_Questions at Issue in
Our English Speech_
[Illustration]
_Edwin W. Bowen, Ph.D._
_Author of
“Makers of American Literature”_
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Broadway Publishing Company_
_PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS_
_835 Broadway, ⁂ New York_
Copyright, 1909
BY
EDWIN W. BOWEN, Ph.D.
_All Rights Reserved_
_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_
_Practically all the matter in this collection of essays has been
printed elsewhere. Four of the articles, “A Question of Preference
in English Spelling,” “Authority in English Pronunciation,” “What
Is Slang?” and “Briticisms versus Americanisms,” first appeared in
the “Popular Science Monthly” and are here reproduced with the kind
permission of the editor of that journal. The paper, “Vulgarisms
with a Pedigree,” is rewritten from three brief essays on allied
themes which were published in the “Atlantic Monthly” and the “North
American Review.” The essay on “Our English Spelling of Yesterday--Why
Antiquated?” is reprinted from the “Methodist Review.” I wish here to
thank the publishers of these periodicals for permission to reprint._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Our English Spelling of Yesterday. Why Antiquated 1
A Question of Preference in English Spelling 25
Authority in English Pronunciation 38
Vulgarisms With a Pedigree 60
Briticisms Versus Americanisms 82
What is Slang? 108
Standard English. How it Arose and How it is Maintained 130
OUR ENGLISH SPELLING OF YESTERDAY--WHY ANTIQUATED?
There is a marked distinction between spoken and written language.
In writing a system of conventional symbols is adopted to represent
speech. At best such a system is ill-devised and incomplete. In many
cases, as in our own tongue, the written language fairly bristles
with innumerable inaccuracies and inconsistencies and with flagrant
absurdities of orthography. Of course the written language is only an
imperfect attempt to represent graphically the spoken speech and is
a mere shadow of the real substance, of the living tongue. No system
of symbols has been adopted which represent with absolute accuracy
and adequacy a spoken language at all periods of its history. It is a
matter of extreme doubt whether any living language is now, or ever
has been, represented by its alphabet with absolute accuracy and
precision. It is quite probable that no living European tongue is today
represented by its alphabet with more than approximate accuracy and
completeness. As for the dead languages, like the classics, we may
be reasonably certain that neither the Greek nor the Latin alphabet
correctly and adequately represented those respective languages at all
periods of their history. The body of Latin literature now extant
is but a desiccated, lifeless mummy of the living, pulsating speech
which was heard upon the lips of the ancient Romans. Of that robust
and vigorous Latin vernacular, as employed by Cicero and Virgil in
all its purity, we have only embalmed specimens, preserved to us in
the stirring rhetorical periods of that prince of Roman orators and
in the stately rhythmical hexameters of that famous Mantuan bard.
_Quantum mutatum ab illo_--how unlike the spoken language, how unlike
the burning eloquence which used to thrill the populace in the ancient
Roman Forum! Small wonder we are accustomed now to speak of the tongue
of the ancient Roman and of the tongue of the ancient Hellene as a
“dead language,” for those noble tongues perished, truly, centuries
ago, when they ceased to be spoken by the inhabitants of Rome and
Athens respectively.
However, the classics are not the only “dead languages.” There is a
sense in which some of the modern languages may be said to be “dead.”
Even our own Saxon tongue, which good King Alfred employed in all
its pristine purity both in conversation and in the translations
which he made for his people, is practically as “dead” as Latin or
Greek, inasmuch as it is no longer possible for us to think in terms
of the Anglo-Saxon or to speak with the accents and sounds of that
rugged, unpolished idiom. Indeed, the speech of Chaucer and even of
Shakespeare, no less than that of King Alfred, is to all intents
and purposes a “dead” tongue to the English-speaking people of the
twentieth century, for we no longer employ the idiom and the sound
values then current. We have the language of those times, it is true,
preserved in the works of Chaucer and in our rich literary heritage
from the Elizabethan age, but the speech of those times--the vernacular
spoken by the mellifluous-tongued and myriad-minded Shakespeare, no
less than that employed by that “verray perfight gentil knight,”
Chaucer--is no longer heard upon the lips of the users of English
and may therefore be said to be “dead.” These authors have left us
a photograph more or less faithful and true, though not a speaking
likeness, of the English language then existent. How our English
vernacular has changed ever since the days of the famous virgin queen,
not to mention the more radical changes of the far-remote days of the
ill-starred Richard II! A spoken language is constantly changing. It
grows and develops, or languishes and decays, upon the lips of those
who employ it as their mother-tongue, now incorporating into itself new
expressions and idioms and now casting off such as are old and worn
out. But it is no easy matter to fix its ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic
form, or to determine its chameleon color. The spoken language is
modified by each speaker who uses it as a medium for the communication
of his thoughts and feelings. The words which a man employs to convey
his thoughts to his fellow man have not an absolute and unvarying
significance. They have only a relative meaning, not a rigid and
definite signification, which is essential in the nature of the term,
and they express only the ideas which the writer or speaker puts
into them. The same word, as is well known, has entirely different
meanings in different passages or is employed in different senses by
the speaker. Hence a prolific source of ambiguity in language. In the
last analysis words are only conventional signs which mean whatever
the speaker and hearer agree to make them mean. Striking illustration
of this fact is furnished by our current social phrases, as Professor
Kittredge points out in his “Words and their Ways in English
Speech.”[1] Such conventional phrases as “Not at home,” “Delighted
to see you,” “Sorry to have missed you when you called” are familiar
everyday expressions which have no essential fixed meaning. To be
sure, they mean what their face value imports, but they are generally
regarded as merely polite forms--etiquette--nothing more.
