour which its promoters have bestowed upon it. To the printer it makes a special appeal, for it asks him merely to economise ; he need neither scrap nor midtiply his types. To the child it opens a short cut to literature and learning, for actual experiment has shown that the child 7vho starts on Simplified Spell- ing arrives at reading even the current hieroglyphics of English more easily and quickly than his fellow who has been nurtured solely on conundrums and enigmas of orthography. It lightens and brightens the teacher's labours. It reduces writer's cramp. It abbreviates the rappings of the typographer. It saves time, money, and toil. It appeals to common sense. Shall it appeal wholly in vain? REGINALD W. MAC AN. March, 191 7. BREAKING THE SPELL It is the generations of children to come who appeal to us to save them from the affliction which we have endured and forgotten. — Whitney. We do not know who was the first wmm. to write a word. For long centuries language existed only as speech. The invention of written signs to represent the spoken language was a momentous advance in civilization. It made it possible to communicate thoughts to those at a distance, far beyond the range of the voice, thoughts that would survive even when the voice of the m0A that con- ceived them had long been hushed by death. This is not the place to discuss tne gradual development of writing ; how some nations came to use a sign to designate a whole word, and others used it for a syllable. The nations that we know best preferred an alphabet in which each sign represented one sound. It is clear that there are fewer different sounds than different syllables in a language, and therefore that we need fewer signs if we let each represent a sound only. B 2 BREAKING THE SPELL. With such an alphabet, in which each sign represents one sound, and each sound has its own sign, spelling becomes a very simple matter ; for if you know the sounds of a word, you can at once write the corresponding signs. For instance, if you know that the sign for the sound b is the letter h, the sign for the sound e is the letter e, and the sign for the sound d is the letter d, then on hearing the sounds of the word bed you know that the spelling is bed. If such an alphabet is in use, then all we have to teach the child is the signs corresponding to the sounds. Defects of the Present Spelling Let us consider whether our present English spelling can be learnt in this simple and rational fashion. Up to the point oi b e d = bed (not a very advanced point) all is plain sailing. But take another word : The child hears the sound of d the sound of e, and again the sound of d. The spelling therefore should be ded ; but we have to inform the child that this is not the case, and DEFECTS OF OUR SPELLING. 3 that the word contains a silent a. On the other hand, when the child sees the word bead, we have to tell him that here the a is not silent ; the two signs ea here have the same value as ee in feed. The child is told that the word toe is spelt with oe. But when he meets the word toad he is told not to spell toed ; and when he comes to poet wc warn him against the pronunciation pote. The child learns that road has oa, like toad ; but when he proceeds to write " The man road in a carriage, and the boy road a boat," we have to explain that although the sounds are the same in these three words he must learn a different spelling for each — roady rode, rowed. The child learns that the vowel in bit is written with the letter i ; but he is not allowed to give the same pronunciation to the letter i when he meets it \x\ find. In this word, he is told, the letter / has the same value as in /. As he uses this letter in find and /, he will naturally want to use it in my, high, eye. But if he does so, he is assured that this is wrong. Nothing in the sound of the word eye shows that it should be spelt differently from /. The child is told that the sounds of the word true are written true. A word is uttered with 4 BREAKING THE SPELL. another sound at the end, which he knows is written th ; so he spells tnieth, only to be told that this is wrong and that here there is no e. Having learnt the spelling of true, the child hears a word in which the t is at the end instead of the beginning, and proceeds to write met; wrong again. Having learnt that the spelling is root he hears a word containing the sanne sounds, but with f in front ; so he writes /root, and has to learn that he must write fruit. Or, having learnt the spelling of root, he hears a word very much like it, but ending in d instead of /, and writes " he was rood." Once more the poor child has gone wrong, through no fault of his own. Not even the consonants are represented in a consistent way. The mere sound of the word k)iit does not tell us that we must write it with k ; the first sound of sit and of city is the same, nothing shows that s is not right in both cases ; nothing in the sound of the words literal and litter indicates that in the second case a single t does not suffice to represent the sound of /. It is clear that in English the sounds do not, as a rule, afford trustworthy guidance to the spelling. There are a few words like sit, bed, lot SAME SOUND, MANY SPELLINGS. 5 in which the spelling is satisfactory from this point of view ; but the great majority of common words are not spelt according to any easily understood system, or, indeed, according to any system whatever. How OUR Spelling became what it is This was not always the case Long ago, when English ceased to be only a spoken language and came also to be written, the spelling represented the sounds in a fairly consistent way. The /' that people wrote in knave, the gJi in nighty the w in write, were all pronounced ; so was the e at the end of name. In those days children had little trouble in learning to spell. After a time, how- ever, the spelling no longer represented the pro- nunciation in such a simple and straightforward way ; and for this there were several reasons. The pronunciation kept on changing. It is alwa3's changing, though not always at the same rate. When all the children of a country go to school and are taught reading and writing in the same way, their speech is less liable to chang e 6 BREAKING THE SPELL. especially if the spelling shows them in an un- mistakable way what the sounds are. In bygone days when the schools were few and the mother tongue was neglected, there was nothing to pre- vent the pronunciation from changing a great deal, far more than the speech of the educated does at present. But the spelling did not keep pace with the pronunciation ; people went on writing certain letters even though the sounds that they once represented had changed or had disappeared. For a time English was written by many who came from Normandy and by their descendants. They were accustomed to writing French, and when they wrote English they often represented sounds in the same way as in French. The word house used to be pronounced as we should pronounce it if it were written Iwos ; in French this vowel sound is written ou (as in the French word touf) ; and the spelling ou thus came to be introduced in the word house, taking the place of the older ?/. When books were first printed in England the compositors often spelt the same word in different ways ; there were no fixed rules. Some had learnt THE SPOILING OF OUR SPELLING. 7 their trade in Holland ; and memories of Dutch spelling survive in such words as ghost, which should have no h in English ; h occurred in the Dutch word that had the same meaning. Before long the spelling became more or less fixed. Only a few slight changes have been made in the last centuries ; we no longer write mtisick^ .Li.