SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 8 September 1926, Page 3

SIMPLIFIED SPELLING

(T) The Editor.)

Sir, —As 1 anticipated would be the case, I iiiii being assailed on all sides with remarks about Die "hideous ugli-' nt.-ss" of simplified spelling.” But, does it not appeal ugly moitdy beranse u is novel and unusual? Alter ail, the words it! themselves remain the same : they are merely clothed in a- new drives. A useful analogy van be drawn from the change m women s fashions. As Punch has recently reminded us with delightful humour, the young ladies of hut twenty years ago wore long hair, wasplike waists and dresses down to their toes. And we all thought them lovely I Trv to imagine the horror and iiulignat mu we should all have lelt coin l l a present-clay flapper with her slnngled hair and short slims have appeared in Trafalgar street in the year IflO/i. How disgustingly ugly and hide- . enl we should have considered her lostume! Vet. now? All hut, a few old fogeys regard it with approval and admiration, Just so with spelling. Our present stupid spelling is really as ugly and inconvenient, ns was ladies’ dress oi 20 veins ago, while simplilieiL spelling is as heautiful and rational us the dress of to-day. When we get- used to the new improved style, we shall shriek with laughter at the old forms, such as daughter, through, thumb. and knee. The reform in the fashion of women's dress is a most, hopeful sign and makes all sane reforms appear possible.

Your correspondent, ‘‘Veto,” thinks that tin- advocates of the new spelling have overlooked the fact that Hie dori ration of many words would lie obscured. Bill this is far from the truth. The originators of the movement were England's fore most pli ilologists,—scholars who spent their lives in compiling dictionaries and endeavouring to trace the derivation of words. If "Veto” wishes to look up a derivation, he probably turns to one of Professor Skeat’s etymological dictionaries, or to one of the numerous volumes of the stupendous Oxford English Dictionary, now nearing completion, at which many of our best scholars have been working for 45 years. But it was these very scholars, men who could best assess the value of the present spelling as a guide to derivation, that established the Simplified Spelling Society. It was the great etymologist, Skoal, that became the first president of the society, and that took the keenest pleasure in demolishing the self-same etymological argument which "Veto" advances. "In the interests of etymology,” wrote Skoal, "we ought to spell as we pronounce To spell words as they used to be pronounced is not- etymological, but antiquarian.” Similarly Sir James Murray, iirsl chief editor of the Oxford Dictionary, declared that "tile ordinary appeals to etymology against spelling reform utterly break down on examination." "Veto” will recognise that the etymological argument lias not by any means been overlooked. To take the examples lie quotes, lie is wrong in supposing that "auction” and “augnicni would become "oeksliun” and "orgmciil," as "oukshnn” and “aug nieiii’ would be the correct forms. But e\'cu if lii.s forms bad been correct, il would remain true that from the. time we begin lo lisp at our mother's knee, we learn the meaning of practii ally all the words we list; by hearing or reading tliem in their context-. The number of words of which wo acquire the meaning through derivation is inlinitesimal and not worth consideration. All the words which “Veto” quotes can be fully understood without reference to ilieir derivation. Jn any case, Jes persent, the world’s greatest living authority on linguistics, assures us that t wet birds of the derivations given ’.i oitr dictionaries are almost certain v wrong, so the etymological argument has very little force. Veto’s reference to Italian and Spanish is unfortunate, as both those languages have simplified systems of spelling, ns has also German. Although “Veto” may scorn the suggestion, It is the opinion of mane scholars and men of affairs that tlhe world must adopt some international language in the near future, and that English will almost certainly be the language if its spelling is simplified. I am, etc., F. 0. GIBBS.