Furthermore, the sounds which constitute words have to be learned
by the tedious process of imitation, and in this very process the
sounds are modified to a greater or less extent. In childhood--in
fact, in infancy--we begin the slow and painful process of acquiring a
vocabulary to express our ideas and we continue the work till death,
ever imitating more or less closely the habits of speech of those
about us. Thus language is modified perhaps without conscious effort,
upon our part. By careful speakers the purity and the propriety of our
speech are safeguarded. On the other hand, our language is corrupted
and debased by those of careless and slipshod habits of utterance.
In any case, however, whether upon the lips of the cultured and
refined or upon the lips of the untutored and ignorant, the language
is constantly undergoing modifications for better or for worse. Since
it is true that a spoken language is ever changing and never remains
fixed, how great and far-reaching must be the modification and change
which our own English speech has undergone during the many generations
of its history! Because our written language has experienced
comparatively little alteration since the invention of printing, it
does not follow that the spoken speech has remained constant and
unchanged from century to century. Indeed, nothing is farther from the
truth. But even our written language has been subjected to some minor
alteration and slight modification since the days of Caxton, reputed
the first English printer. Spoken English, which is the real, living
language, has undergone infinite change during the last five centuries,
and has diverged more and more from the idiom of Chaucer and Caxton,
so that it is today almost an entirely different tongue. English
orthography never has kept pace with the written language. Before the
invention of printing our spelling failed to reflect the modifications
which took place in the pronunciation of our tongue and the printing
press served to establish and stereotype the conventional spelling then
in vogue, which the characteristic conservatism of the Anglo-Saxon race
has ever since preserved in its crystallized, fossilized form.
The printing press, therefore, is largely responsible for our
inconsistent, archaic and unphonetic English orthography. When
printing was introduced into England, such bewildering confusion
and signal want of uniformity prevailed in writing and speaking the
vernacular that expediency and business exigencies alike suggested
a modification of our received spelling, and soon an imperative
demand for simplicity and uniformity was felt among the printers. In
response to this demand, and in order to facilitate the labor of the
compositor and reader, a conventional mode of spelling was adopted
and put into general use by the printers. Thus English orthography
was taken from the direct control of the intellectual class who wrote
books, and was turned over to a mechanical class who simply printed
books. The intellectual class strove to make the spelling of our tongue
conform to the pronunciation. With this object always in view English
orthography was permitted a wide variation. A writer, therefore,
enjoyed considerable latitude and freedom of choice and was untrammeled
by the binding authority of tradition or convention. The mechanical
class who undertook to establish our spelling for us at the same time
that they printed our manuscripts experienced serious difficulty in
their effort to represent an ever-varying orthography. Above all things
they aimed to reduce English orthography to some uniform notation, and
at length they achieved their purpose. Thus uniformity in our spelling
was secured, but at the sacrifice of accuracy and precision; for the
conventional orthography adopted by the early printers in England was
by no means scientific or accurate even at the time of its adoption,
and no attempt was made later to make the received orthography
adequately reproduce the pronunciation. Consequently there arose a wide
divergence between written and spoken English. Not the least important
result is the loss of knowledge we have sustained as to how successive
past generations of Englishmen spoke the vernacular. The result, which
is obvious to everyone and frequently an embarrassment to some, is the
innumerable obstacles which our archaic and inconsistent orthography
necessarily places in the way of those of the present generation who
have to learn English.
Sometimes, indulging in a little persiflage, we point with pardonable
pride to the great achievements of our race and descant upon the
marvelous beauty and flexibility of our noble English speech. We
glory in the fact that “we speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke,”
although we may not hold the faith and morals which Milton held. We
look with leniency upon such an oratorical or poetic utterance as a
harmless effusion of patriotic sentiment. Yet how few really are those
who today know the tongue that Shakespeare spoke! Because we speak the
vernacular we take it for granted, as a matter of course, that we speak
the language and employ the idiom of Shakespeare, little reflecting
how different our present-day English sounds from Elizabethan English.
