SIMPLER SPELLING
SYMPOSIUM OF OPINIONS 1.... ■ S ;:js‘ SOME GRAVE OBJECTIONS. The demand for a simplified spelling of English has gained of late many influential supporters. Dr Bridges, with his private and improved spelling, was a comparatively lonely innovator. Those who are of his way of thinking are now beginning to find a readier public. For example, Professor W. Emery Barnes has just been making his coming retirement and “the end of a teaching career of forty-nine years” the occasion for a grave complaint of “the riot of unreasori 'and insults to young intelligence” with which English education begins, and he has met with lively response. Professor Barker has suggested that there is precedent for a Prime Minister’s Committee which might explore the question at large. Professor Barnes would incite people to private rebellion. He wants them to begin by writing hav, giv, gon, neer, cleer, yeer, enuf, cof, tho, throu, beleev, frend, plesant, deth, at any rate in private letters, thus spelling privately in the manner of Chaucer and Milton and not in the manner of Dictionary Johnson. In addition there is the possibility that versed in simplified spelling a people may ultimately understand Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. Recently a number of representative opinions were given to the London Observer. It was interesting to note that among nine people—three writers, another writer who is a mother of two children and has strong views on education, a publisher, a professor of English, a professor of education, a scientist, and a librarian —the voting was five in favour of reformed spelling, four against. Professor Julian Huxley. The scientist was Professor Julian Huxley. He said “I am wholly in favour of reforming spelling. Our present way of spelling is all that stands in the way of English becoming a world auxiliary language. I don’t think we ought to let philological and historical objections stand in the way. For instance, living in America I found that the haphazard new spellings customary there were first painful to me, then scarcely noticeable, and, finally, seemed perfectly normal. A more considered reform would still have its painful stage. But there need be no chaos. There would have to be some sort of Commission—perhaps a Prime Minister’s Commitee, as Professor Barker has suggested. It would have to be many-sided, including representatives of science, commerce, and the general public, as well as of literature and scholarship if general agreement were reached, then it could be enacted that from a certain date such and such words had two alternative spellings both of which were right.” Professor Dover Wilson. There is precedent in Sweden for the practical operation of spelling reform, Professor Dover Wilson pointed out. Just before the War the first Swedish Liberal Government changed by law the spelling of two sounds. It was a useful simplification and has worked out well. “We do not think of our language,” said a Swede, “as being fixed, and spelling reform is fairly continuous, though there have been no changes by Act of Parliament since the War. It so happens that at this very moment the elementary school teachers, in Sweden are making strong demands to the Government to carry through an even more thorough-going spelling reform, though there is a large section of writers and scholars who resent State interference.” Professor Dover Wilson gave reform cautious welcome. He liked Bridges s spellings on the whole, but on the general question which he thinks is of extreme complexity f he prefers the approach made by Bradley, ‘ the greatest philologist we ever had.” He thought we must pay special attention to the look of words “for of all the words that pass through our minds in a day the greater number are words we see rather than hear.” Professor A. W. Reed. Professor A. W. Reed, professor of English, thinks that “the solution lies with the phoneticians,” but he is not sanguine of any important reform until the public at large is educated a good deal more in phonetics. Shorthand, after all, is based on a phonetic system, and there is a possibility that eventually another alphabet will be invented which will make great reforms possible. “If it is a question of reviving the simpler spellings used prior to Johnson’s dictionary, then it will be necessary to go back to the time before the introduction of printing. It was the printers who changed our spelling and Johnson . did no more than codify printing house practice.” Mr Aldous Huxley. Mr Aldous Huxley put in a word for seventeenth-century -spelling—the spelling employed by Milton in “Lycidas,” for example, which he said was “without frills.” He said “I am one of the fortunate people who are not troubled by the difficulty of English spelling. There is probably a good deal to be said for getting rid of the excrescences, and simplifying generally. No doubt it will be like the twenty-four hour clock. You will probably find no popular demand, and great public opposition.” Mr Aldous Huxley as a good speller was counterbalanced by Mrs Amabel Williams-Ellis, who declared that she has no idea how to spell at all. Her father, Strachey, of the Spectator, who was no more fortunate, used to say “Never mind, the printer can always spell; but nowadays,” she added, “that doesn’t seem to be true.” Of the nine interviewed, she was the sole upholder of the good old-fashioned belief that spelling may be individual. She heartily deplored the habit which still persists in many schools of giving marks for spelling in English composition. The more freely ideas flow, the worse spelling becomes. “Spelling is very chancy, she said. “Some can’t spell just as others are tone-deaf or colour-blind. On balance she heartily favoured simplification and reform. Mr Geoffrey Faber. The noes put their arguments Lorn several points of view. The librarian, Dr Hagberg Wright, of the London Library, thought that “the English language is not in need of reform and should not be tampered with.” Mr Geoffrey Faber, the publisher, finds something to fear in the “tremendously attractive” notion of English as a world auxiliary language,” as Professor Huxley had put it. “It frightens me because it sounds to me like the deathknell of our own living national language and literature. One might take an illustration from the history, of Latin. So long as Latin was the national language of Rome it produced great literature. After it became an imperial language the quality began to fall. off. Instead of Cicero you had Quintilian; instead of Virgil, Statius; and so on. Finally, it became a universal language, and you got nothing—or next to nothing—out of it in the way of literature. The case of English would be worse; because Latin continued to be a primary language until the romance guages separated from it, whereas English would only be a secondary language—except in the original Englishspeaking countries. It would be just a bare means of communication—a language for business and diplomacy. Mr T. S. Eliot said he agreed with Mr Faber. Mr David Garnet#. Mr David Garnett said: “In my opinion there is a conclusive defence of the existing spelling. It is that to change
it drastically would in time make the whole body of printed books a trouble to read, and thus enormously hamper science and culture. It would be impossible to reprint all the books in the British Museum in the new spelling. If we got accustomed to a new spelling the old form would then become a bar to our interest in existing books.”
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19341206.2.73
Bibliographic details
Southland Times, Issue 22497, 6 December 1934, Page 7
Word Count
1,254SIMPLER SPELLING Southland Times, Issue 22497, 6 December 1934, Page 7
Using This Item
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Southland Times. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.