^'* and have given up honor in favour of JLonoutr\ox\ \^ i/Ct. the advice of Dr. Johnson). These changes in the spelling, however, are insignificant if we compare them with the changes that have taken place in the spoken language. The breach between the sounds and their signs has become wider and wider, until — as we have seen — the sounds have ceased to be a guide to us in spelling. The Idea that the Spelling should show THE Derivation There is, however, another way in which our spelling was rendered different from the spoken language. In the Middle Ages Latin was held in high honour, and the mother tongue was treated with 8 BREAKING THE SPELL. contempt. When the scholars of those days did condescend to pay some attention to English, they had the feeling that it was a very inferior language to Latin, which was used for all higher purposes, for religious worship and study, for education, and so on. They could not help noticing that some English words were connected with Latin words ; but they had undergone a change Any change from the original Latin form was, in their eyes, manifestly a change for the worse. So they set about restoring what they could. The Latin words from which the French words are derived that gave us debt and douht contain a b, so the b was written — although no one pronounced it. The word perfect had lost its c (Chaucer spells it " parfit ") ; they put the c back, and after a time people actually pronounced it. In making these changes it is clear that the true purpose of spelling — to represent the sounds and nothing else — was ignored. The written form of the word was now made a means of indicating the derivation, and it was brought closer to the spelling of the word from which it had developed. Now the scholars of the Middle Ages knew very little of historical grammar, and consequently THE PERVERSE PEDANT. 9 their activity with regard to the spelh'ng was often quite misdirected. They wrongly thought that the word rime was derived from the word which has given us rhythm, and changed it to rJiyme. It was imagined that soveran was connected with reign, and so it was changed to sovereign. Nowadays the study of historical grammar occupies the serious attention of many learned scholars ; and they know much that was unknown or unregarded in the Middle Ages. They know that if we wanted to make words show their derivation by restoring all letters that have dis- appeared we should have a very difficult task; the words would become much longer than they are. It would, indeed, be impossible to tell where we should stop. Some words, for instance, have come into English from French ; the French word may go back to a Latin word, which in turn may come from a Greek word.^ How are we to indicate all this in the spelling ? Are we to make it resemble the French word, or the Latin word, or the Greek word ? Or shall we go beyond Greek ? The ' Thus our word blame, from French hldnie, ultimately goes back to the Greek word that has also given us blasphemy. 10 BREAKING THE SPELL. Greek word itself does not give us the oldest form ; scholars suggest a still older form from which they conjecture the Greek word was derived. A language may be regarded from two points of view : as a means of communicating thought and as a subject of study ; just as you can use a horse for riding and drawing vehicles, or study it as a zoologist does. The medieval scholars who burdened us with such spellings as debt and sovereign were scholars and not practical men. They thought they were improving the language by making it more valuable from the philological point of view ; they did not realize that they were complicating the spelling and thus rendering the written language a less simple and satisfactory means of communicating thought. Furthermore, most of the misspellings afford no indication of the past history of the language, except to the learned specialist ; and even if they did give such information to an appreciable number of people, no one wants to know or remember pre- cisely what muscles a horse is using every time ]H| rides or drives it. PRACTICE AND THEORY. 11 Habit has blinded us to the Defects OF OUR Spelling We have now seen why the spelling has gradually ceased to be a simple representation of the living, spoken language. We cannot help realizing that it contains superfluous letters that nobody pro- nounces, and many ways of representing the same sounds. Yet we continue to use this spelling and make our children learn it, at great expense of time and effort. The fact is that most of us have forgotten the time and effort it cost us when we were children. When we come to think about the early years of our school life, most of us have only hazy memories, and very few of us are able to criticize the methods that were employed by our teachers. We learnt to spell, somehow, and we went on spelling and reading words in the same spelling, year after year. The present form of words has become familiar to us — few things, indeed, could be more familiar than the form of the common words in our language. Some of them we read and write hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times every day. 12 BREAKING THE SPELL. Habit plays a great part in our lives. The buttons on the back of our overcoats, once used for buttoning back the full skirt, no longer serve any useful purpose ; but we are content to keep them. They would be equally useless at the end of the coat-taii, but if we saw any one with buttons in this position it would shock us extremely. We wear white ties with evening dress ; they are of no use, but if at a party we met a friend without a tie we should almost hesitate to point it out, and if we did, he would be very uncomfortable. Our eye has become accustomed to seeing each word always spelt in its own peculiar way. It is accustomed to bed and dead, to root and fniit, to write and right, and a thousand other inconsistencies. It no longer sees the grotesque appearance of these v/ords. Probably you resent the use of the w^ord "gro- tesque." You would prefer to call it " interesting " or " picturesque." Just try to imagine that you had been differently accustomed : that you had learnt to spell the lan- guage by some system that really represented the sounds. Imagine that you had grown accustomed to regularity and simplicity of spelling. What would you have said to the man who proposed to SLAVES OF HABIT. 