Very few persons, indeed, have an accurate knowledge of Shakespearean
English. Our speech has taken a long step in advance since the halcyon
days of Queen Elizabeth, and it is a far cry from the twentieth century
to the sixteenth century English. Perhaps it is not wide of the mark
to affirm that not one person in a thousand of those using English as
their mother tongue could today understand a play of Shakespeare if
read with the author’s own accent and pronunciation. Spoken with the
original sound values, in accordance with authorized usage at the time
of its production, the play of Hamlet would seem to us today a foreign
tongue. With the words of Shakespeare’s plays according to our present
fashion of pronunciation we are quite familiar, but we know no more how
the master dramatist would have uttered them, as Ellis observes in his
“Early English Pronunciation,”[2] than we know how to write a play in
his idiom. The speech of Shakespeare has long since departed from us;
and if acquired today, it must be acquired as a new tongue at the cost
of untold study and unstinted toil. It would be necessary to delve into
Elizabethan antiquities and consult contemporary authorities on English
pronunciation in order to determine the accepted values of English
sounds then in use and reproduce the vernacular of that remote age.
This would involve a vast deal of patient labor and generous study, and
even at this costly price we could only hope to ascertain Shakespeare’s
speech with approximate accuracy of detail. So far has our spoken
English today left behind the written English of the Elizabethan age.
Were it a physical possibility, it would be equally instructive and
interesting to hear our English tongue uttered with the characteristic
accents and sounds of each successive period of its history from the
age of King Alfred to the Victorian era. What a vast and striking
difference there must be registered between the received pronunciations
of these several periods, embracing a lapse of time of well-nigh ten
centuries! How they gradually shade into each other as the colors of
the prism! History records a wide divergence of the speech of King
Edward VII from that of King Alfred, and yet both of these are but
extremes of the same English language which has enjoyed an unbroken
continuity of development through so many centuries. How different our
language must have sounded upon the lips of the leading English men
of letters from Chaucer, Wickliffe, Langland, and Spenser, on down to
Dryden, Milton, Pope, and Addison! When we speak of the English speech
of a given period in the past, we naturally think of the pronunciation
as being uniform all over England. We assume without sufficient warrant
that there was a standard of pronunciation that prevailed throughout
England in those remote times, just as there is a recognized standard,
with but slight variation, that prevails in England and America at
the present day. However, even today there is no absolute standard
of pronunciation. An absolute, definite English orthoëpy does not
exist in reality; it is only a phantom, a figment of a precisian
imagination without a counterpart in nature. We use the phrase for
convenience, to be sure, but there never has been any such thing as an
absolute standard of pronunciation in English, and is not now. The
nearest approach to it is a linguistic ideal to which the users of our
English speech aim, with more or less conscious effort, to make their
pronunciation conform.
Still, the educated pronunciation of England and America comes much
nearer to a common standard today than was ever the case before in the
history of the English language. In Elizabethan times the usage of
London and the Court did not prevail throughout the various shires of
England, where the pronunciation was somewhat provincial. The tendency
of English pronunciation in modern times has been toward uniformity.
But in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries it is almost
a straining of the meaning of words, as Ellis truly remarks, to talk of
a general English pronunciation. In those good old days there was no
received standard of pronunciation in England, and every man was free
to speak English according to his own sense of propriety. Indeed, prior
to the age of Chaucer not only was there no standard of pronunciation,
but there was no acknowledged standard of literary English. There
were various provincial dialects and also a Court dialect, but none
of these was of sufficient influence to triumph over the rest and to
compel universal imitation and adoption. After the Elizabethan age
local usage in the matter of English pronunciation declined steadily,
and the standard of the metropolis gradually commended itself, with
increasing influence, till it spread more or less completely over the
entire country. Consequently at the time of the rise of the pronouncing
dictionary, in the eighteenth century, when the great middle class
had begun to attain to prominence, provincial pronunciation fell into
disrepute, and people everywhere clamored for a guide to Court usage
in the matter of English orthoëpy. From that time to the present
there has been a close approach to uniformity of utterance in our
English speech. But in the very nature of things there cannot, of
course, be a standard pronunciation without absolute uniformity of
utterance, and it need hardly be remarked that this does not exist.
Nevertheless, the influence and dominance of the pronouncing dictionary
are clearly in the direction of a standard pronunciation and have made
possible the existing approach to that end. It is quite remarkable how
potent the influence of the pronouncing dictionary is upon English
pronunciation.[3] Despite the fact that such an orthoëpic authority
is at best arbitrary, and somewhat artificial, it has enjoyed a kind
of undisputed supremacy since the days of Dr. Johnson, the literary
autocrat of the eighteenth century; and its tyranny seems not yet
ended. For the English-speaking world still defers to the authority of
the pronouncing dictionary and to that extent is under its thrall and
has not the courage to challenge it and to assert its own independence
in matters of orthoëpy.
