THE NEW SPELLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE NEW SPELLING.

ENGLISH V. AMERICAN. It is all very well for the " literv gents to sneer at the efforts of Professor Brawler Matthews and his Simplified Spelling Board. But let them try to teach spelling. Let them try to measure tip the waste of precious' time, to say nothing of the irritation and dejection of spirit, to which the youthful student of the vagaries of English orthography is committed. He is taught that "i" comes before "e" except after " c," and is straightway taken to task for spelling "seize" "s-i-e-z-e," or " heir'' "h-i-e-r," or "feign'' "f-i-e-g-n," and so on. He is solemnly adjured to drop the final e when adding ing to a verb, and then comes a. rebuff for spelling "shoeing'' " s-h-o-i-n-g." They teach him that while " fulfil' has only one final 1," that final "1" is doubled in "fulfilled." And when he goes on to apply the rule to "fulfillment" there is trouble. Then they tcach that ' r-o-u-g-h spells " ruff." In simple faith he spells "stuff" " s-t-o-u-g-h." They drum into his head that " 1-a-u-g-h" is " laff," and privately vote him a thick-head when he spells "staff" "fi-t-a-u-g-h." WHY THE ENGLISH ARE STOLID. I believe the stolidity of the English character and its implicit acceptance, of authority is due in a large measure to the fact that long before it leaves the spelling class it is ready to believe anything. .And this unquestioning attitude of mind is only rendered the more hopless when it comes to learn that in one case twelve ounces make a pound, in another case it requires sixteen. Indeed, if we had set ourselves deliberately to stamp out rational instincts and the habit of logical and thoughtful inquiry in the child mind, we probably could not have devised .two more fiendish instruments than our scheme of spelling on the one hand, and" of? weights and measures on the other. Therefore, let the spelling reformer be taken seriously. And not only because of the case presented by the class-room and its pupils full of travail. Take, the average grown-up fairly educated man. Spelling being all a. matter of guesswork (every rule being promptly honoured in the breach just as much as in the observance), even well-educated people very frequently go wrong. How many timet; in a sub-edi-torial room does somebody call out, How d'ye, spell irrepressible," or "quarrelled," or "accommodation." or "caressed," or something of that sort? Just as in the. ease-room the silence is suddenly broken by "Any gent got minion caps?" How many times in the communications of well-read people do you get " timely," " seperate," " until]," " makeing," " judgement," " persuit," "exciteing," "useing," " neioe," "potatoe." "buisness," " government," . "cruely," "fulfill," "occuring," and so on? (As , this is not A confessional, I decline to say which of these is my own, particular failing; but if it were not for those unostentatious treasures, the correctors of the press, many a big reputation would go down with a ran.) A BEWILDERING MAZE. > Now, before our bewildering maze of let-ter-combination eccentricities miscalled a system of spelling can be affectively tackled it is necessary to diagnose the disease. What is the matter -with the Anglo-Saxon alphabet? It consists of six-and-twenty signs. Three of these—c, o, and x— redundant, and therefore useless, the result is that wo have twenty-three letters doing duty for just double that number of articulations. Therefore, in the first place, a number of the letters have to bo employed to denote a variety of different sounds. For instance, take the varying sound values of the letter "a" in fat, fate, father, and fall, or the sound values -of the combination "gh" in rough, sough, and dough. Conversely .the same sound values are represented by a. variety of letters and -combinations. Take the long "e." It stands for itself in lethe. In cheat, " ea" docs duty for it; in street, " ee"; in people, " eo'"; and in either, " i-" Then, again,' many letters are silent, as "h" in heir, hour, honour, and honest, and their many declinations; "b" in lamb, doubt, and jamb; "u" in buoy, aunt, guard, guide, and so on. HOPELESSLY WRONG. All these and many more of our spelling troubles arise from our defective alphabet. Consequently there can be no complete reform until the alphabet itself is overhauled and recast on rational and phonetic lines.' But of course you cannot remodel the oldest and most universal tongue in the world except by the slowest and most circumspect stages. For myself, I think the Carnegie-Roosevelt scheme hopelessly wrong in two particulars. The Simplified Spelling Board ought to have been composed not of Americans only. It should have included representative philologists from all parts of the Anglo-Saxon speaking world. As things stand, if the Roosevelt spelling'be adopted in America all that has been achieved lias been the breaking away of the United States from' the standardised English tongue in favour of a Yankee-ised edition. If this comes about it will be a pity."" ' The derivation of a word is a precious thing, as . precious to the student as the pedigree of a promising two-year-old is to the man who follows form and racing calendars. We must, as I say, therefore, go cautiously. -W . ~, , , For years America has led the way m knocking off final e's, leaving out redundant u's, turning re's into er's, changing ph's into plain f's, and reducing the repeated letter to single form. Thus we are all very- familiar, with labor, candor> program, fan torn, tho, thru, thoro, center, and eo on. If the American committee had added another score of simplified words to these, and bad then solicited English co-operation for the • next step forward, a useful move in the direction of much needed reform would have been taken. . ■ ; As it- is, I doubt very much whether he-, tween them, Carnegie, Roosevelt-, Brander Matthews, and Murray - Butler have done much more than furnish the newspapers with an altogether unexpected windfall in the shape of a quite crisp topic of discussion for the silly season fortunately for the people at most of the seaside resorts, the weather for 'the week has been, wid continues, fine.—Dr. Macnamara, M.F.