13 spell tough and stuffs after and laughter, plough and coiv as we actually spell them ? How would you have received the suggestion that det and dout should be written with /; because the Latin words from which the French words are derived which gave us the English words contained a b — two thousand years ago ? Suppose you had been ac- customed to write tho, would you not have thought the man mad who proposed to add ugh to it ? Suppose you had been accustomed to write nee, nit, and nazv, how grotesque would you have deemed the idea of prefixing a /f to the first and second, and a ^ to the third ! Suppose you had been accustomed to write zvai and kaut, would you not have thought the spellings weigh and caught as ludicrous as they are senseless ? You would have said : " This man is trying to spoil the lan- guage, to disturb what we have grown accustomed to. We like to spell the words as we pronounce them ; we like their written and printed form. What would be the gain if we adopted these changes ? " 14 BREAKING THE SPELL. What should we gain from a Simplified Spelling ? But you have not been accustomed to a regular, simple spelling. You have learnt the spelling of words, not of sounds, and by dint of constant prac- tice you are able without effort to reproduce the conventional spelling. And the proposal is put to you to change that spelling, to acquire fresh habits. You are asked to consider the living, spoken lan- guage, and to write as you speak. Such a change in your habits means some temporary discomfort, that is clear. Naturally you ask : " What would be the gain if we adopted these changes ? " The Gain to our Children It must be said at once that the chief gain would not be yours ; the change would, above all, benefit those who have to learn the spelling — far less, those who have learnt it. You are asked to consider this question in its bearings on the children in our schools — not only now, but through all the cen- turies to come — and in its bearings on British subjects and foreigners v/ho have to learn our language. GREAT WILL BE THE GAIN. 15 Above all things, consider our children, and es- pecially the children who attend the elementary schools. Go into these schools, and convince your- self of the vast amount of time and energy spent by the teachers and the learners alike in memoriz- ing the spelling of words. It has been shown above that the sounds do not guide the child to the cor- rect spelling ; the spelling of hundreds upon hun- dreds of words has to be learnt. It is not too much to say that from one and a half to two years of the child's school life are taken up by this memorizing. Now suppose that, instead of learning the spelling of individual words, the child had only to learn how to distinguish the sounds of the language and to produce them correctly ; that we then gave MUk the sign or signs corresponding to each sound, and bade Jill spell as Wk pronounced. The scheme here presented can be learnt by a grown-up person in less than half an hour ; let us say that a child would take three months. Does not that represent a notable saving ? The school life of these child- ren is deplorably short ; are we justified in con- tinuing to waste their time as we do at present ? There is yet another gain for the child. At present |i is rarely taught to distinguish the 16 BREAKING THE SPELL. sounds ; but if we teach a spelling that depends upon the sounds, we cannot neglect them. What does this mean ? It means that teachers and learners will become more observant of the spoken language : that they will pay more attention to clear speech and all that this implies — namely, p-ood breathing, careful articulation, and expressive intonation. When we listen to a mmmmmmmmm who speaks clearly we are pleased ; we cannot help feeling that it is too uncommon an accomplish- ment. Let the spelling be closely connected with the sounds, and the cultivation of the speaking voice is bound to follow. The Gain to all Learners of English English is in many respects an easy language. Its grammar is remarkably simple. Its only great weakness hes in its spelling. Nothing else stands in the way of its being the language of international intercourse. Simplify the spelling, and you make it easier for the French Canadian, for our Dutch fellow subjects in South Africa, for the natives of India, to learn the language of the Empire. Sim- plify the spelling, and you increase the number of MORE TIME, SOUND TEACHING. 17 foreigners able to read and to appreciate our lan- guage. And what gain does that bring us ? It means that the words written in our language, ex- pressing our thoughts and aims, will be more widely read and better understood ; it means ever-increas- ing influence for our journalists, novelists, and dramatists, for our Q^flfi of learning and our vtmt. of practical genius. The Gain in Learning Foreign Languages It is, however, not only the foreigner learning English who would find IMl task lighter ; the Eng- lishaMm learning a foreign language would also be benefited. One of the great difficulties that besets our path when we learn a foreign language is the pronunciation. Now, of late years many have been working hard to see how the English child can best be taught the pronunciation of a foreign lan- guage ; and they have come to the conclusion that the child must know something about the sounds of English before Ak can be taught the sounds of French or any other foreign language in the best way. This is not mere speculation ; practical ex- perience in many schools has led to results which C 18 BREAKING THE SPELL. would have been regarded as altogether unattain- able fifteen years ago. The Modern Language teacher now has to spend much time in teaching J/tt pupils about English sounds. If our children all learnt this when they were first taught to read and write, they would find it far easier than at present to learn the pronunciation of foreign lan- guages. Our Present Neglect of the Spoken Language It is strange how the neglect of the spoken lan- guage has rendered many quite ignorant of the sounds that they utter so many times every day. People express surprise when they realize that the sound at the end of do£-s is not s, but ^ ; that the sound at the beginning of f/du is not the same as that in ;t/iefi ; that the first sound of Je^ is d ; that the usual pronunciation of the vowel in luas, liad is not the same as that of what and hat. It has not struck them that they do not pronounce the / in cupboard, the d in handkerchief, the t in castle ; and that the endings of ad/e and label, constant and persistent^ stationary and stationery are the same in sound. DO YOU KNOW YOUR SOUNDS? 19 Perhaps no other nation of those in the first rank is so ignorant of the sounds of the spoken language, and at the same time so respectful towards a spell- ing that is full of redundant letters and inconsis- tencies. Every jBi^- who has made a special study of the English language will tell you that it is a thoroughly bad spelling. Among the pioneers of spelling re- form may be mentioned Prof. Skeat, Dr. Furnivall, Sir James Murray, and many other famous English scholars. Would the Simplified SrELLiNG obscure THE History of Words? It has probably occurred to you that if the ^ spelling should be simplified, the history of words would be obscured. You have been thinking about the possible objections to the proposed changes, and this has struck you at once. Is your appre- hension justified ? You say that you are interested in tracing derivations, that words in their present form tell you their story. How much they tell you depends C 2 20 BREAKING THE SPELL. on how much you know of other languages — French, German, Latin, or Greek. But what do the elementary school children know of these languages? Clearly, in their case, this argument against change would have no weight. How many of those who learn English know more than one foreign language at all well ? Let us assume that you know French, German, Latin, and Greek, and that you have a sufficient knowledge of these languages to be able to connect English words with all kindred words in these languages. Ivook at any passage in simpli- fied spelling ; you will confess that the changes made have rarely rendered the connexion obscure. Indeed, in some cases the connexion becomes more clear when the spelling of a word has been simplified : sent is closer to Latin sentio than scent^ and mut/ier is closer to the German Mutter than mother. Even granting that the simplified spelling does sometimes obscure the derivation, you must confess that your interest in the history of words is