Prior to the eighteenth century the pronouncing dictionary was unknown.
It therefore cannot boast the authority of a long antiquity. There
were, however, certain guides to correct orthoëpy even in those early
times, at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are
preserved to us certain records of contemporary orthoëpists which throw
light upon English pronunciation in those remote times. We are not
therefore left to conjecture simply in this matter. These authorities,
to be sure, leave much to be desired in any disputed question of our
early pronunciation. Their descriptions of the accepted orthoëpy of
their respective centuries as well as their graphic representations
of the English sounds are far from lucid, and they sometimes make
confusion worse confounded. Some of the orthoëpists were content to
refer to Latin, Greek, or Hebrew sounds as a standard of comparison
for English pronunciation, sublimely unconscious of the fact that the
older pronunciation of these languages is not yet established to the
satisfaction of all scholars and that the modern pronunciation varies
with different countries. Others of them used key words the value of
which it is extremely difficult to determine definitely. Others again
refer to such unstable standards of comparison as contemporary French
and Italian. Yet, amid the endless confusion and apparent conflict of
these incomplete records, that eminent authority on our English speech
succeeded, by dint of his laborious erudition and untiring patience,
in solving the numberless difficulties with which the question of our
early pronunciation was beset. By this achievement Mr. Ellis placed
the world of scholars under lasting obligation by determining for us,
with approximate accuracy, the successive values of our early English
sounds down to the age of the pronouncing dictionary. Let Mr. Ellis
give us in his own words a summary of his arduous investigation.
“The pronunciation of English during the sixteenth century,” says
he, “was thus rendered tolerably clear, and the mode in which it
broke into that of the seventeenth century became traceable. But the
seventeenth century was, like the fifteenth, one of civil war, that is
of extraordinary commingling of the population, and consequently one
of marked linguistic change. Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth
centuries our language was almost born anew. In the seventeenth
century the idiomatic changes are by no means so evident, but the
pronunciation altered distinctly in some remarkable points. These
facts, and the breaking up of the seventeenth into the eighteenth
century pronunciation, which when established scarcely differed from
the present, are well brought to light by Wallis, Wilkins, Owen, Price,
Cooper, Miege, and Jones, followed by Buchanan, Franklin, and Sheridan.
It became, therefore, possible to assign with considerable accuracy the
pronunciation of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, or
rather of their contemporaries.”[4]
In the English language there is manifest a tendency for the
pronunciation to conform to the orthography. Our pronunciation seems
to be more a matter of the eye than of the ear. By this is meant that
the spelling of an English word exerts an appreciable influence upon
its pronunciation. We feel, somehow, instinctively that the spelling
ought to be an index, perhaps a reasonably trustworthy guide to the
pronunciation of a word. It seems not in keeping with the eternal
fitness of things, certainly contrary to our linguistic instinct and
opposed to the genius of our English speech, for pronunciation to be
entirely dissociated from orthography. We feel that the sound should
be forever and inseparably wedded to the writing, and our linguistic
sense is more or less shocked when the two are divorced. Especially is
this sentiment prevalent in America. What else could have prompted the
slight modification in the writing of such words as _favor_, _honor_,
_neighbor_,[5] etc., where American usage has seen fit to make a
departure from the time-honored British usage in discarding the silent
letter? Of course, as far as orthography is concerned, there is very
little difference between American and British usage. In America we aim
to pronounce more nearly as we spell. Yet even in American English the
pronunciation is occasionally divorced from the spelling, particularly
in proper names, but in British English this feature is still more
noticeable, and, no doubt, American usage in this particular is simply
to be regarded as a concession to British authority and custom.[6] For
there appears to be no general principle governing the pronunciation
of proper names, the same name being sometimes differently pronounced
in different localities. Besides, many of our proper names are
direct importations from the mother country and therefore have
naturally retained their imported pronunciations. In British usage the
pronunciation and spelling are not infrequently at glaring variance,
as in _Pall Mall_ and _Cholmondeley_, which may serve as a type of
this class of proper names. We might offer _Taliaferro_ as an American
Roland for the British Oliver. But where should we find a parallel in
American English to the characteristic British _clerk_ and _military_,
to cite only two examples of a class of words of which the distinctive
usage of the United States and Great Britain is at variance?
Perhaps the true explanation of this variation between British and
American usage is found in the fact that America is a new country,
and hence tradition here does not carry such binding authority as
in the Old World. There the pronunciation has been handed down by
word of mouth, from generation to generation, among a people “to the
manner born.” Here conditions are much altered. America has a large
foreign-born element, and consequently many of the people cannot claim
English as their native tongue and are compelled to learn it as a
foreign language. Hence they rely, in a measure, upon the spelling
to indicate the pronunciation of English, making it a study for the
eye quite as much as for the ear. If in democratic America the habits
of speech were as thoroughly established as they are in aristocratic
England then we should speak the English language without any reference
to its orthography. But political conditions have modified our American
English somewhat, causing it to vary slightly from British usage. A
rise in social rank, which is quite common in the New World though
rare in the Old, is frequently marked by a revision of one’s former
mode of utterance, especially if your self-made man happens to have
come of an obscure and unlettered family.
