SIMPLIFIED SPELLING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19199, 16 June 1924, Page 10

SIMPLIFIED SPELLING.

THE WAY TO RUIN OUR LANGUAGE. The Ontario Educational Association has passed a resolution, which is to be sent to Mr Ramsay MacDonald, urging that a Royal Commission be appointed to inquire into the practicability of introducing simplified spoiling throughout the Empire. Having studied various examples of simplified spelling and having made experiments myself in spoiling words phonetically (writes John Blunt in the Daily Mail), 1 have come to the conclusion that simplified spelling is not simple at all, but exceedingly difficult. If we adopted this method we should only make confusion worse confounded. When Roosevelt was President of the United States he introduced a modified form of simplified spelling into official documents, but he soon had to abandon it. And in the same way, if Mr Ramsay MacDonald were to be lured into the experiment—which being a canny Scot, he will not be—ho would presently discover that, far from solving any problem, he had only added another terror to existence. GENIUS OF ENGLISH. But though the material objections to simplified spelling appear to me to be overwhelming, nevertheless I think there is a still greater objection. English spelling is part of the genius of the English language. 1 know that it is governed by no particular rules —or, at least, ihat it is so full of exceptions to any rules that the rules can scarcely be said to count —but it has grown up out of the dim past and has become a portion of our lives. Shakespeare says that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; but I doubt it very much, because the scent and the name are inextricably associated in our minds. And, similarly, words are closely bound up in our minds with the manner in whicn these words are spelt. Imagine a page of Shakespeare or Dickens produced in simplified spelling; its ugly, meaningless appearance would take from literature half of its personality, charm, and beauty. The truth is (hat the appreciation of anything is not concerned only with one sense; a smoker gets little pleasure if he shuts his eyes, a diner gets little pleasure if the tablecloth is dirty—a reader gets little pleasure if the spelling is fantastic. REPULSIVE-LOOKING JARGON. Furthermore, all such innovations as simplified spelling and Esperanto tend to eliminate national individuality and to make language not merely ugly, but dull. Therefore, even if they wore to accomplish all they promise the price, in my opinion, is not worth paying. 1 would rather have my language difficult and the spelling of it illogical than have it combed free from everything that made it a language worm having. Scientists, botanists, zoologists, and other learned men require a universal nomenclature for the co-ordination of their knowledge, and this is voiy satisfactorily supplied by Latin. But other people do not require a universal language to the same degree. It is a good thing to know foreign languages, but, generally speaking, it is not essential, because the best thought and the finest creations of foreigners are brought to us by translations. In any case, national genius requires a national language. If there was one universal language for the whole world, nationality, and with it national genius, would decay, because, in losing its language, it would have lost its impetus. And the same thing would apply, within the British Empire, to almost as great an extent if writers were reduced to the appalling dreariness of simplified spelling. Fancy producing odes to skylarks or passionate love scenes in this repulsive-looking jargon I