one thing, and your ordinary use of the spoken, written, or printed word another. While you are talking, THE ETYMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 21 or reading a newspaper, or writing a letter, you are not at the same time thinking about the history of the words you u se. You may occasionally let your thoughts dwell on this aspect of language, but then you look at words from quite a different point of view. Would you stand in the way of securing a great gain for the children of coming generations because of such considerations as this? Remember, too, that even when the simplified spelling is in general use, the present spelling, the " old spelling" as it will then be called, will still be familiar to everybody ; for the enormous number of books now in existence will not have been swept away. Everybody with any claim to education will be able to read the " old spelling." It will assuredly not command admiration or respect ; but people will consent to read it, because of the books printed in it. No one will dream of writing it, because of the labour involved in learning the bad " old spelling." There will be students of the language then as now ; let us hope there will be far more. To them the "old spelling" will occa- sionally prove useful, but not as often as might now be thought. To the student of language 22 BREAKING THE SPELL. a spelling that deviates so far from the pronuncia- tion affords no very satisfactory aid in t^ re- searches. The spelling of an earlier age proves to SSb that knight and knave had a sounded k ; our spelling with k gives no clue to the present pro- nunciation of these words. It is no exaggeration to say that for one person who ever thinks of the derivation of words there are a thousand who suffer from our bad spelling ; and that one in a thousand does not need the misspellings to remind JBBl of the derivation. " The scholar does not need these indications to help Vtaa to the pedigree of the words with which IP deals, and the ignorant is not helped by them ; the one knows without, the other does not know with them, so that in either case they are profitable for nothing." Or, as Saintc-Beuve neatly puts it: "Pour une lettre dc plus ou de moins, les ignorants ne sauront pas mieux reconnaitre I'origine du mot, et les hommes instruits la re- connaitront toujours." THE HOMONYM ARGUMENT. 23 Would Confusion arise from Words having THE SAME Spelling that are now spelt differently ? Perhaps the words knigJit and knave suggest another difficulty to you : if the k is no longer written, how are we to distinguish these words from night and nave? The words write^ right, and rite, the words road, rowed, and rode sound alike ; will there not be confusion if the spelling is the same ? How would you answer the question : bear (the animal) and (I) bear have the same sound and the same spelling ; have you ever confused them ? Why not ? Because the rest of the sentence makes the meaning clear. The same is true of knigJit and night and all the other words that sound alike but d4ffer in meaning. When you talk about a knight you do not feel it necessary to pronounce the k to show that you mean knight and not night ; and it is equally unnecessary to write the k for this purpose. The rest of the sentence leaves no doubt as to the meaning. In a very few cases ambiguities might arise ; how rare they are you will realize if you try to construct such a sentence. 24 BREAKING THE SPELL. Sometimes the simplified spelling actually makes the meaning clearer. If I write the words : I read it, you do not know whether I mean read for the present or the past ; in the simplified spelling the past would be red^ in accordance with the pro- nunciation. A " roiv of houses " would no longer be spelt in the same way as " making a rowT The noun tear would not have the same spelling as the verb tear. Our Attitude towards Reform. You have now come to understand that the simplification of the spelling is a matter worthy of your earnest attention. You know well that it is easy to make fun of attempts at spelling reform. The narrow-minded lamilfr, hidebound by prejudice, resents any suggestion that what is familiar to 1M| might be changed with advantage ; H^ likes to go on doing in JB^unthinking way what Mk has always done. Hft objects to change because change dis- turbs Wm comfort, and because j^ recoils from the mental effort required by a serious consideration of the changes proposed. M* tries to thwart all attempts at improving the spelling, by pointing to PREJUDICE AND PROGRESS. 25 this word or that in its changed form, and appeal- ing to the prejudices of others ; perhaps l^ even travesties the efforts of reformers by suggesting imaginary and obviously absurd spellings as likely to meet with their approval. You, on the other hand, realize that, if a real simplification could be effected, its adoption would have very important and far-reaching results ; and you would like to know how we can arrive at such a simplified spelling and how we can secure its adoption. The Problem of Spelling Reform. If we desire to improve the spelling, we can set about it in several ways ; but the general principle must be to bring it into closer agreement with the sounds of the spoken language. At first sight it would seem to be the easiest method to ascertain how many sounds we have, and to assign a letter to each. We very soon, however, meet with difficulties in the attempt to do this. We recognize that there are more sounds in English speech than there are letters in our alpha- 26 BREAKING THE SPELL. bet ; so that wc should require new letters or, at least, " diacritics " (that is, accents, dots, &c.) over or under the existing letters. Additions to the alphabet are awkward, because they mean fresh types in our printing establishments, the re-model- ling of typewriters, linotype machines, &c., and changes in the Morse alphabet (used in signalling, telegraphing, &c.). Diacritics are not a good device. Such dia- critics as we now possess (the dot on i, the cross line of t) are troublesome ; but any considerable number of diacritics would prove a real nuisance in writing, for the addition of a dot or accent interferes with the flow of the pen. The presence of diacritics is also a disadvantage in reading. We read words as wholes and what helps us to recognize words is particularly the top outline. The presence of tall letters makes this distinctive ; but the addition of diacritics blurs the outline. The printer, too, does not like diacritics ; the little additional marks are very liable to be broken off. Many kinds of phonetic spelling have been devised. Some are used in dictionaries to indi- cate the pronunciation of words ; others have been used particularly for the purpose of teaching THE ROAD TO RATIONAL SPELLING. 