Assuredly English orthography is no criterion of received
pronunciation, either in America or in England. It requires only a
moment’s reflection to be convinced how misleading and deceptive is
our orthography as a guide to orthoëpy. Foreigners who undertake
to learn our tongue are naturally more forcibly impressed with the
utter untrustworthiness of this guide. The status of our orthography
has been correctly described by a prominent historian of our noble
speech. He says, “English is now the most barbarously spelled of any
cultivated tongue in Christendom. We are weltering in an orthographic
chaos in which a multitude of signs are represented by the same sound
and a multitude of sounds by the same sign.”[7] There is no doubt
that our spelling is exceedingly unphonetic and unscientific. In our
alphabet are only twenty-six characters to represent the multiplicity
of sounds which exist in the English language. The utter inadequacy
of our imperfect alphabet makes its strongest appeal--albeit mute--in
its vowel notation. Here the many distinct vocalic sounds with their
gradations in which English abounds must all be represented by five
symbols. Add to this that we employ the same orthographic device to
indicate quantity. The one vowel symbol _a_, for example, is written
to indicate the various divergent sounds heard in the words _father_,
_fate_, _fat_, _fall_, _ask_, and _fare_. Likewise the single letter
_o_ is employed to represent the diverse gradations of that sound which
we utter in the words _floor_, _room_, _frog_, _off_, _note_, and
_not_. Again we use diagraphs, such as _ea_, _ee_, _oa_, _ei_, _ie_,
etc., to represent a single vowel sound and diphthongs as well. As has
been pointed out by Professor Lounsbury, one and the same sound is now
represented by _e_ in _let_, by _ea_ in _head_, by _ei_ in _heifer_, by
_eo_ in _leopard_, by _ay_ in _says_, by _ai_ in _said_, and by _a_ in
_many_.
Furthermore, as a result of the change in the values of English vowel
sounds, our vowel notation is no longer accurate. We use the character
_a_ to indicate to the eye the vowel quality in _mate_, _sate_, _rate_,
_date_, etc., where the sound value, far from being of an _a_ quality,
is really a long phonetic _e_. The truth is, all the English vowels
have undergone a radical alteration from their primitive values which
they had in the early history of our speech, having passed through
different stages in the successive periods. It is an interesting
chapter in English phonology to trace the tortuous course of a given
sound, say _a_, through its various mutations from the Anglo-Saxon
period down to the present time. Our vowels, especially, have changed
and interchanged to an extent which is simply astonishing. The average
scholar who has not made a special study of our English language has
absolutely no conception of the radical nature and vast extent of the
change and development of English sounds. Take as an illustration our
vowel _e_. The early English phonetic _e_ passed through several stages
of development and about the seventeenth century came to have the value
of a genuine long _i_, as in _ear_, _hear_, _year_, etc. Later, in the
nineteenth century, this same sound developed into a diphthong which
is its present phonetic value. Of course we speak now of the sound of
this vowel, not of the symbol which we employ to represent it to the
eye in writing. That is another story, and it illustrates the bungling
work of our early English printers. In early times there were several
characters in use to represent the vowel, _e_, to wit, _e_, _ee_, _eo_,
_ea_, and _ae_. After the printing press was set up in England, for
convenience and simplicity, _eo_ and _ae_ were not much employed. But
_e_, _ee_, and _ea_ came into general favor, and were established by
custom to indicate the vowel _e_ to the eye. However, these symbols
were not consistently used in the beginning by the printers, and hence
the present confusion in writing. Our consonantal notation shows
evidence of as flagrant abuse of symbols and of glaring inaccuracy.
Numerous examples might be cited to prove that errors on the part of
our early scribes and printers have been stereotyped in our orthography
and perpetuated to the present day.
But not all the inconsistencies in our spelling have sprung from
the careless work of the early printers. Some are the result of our
etymological spelling. For instance, the sound of _s_ in _sure_ we
represent by the symbol _ti_ in _motion_, by _sci_ in _conscience_,
by _ci_ in _suspicion_, by _xi_ in _anxious_, by _ce_ in _ocean_,
and by _sh_ in _shepherd_. It is obviously not fair to charge such
an inconsistency as this to the sins of our erring early printers.
Still, the early English printers have enough to answer for in
corrupting the orthography of our language. They were grossly careless
and indifferent, and showed but slight regard for the propriety of
English orthography. We are not at all surprised to learn, in view
of the gross errors they committed, that they were, for the most
part, foreigners--Germans and Dutchmen--who did not use English as
their vernacular and who did not, for that reason, know the language
thoroughly. “As foreigners,” comments Professor Lounsbury, “they had
little or no knowledge of the proper spelling of our tongue”; and
he adds that “in the general license that then prevailed they could
venture to disregard where they did not care to understand.” The
result was the printing press brought chaos into English orthography
in the multitude of books which it sent broadcast over the land.
