The Waipa Post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1911. CORRECT SPELLING.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 45, 19 September 1911, Page 2

The Waipa Post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1911. CORRECT SPELLING.

A VERY considerable change is gradually coming into operation in the matter 01 spelling. Undoubtedly many people who have not devoted special attention to the study oi language, are tempted 10 think that our mother tongue nas taken on a fixed and final I or in, ana as one writer puts it, "is Dound by hard and fast rules, that certain usages are inevitably right, and any departure therefrom is mevitaoiy wrong." We need hardly say that such a view is entirely wrong, and has no warrant whatever. We must admit that any language that is living and not dead, has not taken on its fixed and final form. This has been the great mistake of the past, but those who study the question are fuliy convinced that so long as a language is a living speech, vital in the mouths of men, it will grow, like any other living" thing, it will change to meet new needs, and what it condemned yesterday, it may approve to-morrow. 'While we must endeavour to preserve the ancient land-marks, we cannot possibly afford to reject ail the modern improvements. As Mr Chesterton once pointed out. "All Conservatism is based upon the idea, that if you leave things aione, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If y.ou leave a thing aione, you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post aione, it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white, you must always be painting it« But this which is true even of inanimate things is, in quite a special sense, true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of tin: citizen, because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old." And of all our opinions, none seem so imperative as those which we had drilled into us at school. To modify the rules of grammar to change the spelling of a word seems little short of sacrilege. The way we have been taught to

use the -- language is the only right way, and to doubt it is to cast reflections upon the knowledge and wisdom of our teachers and parents, yet we find Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was not only the foremost of English portrait-painters, but a man of great shrewdness, and penetration saying over a hundred years ago, that there are some rules whose absolute authority, like that of our nurses continues no longer than while we are in a state of childhood. And to say the rules of grammar are human,is only to say a truism. Ai_d we cannot help but rejoice in the efforts which arc being made both in England and America, to bring about a more rational method of spelling. Even the great dictionaries are not a guide on the spelling of certain words, and even .disagree about a host of words, many of them in daily use. And who is to decide when the dictionaries disagree. We are glad that attempts are being made to bring order out of chaos. We certainly think it is time that a central authority took up the matter and gave a revised system of orthography, more rational, simpler for adults and a great deal easier for the child. In the meantime, we may with safety, if in doubt about a word, use the shorter of the two forms, by so doing, we shall be helping forwarb a very necessary and useful reform.