27 foreigners the sounds of English. If you look at any of these you will find that they make extensive use either of diacritics or of new letters or of inverted letters ; and that to write English in this way would change the appearance of the language very much and make it much more difficult for those who have acquired the new spelling to read books printed in the present spelling. Another and more promising way of solving the problem is to examine the current spelling ; to consider in what ways each sound is spelt at present ; and then to choose that spelling which appears to be the most common. This will give us a spelling based on present usage, containing only familiar letters and requiring no diacritics. Sometimes, it is true, we may find that two or three ways of spelling a sound are equally common ; then we may choose that spelling which is most convenient for other reasons. Sometimes, too, we may find it necessary to combine two letters (to use a "digraph") in a way which is new : for instance, our language has no convenient representation of the sound heard in vision, measure, and for this we may use zh, showing the connexion of the sound with the sh of mtsh. 28 BREAKING THE SPELL. The Representation of the Consonants When we consider the consonants, we find that there are many which, from our point of view, are quite satisfactory ; that is to say, each sound is usually represented in one way only. The sound h is regularly spelt b ; the child finds it easy to remember that when he hears bit, the first letter of the word is a b. The same is true of p, d, t\ the consonants of bed, pet give no trouble. The letters in the following words that are in bold type are also used in a satisfactory way : met, win, very, fan, zest, so, this,^ hot, lot. All these letters we can adopt in our simplified spelling. This does not mean that we can always use them where they occur in the pre- sent spelling. The second s of sees does not stand for the sound s, but for the sound z ; sees does not rhyme with lease, but v^Wh freeze. We shall there- fore write seez. The consonant of of is not f but 1 Th stands for two sounds ; the th in this is not the same as the tU in thing. But there is no need to differen- tiate these in the simplified spelling, except in the case of children learning to read and of foreigners, when it is best to use dh for the sound of th in this. This is a similar device to the use of zh suggested above. CONSONANTS. 29 v; and we shall therefore write ov. The zv in sivordy ivhole, write does not represent any sound at all ; so it will be omitted. In uphill the letters / and h have their ordinary value ; but in ///antom the ph represents /. The sound is no guide to the present spelling. Fa n spells fan ; in a reasonable spelling f a lit 7H spells the word now written with ph. (If those who think ph ought to remain because it shows the derivation from the Greek were consistent, they would write phrenzy^ phancy, not frenzy^ fancy ^ for these words also are of Greek origin.) In iiephezv^ on the other hand, most of us pronounce the ph as v, and should there write v — which ought to please our friends the deriva- tionists, for this brings it closer to the French mveiiy from which it comes. Some of the consonants are more troublesome. Worst of all are the letters c, k, qUy x. Consider their present uses : c2Xy city, o^ean, science, badv. cooy^, bac/^, /^nave. quaint, gua.y. e.*rtra, e-ramine, an,rious. How can the learner tell from the sounds that he must use c in cat and k in /bitten ? That in 30 BREAKING THE SPELL. cook the same sound is first to be written c and then k ? That in taken he must write k, but c in baco7i ? How is he to tell from the sounds that there is an s in sit, but c in cityl s in sealing, but c in ceiling} Why should he write ck when r or /^ would suffice ? Why cocks, but tiA' ? Why eggs, but examine ? He hears the same sounds in kill and ^?^z7/, except that in the second of these the k is followed by a zv\ why should he not write kiv or czv ? The sounds of key and qtiay are the same ; how is he to tell that they differ in spelling ? The answer to all these questions is that the learner has to learn by heart the spelling of individual words. It would assuredly be much simpler to say : when you hear the sound written k in king, write k always ; when you hear the sound written s in sit, write .$■ always. To those who are accustomed to the present spelling, kat for cat and kook for cook no doubt look odd ; but that is true of any change in the spelling. The letters ng in sing represent one sound, not two ; in anger they represent two sounds. The CONSONANTS. 31 same sound is written « in anger and anchor. While it would be more consistent to write angger and ajigkor or angker (the h would, of course, disappear), it seems unnecessary to recommend a change from present usage in such cases. The spellings anger and ankor may give a little trouble to the foreigner, who may be tempted to pro- nounce anger as though it rhymed with hanger and ankor., an-kor ; but to the child who knows both words by ear before he ever sees them, there is no difficulty. The sound of sh in shut is written in many ways ; consider these words : sugar, machine, notion, special, ocean, tension, conscience, complexion, passion. Here we have nine different ways of spelling the same sound. How is the learner to tell that s is to be written in sugar} That ocean and notion, complexion and direction, tension and attention are to be spelt as we actually spell them ? Is it not a great simplification to say : when you hear the sound sJi, write sli ? For the related sound that is written s in measure, vision, and z in azure, seizure the letters zh are suggested as the most suitable notation. The sounds written cJi in chat and / in jet are 32 BREAKING THE SPELL. really tsh and dzh ; but the present spelling ch and / is more convenient. We write cJi in wJiich and tcJi in witcJi ; it is simpler to say : write cJi always when you hear it. The sound of 7 appears in jet, but also in gem, wager, badger, badge, legion, spinach. The learner cannot tell which of these spellings is correct in any particular word ; he has to learn the spelling of each word separately. It would be far simpler to give the rule : write the letter j when you hear the sound of y. We have now dealt with the sounds : bet pet dip tip get king met nip sing(iV.^. — linger think) win van fan this (or dhis) thing zest so vizhon sheen jest cheer left him The only consonants that remain to be con- sidered are y, r, and ivh. In the present spelling / represents a consonant vayet, and it may well be retained with this value. It also represents vowels ; the y in ph/sics, cit^ has the same value as i in v/sit, cit/zen, and the y in t_;/pe, wh^ has the same value as i in f/nd. We shall meet with these sounds again when we come to the vowels. CONSONANTS. 33 The letter r has various pronounciations in dififerent parts of the EngHsh-speaking world, and it will be well to keep it where it occurs in the present spelling, even in words where some have ceased to pronounce it. The letters wJi are also variously pronounced. In some parts there is no difference between ivh and w\ which is pronounced like zvitch, where like ivear^ while like zvile. As, however, so many speakers of English do make a distinction, it will be well to keep wh where it occurs in the present spelling. From what has gone before, you will see that the consonants on the whole present little diffi- culty ; and that is a very important fact. In our language they are more numerous than the vowels; and it is not difficult to read a sentence in which only the consonants have been written and the vowels have been left out.^ The consonants are a much more stable element in language than the vowels. ^ As an example, take the sentence : **g **g^^* .