Some of the errors, it is true, were corrected subsequently, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, when an effort was made to reform
English orthography and adjust it anew to the pronunciation. But many
of the incorrect spellings which had meanwhile crept in through the
introduction of printing were too thoroughly established by usage to
be eradicated. They continue still in English orthography as a lasting
monument alike to the crass ignorance and negligence of our early
printers and to the arrant pedantry of our early proof readers. Thus
our English orthography now in its crystallized state preserves those
glaring defects as the amber the insects which, entangled in the
liquid, are encased for ever.
It must not be inferred, however, that as soon as Caxton set up his
press, English spelling was immediately stereotyped and fixed for all
time. It required fully two, if not three, centuries, according to
Ellis, for the picturesque diversity and latitude permitted the early
scribes to be reduced to the dull, rigid uniformity now established by
convention. Experiment after experiment was made by the typographers
whose constant and ultimate aim was simplicity. The last radical change
was effected by the seventeenth century when the spellings _ee_, _oo_,
and _oa_ were adopted by the printers. Even then a fierce struggle in
orthography was waged, as, for example, that between _sope_ and _soap_,
until the conventional spelling at last triumphed. In the seventeenth
century the writing _ie_ for long _e_ as in _brief_, _believe_,
_friend_, _chief_, and the like, was finally established after a long
and doubtful contest. In early times the spelling vacillated between
_frend_ and _freend_, _chef_, _cheef_, and _chefe_; and a scribe could
take his choice. But of course the printing press sounded the knell of
this orthographic liberty of the individual, and one must spell now
according to convention. And if one does not know what this is, he must
consult the dictionary.
The seventeenth century witnessed many important, yea, revolutionary,
changes in our speech as a result of the social upheaval incident
to the civil war. But there was very slight recognition of these in
the contemporary orthography. The printers refused to alter the
conventional orthography to suit the modifications in the spoken
speech, and they threw the weight of all their mighty influence in
favor of the traditional spelling and against any sweeping reform. They
prevailed; and from that time down to the present they have resolutely
discouraged any attempt at extensive revision of our traditional
orthography. Hence our historic orthography with its teeming
inconsistencies and absurdities has now come to be regarded with a
feeling of reverence; and we naturally recoil from any far-reaching
reform of it as we would from laying violent hands upon an heirloom
which has passed down to us through many generations. We have become
accustomed to associate a certain spelling with a certain word, and we
do not desire to have this association broken up. We therefore feel
like registering a strong and vigorous protest against any proposed
reform of a sweeping nature which would disturb our present English
orthography, however illogical, archaic, and arbitrary.
To be sure, some of our lexicographers have ventured to introduce
a revised spelling here and there. Dr. Johnson essayed this in
his epoch-making dictionary, published about the middle of the
eighteenth century. Indeed, he foisted not a few absurd and arbitrary
orthographies into our language, which have contributed to bring our
spelling into disrepute with those who clamor for “fonetic reform.” Let
us note some of these. Johnson threw the weight of his authority in
favor of _comptroller_ against the older _controller_, although he gave
both a place in his dictionary. He likewise harbored _foreign_ and
_sovereign_ in his dictionary, leaving the older _forrain_ and _sovran_
to shift for themselves. He adopted _debt_ and _doubt_ with the
epenthetic _b_, to the exclusion of the older and correct _dett_ and
_dout_. He lent the weight of his influence to establish a misleading
and useless _s_ in _island_, which used to be written _iland_. But
perhaps he felt that the word was too closely associated in the popular
mind with _isle_ for _iland_ to prevail. On the other hand, he retained
the old spelling _ile_, which we have discarded for the etymological
_aisle_, adding that _isle_ was in his judgment a corrupt writing for
_aile_, then also current. His uncertainty as to the etymology of the
early English _agast_ led him to write it also _aghast_, which has
since triumphed over its quondam rival. He gives the precedence to
_delight_, to the utter defeat of _delite_, its erstwhile competitor
for popular favor. He rejected the simpler spelling _ake_ for the
less familiar _ache_, out of deference to its Greek origin, yet he
endeavored to preserve a useless _k_ in _almanack_ and _musick_ and
similar words. He made a distinction without a difference in his
spelling of the final syllables of such words as _accede_, _exceed_,
_precede_, and _proceed_. But it is idle at this distant day to arraign
Dr. Johnson on the score of his spelling. Let us therefore dismiss
the indictment against his arbitrary orthography. Some of our present
authorities on English spelling are not entirely free from reproach
in this particular. The truth is, even yet our English dictionaries
are not a unit as to approved spelling. We have not yet attained to
absolute uniformity in the matter of our orthography. For, according
to Ellis, there are still well-nigh twenty-five hundred words in the
English language the spelling of which is unsettled and indeterminate.
But we experience no serious inconvenience as a result, even if we
have no preference as to what dictionary we should follow as a guide.
In fact, any dictionary gives us a choice between _worshipped_ and
_worshiped_, _traveller_ and _traveler_, _center_ and _centre_,
and similar words, in the case of which usage still wavers and is
divided almost equally. Some excellent authorities still cling to the
etymological spelling of words of classic origin, such as _hæmorrhage_,
_diarrhœa_, _æsthetics_, _œconomics_, and _æstivate_, to mention only a
few of a large class the spelling of which vacillates. Others, again,
sanction this spelling, but throw the weight of their influence on the
side of the simpler form. This simply proves that there is some degree
of variation even in our accepted orthography. After all there is no
fixed standard of English orthography, just as there is no absolute
standard of English pronunciation. And yet there is a narrower margin
of variation in our accepted orthography than there is in our received
pronunciation.
The movement for the reform of English spelling is beginning to
engage the attention of the public. The Simplified Spelling Board has
already entered upon a campaign which holds out some hope of success.
It remains to be seen what practical results will be accomplished.
Scholars of acknowledged eminence are lending the influence of their
authority to the movement. But there is a mighty wall of bigoted
conservatism, to be battered down before a movement so sweeping in
its aim and scope as “spelling reform” can make much headway. The
history of all similar attempts in the past is not such as to hold out
great promise to the present reformers or inspire them with unbounded
confidence. Still, intelligent, well-directed and untiring effort
ought certainly to be rewarded with a reasonable degree of success,
and surely there can be no question that there is room for improvement
in our English spelling. If we had such an institution as the French
Academy, no doubt the problem would be simplified. The outcome of the
present campaign for the revision of our English spelling will be
awaited with no little interest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See p. 219.
[2] Vol. I, p. 22.
[3] See Authority in English Pronunciation.
[4] Early English Pronunciation, I, p. 26.
[5] See A Question of Preference in English Spelling.
[6] See Briticisms vs. Americanisms.
[7] Professor T. R. Lounsbury, History of the English Language. p. 267.
A QUESTION OF PREFERENCE IN ENGLISH SPELLING.
We little think when we read or write that the words we employ are not
precisely the same as those which have been in use in our mother-tongue
from time immemorial. We are born into the language, so to say, and
the words of our vocabulary we regard as part and parcel of our rich
heritage of American liberty. Yet even the words of our English
speech, like many of the institutions and customs of our Anglo-Saxon
civilization, have a long history back of them, showing traces here
and there of the various stages of development they have passed
through. The words we use to-day are not identical in form or meaning
with those employed by our forebears of the generation of Chaucer or
even of the generation of Shakespeare. The forms of our English words
have undergone considerable change since that remote period in the
development of our mother-tongue. English spelling is far different
from what it was in Alfred’s, or Chaucer’s time.
Before the invention of printing, those who spoke and wrote the English
language seem to have been at liberty to spell as they chose. Their
mental composure was not disturbed by the annoying suspicion that their
spelling was not according to the norm prescribed by the dictionary.
In those good old days there was no acknowledged criterion such as
the “Century,” or “Webster,” or “Worcester”; and writers had no final
appeal in the matter of orthography as present-day writers have. Since
there was no standard authority on orthography to which all polite
society had to conform, the authors of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were untrammeled by tradition and were free to spell as they
pleased. Every writer was a law unto himself and followed the dictates
of his own orthographical conscience, with no dictionary to molest
or make him afraid. We find an allusion to this delightful sense of
freedom in the comment which a well-known American humorist made upon
Chaucer, that well of English undefiled from which so many modern
writers have drunk copious draughts of inspiration. “Chaucer,” said he
quaintly, “may have been a fine poet, but he was a ---- poor speller.”
The diffusion of the art of printing and the consequent necessity
for a uniform orthography gradually curtailed this liberty, and then
the day of the dictionary dawned. The dictionary is a democratic
invention called into being by the rise of the great middle class of
society, which desired to become familiar with the practises of polite
circles. Lexicographers came forward to supply the desired information.
Authors not “to the mannor born,” and therefore unacquainted with
courtly usage, when moved to write, felt that they must conform to
the standards set up by the lexicographers, who claimed to give the
received usage, the _jus et norma scribendi_. Before the epoch of
dictionaries it appears not to have made the slightest difference
whether a writer spelled the word _recede_, for example, according to
the present accepted orthography, or whether he spelled it _receed_,
_receede_, _recede_ or _recead_, all of which forms are found in
manuscripts of a few centuries ago. Some of these orthographic
variations lingered into the eighteenth century, though English
spelling had probably become stereotyped at least a century before this
date. Yet the establishment of the spelling was naturally a gradual
process, and some words vacillated a long time and never really became
fixed. Of this more anon. Proper names showed considerable latitude
of spelling. Men of the eminence of Spenser, rare Ben Jonson and
Shakespeare, for example, are said to have had no fixed practise of
spelling their names, but wrote them in a variety of ways.