^jj^^jjf^u* ^^ ***ee 0**0** o* *ue**av* a** and compare it with : Th* tr**n st*rts *t thr** *cl*ck *n T**sd**s *nd Th*rsd**s. D 34 BREAKING THE SPELL. Double Consonants and Silent Consonants Before passing to the vowels, we must pay a little attention to the double consonants and the silent consonants. When we say the word coattail we pronounce the t at the end of coat and the t at the beginning of tail. But the case is different in written ; we pronounce only one / here. We pronounce both p''s in lamppost, but only one in happy. In bigger we pronounce one g only, just as in figure. In all we pronounce one /, just as in awl. In muddy we pronounce one d, just as in study. It is clear that where the consonant is pronounced only once, it should be written only once. Silent consonants occur in a fair number of words, for instance in light, whole, gnat, knave, write, lamb, autumn, science, sign, half, doubt, anszver, yacht. Where a letter represents no sound at all, it cannot be retained in a rational spelling. VOWELS. 35 Short Vowels. The short vowels fortunately give little trouble. You will accept without hesitation the spelling of them as it occurs in glad, best, king, song, good and bud. If this use of a, e, i, o, oo, n^ be made regular for the short vowels, some changes will of course result. The silent 7i will have to disappear from guest, and you will write gest as you write best ; you remember that we are giving g uniformly the value it has in go, and gcst will therefore not be confused with jest. You will write frend (cp. lend), hed (cp. bed), forin (cp. florin), uther (cp. utter), flud (cp. bud). Long Vowels and Diphthongs. The long vowels and diphthongs present far more difficulty, for their spelling is very varied. To give ail the different ways in which these sounds are at present spelt would take up a great deal of space ; it will be sufficient for our present purpose to give a few examples, and to indicate which spelling of these sounds appears to be the most convenient. ^ For u as in tune, volume, see p. 40. D2 36 BREAKING THE SPELL. Let us take as our first example the sound of in go, which some pronounce as a long vowel, others as a diphthong, others again as a diphthong of another kind. The fallowing words show thirteen different ways of writing this o : Go, goes, road, rode, rozv, rozved, maicve, bureau, yeoman, sezv, brooch, tJioiigJi, soul. They are, of course, not all equally common ; but each of the spellings exemplified by go, goes, road, rode, and roiv occurs in many words. As a second example we may take the long sound of // in truth. The following words show ten different spellings of this sound : truth, true, rule, fruit, rheumatisin, drezv, mood, through, move, shoe. Our third example shall be the sound of ie in cries. The following words show eleven different spellings of this sound : C7'ies, dial, high, height, file, cry, type, aisle, guide, buy, eye. These examples serve to show that nowhere is simplification more urgently needed than in the case of the long vowels and diphthongs ; at the same time it is obvious that the number of changes will be the greatest. In the following suggestions VOWELS. Bl for a simplified spelling of these sounds, the attempt has been made to produce a system that is easy to learn and that takes into account, as far as possible, what is most common in the present spelling. (i) Write aa in faather, ar in far. (ii) Write az in maid, air in fair, (iii) Write an in laud, or in lord, (i) If we used the single a we should get into difficulties ; thus we are bound to drop the silent / in ca/m, pahn, etc., but w^e cannot write cam, pavi. We have the digraph aa in the present spelling of the word ' bazaar.' Although some make no difference in pronunciation between father and farther, many do ; the distinction must there- fore be kept in the spelling and the r retained in the latter word. Some do not say faast but fast (with the same vowel as \wfat) ; these may like to write this and similar words with one a only. (ii) It is clear that the present made and maid will have the same spelling ; day will be written dai, great will become grait ; there and tJieir will become thair, bear and bare : bair. On the other hand pail, pair, maid, pain, and many other words will emain unchanged. 38 BREAKING THE SPELL. (iii) Haul, Jiaiint^ caught, etc., will retain their au ; but in other words a change will be necessary. Thus we shall have banl, clan, brand, bant, thaut. Or will remain in form, port, orb, and many other words ; but more will become mar. (iv) Write ee in feel, eer in seer. (v) Write oe in loed. (iv) We shall then be no longer troubled by such difficulties as speak and speech, which will look much more closely related as speek and speech; feet and feat will have the same spelling, as also beet and beat, meet and meat. (As was shown on p. 23, this can hardly ever lead to ambiguity.) The single letter e is found to be sufficient when a vowel follows, as in theory ; and it may also be written in certain monosyllables, such as lie, she, ive, me, be. (v) The sound of in go has many different spellings, as was shown on p. 36, and no one spelling is at present more common than any other, unless it be 0, which we require for the short vowel of got ; on the whole a? seems the best choice. Here again, the e may be omitted before another vowel, as in going, poet ; but then we strictly speaking require a diacritic ("■) to show VOWELS. 39 that the oi, oe are to be pronounced as separate vowels, not as in coin, goes. It has therefore been suggested that the familiar type ce might be used for this sound wherever it occurs (e.g. gee, goei>ig\ Whichever course is adopted, the e may be dropped in the case of a few monosyllables {p, no, so) where there can be no doubt as to the pro- nunciation, (vi) Write^j'-m my, ~ The choice of a symbol for this diphthong is not easy. The most common of the present spellings (see p. 36) are i (which is required for the short vowel), ie, and y. The use of ie would give some trouble ; thus diet would have to be spelt dieet. It is probably better to use y, especially as a single letter is obviously preferable to a digraph. The personal pronoun, with its anomalous capital, may continue to be written I, (vii) Write 00 in food, oov in poor, (viii) Write eti in neu, eur in demeur. (vii and viii) Quite the most difficult problem in connexion with the vowels was to determine the best spelling of the sounds written ne in tnie and cue respectively. The present spelling is most confusing. For ue in true this was shown on 40 BREAKING THE SPELL. p. 36 ; as for ue in cite, it is now spelt in at least ten different ways : cue, cubic, cube, suit, eulogy, adieu, fetv, vieiv, beauty, ewe. It is pretty generally agreed that the letter u should be assigned to the vowel heard in fun. How are we to represent the long 00 in food, the short 00 in good, the long " yoo " in time, and the short " yoo " in volume ? Most varied solutions have been offered, among the representations proposed being 00, uu, yu, yue, eu, ezu, %v, v. At present we are using 00 for the long and the short sounds in food, good, and eu for the long and the short sounds in tune, volume. The use of the same notation for the long and short sounds gives no trouble as regards eu ; but the use of 00 alone for the vowels of pull and pool, full and fool, removes the distinction between these words (and perhaps a few others). (ix) Write oi in coin, (x) Write ou in count. There can be little doubt about the spelling of these sounds. It is true that at the end of words the present spelling generally has oy and ow ; but to make this a rule would be a useless complication. VOWELS. 41 (xi) Write er in fevn^ sister. Many speakers make no distinction between er in fern, ir in yfr, ur in fiir^ and or in word. Some may prefer to write ur in such words as burn^ hurt, etc. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables. The question how far the use of er should be extended is most difficult to answer, for it compels us to face the problem of the vowels in unstressed syllables. Take the following examples : able and label ; idle and idol ; mettle and metal. tailor and trailer ; alter and altar ; beggar and bigger ; stationery and stationary. balsam and venom ; infamy, enemy and economy ; infamous and blasphemous. ocean and notion ; musician and position. barren and ^«r^« ; gotten and cotton. distant and persistent ; distance and sentence ; tenancy and clemency. Read these words in a natural way ; you will find it easier to do this if you introduce them into sentences. It is probable that you will then realize that our spelling shows a variety of vowel 42 BREAKING THE SPELL. letters where in our ordinary pronunciation only one vowel sound is heard. This 'obscure' or * neutral ' vowel, as it is called, is of frequent occurrence in English, as also in French and German. In a purely phonetic alphabet it is usually represented by the sign a (an inverted e). You may, however, have noticed that public speakers who are very deliberate and precise in their speech do make distinctions in some of the cases of which examples have been given above ; and there are many who believe that this is a practice to be commended and worthy of general imitation and extension. They maintain that this adds to the beauty of the language, and that the variety of the vowel letters, as found in the present spelling of the unstressed endings, should be indicated in the pronunciation also ; so that, for instance, the second syllable of moment would be pronounced like meant (which is, indeed, done by a good many) and that the second syllable of idol, sailor should be pronounced like doll, lore respectively. They also maintain that in many cases it is desirable to retain the present spelling of the vowel because of the existence of derived words in which the vowel is stressed and appears VOWELS. 43 with its full value, e.g. metal and metallic, idol and idolatry, baron and baronial, ocean and oceanic. Others, however, regard such a pronunciation of the unstressed vowels as an unwarrantable revival of what has long disappeared. They say that the reduction of the vowels in unstressed syllables, far from being a sign of deterioration, is a sign of progress ; that what has taken place, for instance, in German and other kindred languages, has its justifiable parallel in our own. In other languages this development shows itself in the spelling as well as in the spoken language ; for instance, the e in German Brnder leider Hdiiser goes back to various vowels, which ceased to be differentiated in the spelling when the ' neutral ' vowel had taken their place in the spoken language. They also point to the usage of the poets, who may surely be regarded as not indifferent to the beauty of the language, but who do not hesitate to use such rhymes as ever, endeavour (Words- worth, Byron), sever, endeavour (Th. Moore), tender, splendour (Shelley), moiio7i, ocean (Words- worth, Coleridge, Shelley), sentence, repentance (Byron), Jieaven, Devon (Tennyson), languors, angers (Tennyson). 44 BREAKING THE SPELL. There is another vowel that appears commonly in unstressed syllables, a vowel which resembles the i of pit. The following examples show the present spellings of this sound : city and citizen ; carry and carrier ; captain and satin ; roses and posies ; volley and folly ; purest and purist ; postage, vestige, and privilege. The practical question for us is : How are we to deal with the vowels in unstressed syllables in our scheme of simplified spelling? It is impossible to tell which of the two incompatible views stated above will win the day ; time alone can decide. In these circumstances it will be wise to retain for the present any differences which may survive, not only in the spelling, but in very precise speech. Those who prefer a spelling more in accordance with their natural speech (by no means the same thing as ' careless ' or ' slipshod ' speech) should be at liberty to use it. The Simplified Spelling in Brief. We have now dealt with the sounds of the English language and their representation by means of a simple and reasonably consistent spelling, of which this table gives a summary : THE SPELLING IN BRIEF. 45 Consonant Sounds. bst pet dip tip get king met nip sing" (iV.^.— linger, think) win whim van fan this (or dhis) thing zest so vizhon sheen jest cheer left ryt yes him Vowel Sounds. glad best king song faather maid leed laud Iced far fair seer lord good voleiim food teun poor deraeur joi bud mount fern, sister Realize that when the child has learnt to distinguish the sounds, this little table gives him the way in which they are to be spelt. Then turn to any book now in use for teaching our spelling and ask yourself which is the more economical system. If it implied economy at the expense of educational soundness, you would rightly give it no further attention. That it is educationally sound has been shown above ; but it will be well to give here, in a few words, the advantages of this system of simplified spelling. 46 BREAKING THE SPELL. Advantages of the Simplified Spelling. It is easy to learn. Try for yourself. Say a sentence and then write it in simplified spelling. If you do find difficulty, it is because you have not been accustomed to distinguish the sounds you utter, because in childhood your ear-training was neglected. It can be taught by rational methods. The process will be this : The attention of the child is drawn to the sounds he uses in speaking. His organs of speech as well as his ears are trained. Then he learns to represent the sounds by letters. He does not learn the spelling of individual words, which calls for excessive memorizing. (There are other and far better ways of practising the memory.) The training of the ear and of the vocal organs which is an essential part of learning the sim- plified spelling is of great value. It is useful in leading to clearer speech, and forms the basis of all good work in elocution and singing. It is the best preparation for learning shorthand. It affords great help in mastering the pronunciation of foreign languages. There is no doubt that the IT IS WORTH WHILE. 47 simplification of spelling would very soon lead to a great improvement in pronunciation. Slovenliness and vulgarity are fostered by the lack of a clear and constant relation between the written symbol and the spoken sound. One zvho has learnt the simplified spelling luill be able to read books in the ' old spelling ' with little trouble. Many words are the same. In devising the simplified spelling care has been taken to make the least possible change that is consistent with efficiency. After a little practice, it would be quite easy to read the 'old spelling' ; but no one would be expected to ivrite it, and it is this which requires so much effort. It is easy to pri)tt. As it contains no new letters and no diacritics, existing founts of type will serve perfectly. There is no need to effect any change in typewriters, linotype machir;j3, etc. The alphabet used in telegraphy and in signalling will remain the same. // makes English the most serviceable language for intercourse ivithin the Einpire and between nations. No other language offers the same combination of advantages as ours. It has a very simple grammar and a very rich vocabulary ; 48 BREAKING THE SPELL. it is the key to a grand literature. Its only serious drawback is — the spelling. If we agree to make the spelling of English as reasonable and straightforward as is that of Spanish or of Italian, we shall confer an inestim- able boon on the children of untold generations to come. We shall