The lack of a standard authority of orthography necessarily gave rise
to much confusion and disorder in English spelling. This confusion is
reflected even yet in the present chaotic and unphonetic spelling of
our language. Few tongues are more unphonetic than the English. This
fact is recognized and efforts have been made to bring our spelling
into closer conformity with our pronunciation. Philological societies
on both sides of the Atlantic have been trying for the last quarter
of a century, at least, to reform English spelling; but only meager
success has been achieved thus far.
The proposed reforms have been of two kinds, and they have varying
aims. One recommended by the extreme phonetists, is a reform which
contemplates a revision and enlargement of our alphabet. This would
result in a radical transformation of our written speech, and chiefly
for this reason it has found few ardent advocates. It may be briefly
described as a reform of the language. The other reform is less
revolutionary and contemplates mainly a simplification of our present
spelling, such as the omission of silent letters, the substitution of
“f” for “ph” as in _phonetics_ (fonetics) and of “t” for final “d” as
in _equipped_ (equipt) and similar emendations. Of the two kinds of
reform the latter has, manifestly, more to commend it to popular favor.
This kind of reform may be termed a reform in the language.
The public concedes the unphonetic character of English orthography,
but the conservatism of the Anglo-Saxon race is so binding that the
people are slow to adopt even the slightest recommendations of the
philological societies. A few American journals have had the courage
to adopt certain emended spellings, such as _thru_ (through), _tho_
(though), _catalog_ (catalogue) and the like, but the majority of
our periodicals show by their practise very meager approval of
spelling-reform. No publisher, so far as known to the writer, has
ventured as yet to use the emended spelling in a book issued by his
firm. Yet all admit the need of spelling-reform and believe that, if
adopted, it would save the coming generation a vast deal of humdrum
work in acquiring an accurate knowledge of English orthography.
We Americans, however, with our characteristic spirit of independence
have made bold to break away from British tradition and custom in
the writing of certain English words and have introduced a few minor
reforms in our spelling. But the English people have not followed
our lead in this matter, being content to allow our adopted American
spelling, together with our distinctive pronunciation, serve as an
earmark to distinguish American from British English. It is the
practise of some reputable British journals to disparage our spelling,
wherever it makes a departure from English traditions, and to refer
to it by way of reproach as “American spelling.” Some few years ago
the _St. James Gazette_, intending to express its disapproval of our
spelling, deprecatingly remarked that “already newspapers in London
are habitually using the ugliest forms of American spelling and those
silly eccentricities do not make the slightest difference in their
circulation.” Viewed in the light of subsequent events, perhaps this
ought to be considered as the forerunner of “the American invasion.”
As every one knows who has visited the mother country, there is a
perceptible difference not only in the spelling, but also in the
pronunciation, between American English and British English. Of
course the language is the same in America as in England; and yet
there are some appreciable minor points of difference. For example,
the Englishman gives the broad sound to the vowel _a_ as in _father_,
when it is followed by such a combination of consonants as in the
words _ask_, _fast_, _dance_, _can’t_, _answer_, _after_ and the like.
In America, on the other hand, while this pronunciation is heard in
some circles, it is clearly not the ordinary pronunciation and is
not general, as in England. There is also a noticeable difference
in the pronunciation of long _o_, the Englishman giving the vowel a
distinctive utterance quite unlike that ordinarily heard in America.
The pronunciation of the word _been_ is a shibboleth by which a man
of British nationality may be almost unfailingly distinguished. The
native Englishman pronounces the word so as to rhyme with _seen_, never
_bin_. In addition to these points of pronunciation there are certain
locutions which never fail to betray an Englishman. The English call
an elevator _a lift_, overshoes _galoshes_, napkins _serviettes_,
candy _sweets_. In England a baby-carriage is called a _perambulator_,
which is generally abridged “_pram_” merely; a lamp-post is known as
_lamp-pillar_ and a letter-box as a _pillar-box_. There no one would
ask at a store for a wash-bowl and pitcher, however much he might need
these useful household articles, but he would call at the shop for
a _jug_ and _basin_. An American in London must not say street car,
but _tram_ or _road car_; not engine (which is pronounced injin), but
_locomotive-engine_; not engineer, but _engine-driver_. In England
many ordinary household articles are known by names as different from
those in our country as if the language there were altogether a foreign
tongue. Small wonder, then, that a keen-witted American maid remarked,
_à propos_ of the difference between British English and American
English, that London was a delightful place if you only knew the
language.