add to the efficiency of all English-speaking peoples by effecting an immense improvement in elementary education, by which every child, rich or poor, will be the gainer. We shall ensure the continued spread of the English language throughout the world. how you can help the movement for Spelling Reform. When you look at the names of those who are interesting themselves in the movement, when you see that men like Mr. William Archer, Lord Bryce, Dr. G. B. Hunter, Dr. Macnamara, Pro- fessor Gilbert Murray, Sir Frederick Pollock, Dr. Michael Sadler, Mr. H. G. Wells, to mention only a few, are keen members of the Simplified Spelling Society, you may be inclined to say : I may well leave the work to these men. That, HOW YOU CAN HELP. 49 however, is not what they want at all. They may be able to do more than you, but they cannot dispense with your active support. Like every other great movement, it appeals to all educated men and women. We want your personal interest, we want your help in the campaign for simplified spelling. You can help a great deal. Think about the questions involved, talk about them to your friends, take an interest in the spoken language. When you meet with ignorance and prejudice, do your utmost to dispel these enemies to all open-minded consideration of the problem. The arguments that you will have to answer are always the same. E 60 BREAKING THE SPELL Brief Answers to the Arguments of Opponents. The simplified spelling looks queer, ugly, etc. Answer: Prejudice, born of habit. Familiarity, in this case, breeds ill-placed admiration. Those brought up on the simplified spelling will be just as devoted to that, and with better cause.^ Words of the same sound noiv spelt differently would be spelt alike, which would lead to confusion. ^ You may perhaps hear some one exclaim : ' Shake- speare's spelling is good enough for me." We happen to have no evidence as to Shakespeare's spelling — except that he was not particular as to the spelling of his name ; here is an example of Shakespeare's printers' spelling : How fweet the moone-light fleepes vpon this banke, Heere will we fit, and let the founds of muficke Creepe in our eares, loft ftilnes and the night Become the tutches of fweet harmonic. Or again some one may say : " I should not like to see the Bible in simplified spelling." Probably tlfc would not, at first; and it is also probable that Sfe would not like it in the spelling of the sixteenth century, After all, it is the meaning that matters ; and those accustomed to reading the Bible in the simplified spelling would revere its teaching no less than we do. m HOW TO ANSWER OBJECTIONS. 51 Answer : There is no confusion when the words are spoken ; why should there be any when they are written ? The context makes the meaning clear. Some words, now spelt alike, would be differentiated. A change .of spelling ivould obscure the derivation. Answer : Granted, sometimes ; in other cases it would make it clearer. In our ordinary use of language we are not at the same time studying etymology ; for the student of etymology the ' old spelling' will still be available for reference. // is good for children to ivork hard. Answer : Of course it is ; and there are plenty of subjects of great intrinsic importance at which they can work hard. But where is the intrinsic importance of writing Iho, though and frend, friendl To compel them to learn all the redun- dancies and inconsistencies of our spelling because of the hard work involved is as sensible as to make them write with their feet rather than with their hands because of the harder work entailed in doing so. 52 BREAKING THE SPELL. ^ Brief answers have been given here ; but all these objections have been dealt with on earlier pages of this book, except the last, — which is really too contemptible to call for an extensive answer. Adoption of the Simplified Spelling. You may also like to show that you are a friend of progress by making use of the simplified spelling in your letters or in print. The more often people see words spelt in the reasonable way, the more quickl}^ will they get accustomed to the idea of change. Possibly, however, you may prefer to wait until the scheme is more widely known before adopting it in its complete form. In the meantime you may be willing to adopt certain obvious simplifi- cations which form part of the proposed scheme. The following rules are suggested for provisional use : I. Drop silent letters when this does not involve a change of pronunciation ; e.g. write dout for doubt, acttv for active, definit for definite, program for programme, pick for pitcJi, but not brit for A SUGGESTION. 53 bright. (Do not adopt brite^ which is contrary to the spelling y suggested for this diphthong in the scheme.) 2. Where a consonant is doubled in a single word (not in a compound), drop one letter when this does not involve a change in pronunciation, e.g. write buton for bictton, teror for terror, begining for begmning, but keep the two letters in coattail, lamppost, interrupt, batted, latter. (The forms bated, later in the present spelling do not have this value, and confusion would arise.) 3. Write t in place of the ending ed of many verbs, whenever t represents the pronunciation ; e.g. past for passed, prest for pressed. 4. Substitute / for ph. The Simplified Spelling Society. Finally, you can show your interest in the movement by joining the Simplified Spelling Society, the office of which is at 44 Great Russell Street, London, W.C. i. However limited your means may be, you will be able to subscribe one shilling a year, which makes you an Associate Member ; this subscription assures us of your 54 RREAKINCx THE SPELL moral support, which we value highly. If you can afford five shillings a year, this payment will make you an Active Member, and will help the Society to extend its work. It is no easy task that we have taken in hand ; our appeal is to millions, scattered all over the earth. We want to establish branches in every important centre where English is spoken. We want to gain the sympathetic help of every newspaper. We want to dispel prejudice and prepare the path for reform, A great under- taking needs money, and we appeal without hesitation for pecuniary help to those who can afford it. But to all, rich and poor alike, we appeal for the earnest consideration of the case for simplified spelling which has been put forward in these pages ; we believe that there are few causes more worthy of support than this, which aims at the prevention of waste in our schools, at better educational methods, and at rendering more serviceable for all the English language. 19 To the Secretary, Simplified Spelling Society, 44 Great Russell Street, London, W.C. 1. I wish to be enrolled as an . . ^ Member of the Associate Simplified Spelling Society, at an Annual Subscription of *, and beg leave to enclose my first year's Subscriplion, Or, I wish to be enrolled as a Life Member of the Simplified Spelling Society, and beg leave to enclose as my Subscription the sum of ** Name Occupation Address. * The minimum is Five Shillings for Active Members and One Shilling for Associate Members. ** The minimum is Three Pounds for Active Members and Twelve Shillings for Associate Members. Un.vers-.ty ot Camornja p^ciUTY ..TV4PRN REGIONAL UBRAH g^x 951388 SOUTHERN » ^^^^.,„g Lot 17 .88 Of Form L9-30OT-1 ■to,/ ^^OAUPomm UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 3 1158 00287 4492 ^^ t PLEA*5f DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD^ University Research Library < o •0 U1 ui J i .m^^mi sSPS Unive So L