Harty Crismas Greetings.
The chain of frendship reaching far
Links days that wer with days that ar.
For him [the sender] all written characters are absolutely
nothing but the effort to express spoken sounds, and he puts
anything on paper which he thinks will represent the sound he
wants most immediately for the reader's intelligence. If he is
right, if our written language is nothing but this, there should
be no delay in altering it radically.
But is my philological friend right? I think certainly not. Since
printing came to take a really large place in civilization, the
written word has been a _logos_--a direct means of representing
thought--quite as truly as the spoken. As an agency for
communicating thought between absent persons, for preserving
thought from one time to another, and even for communicating the
knowledge of a foreign tongue to a contemporary learner, the
written word actually exceeds the spoken in general importance.
And to a very large extent it does this _not_ by representing the
sounds of the spoken word, but by representing the idea through
an independent convention. When I read the word "choir" I do not
think first that it represents the syllable _kwiir_, and then
that the syllable _kwiir_ means a company of singers. Some
foreigners who have learned English orally doubtless do go
through this process; but those who have learned it primarily by
reading, or for reading, do not....
The participle _finished_ has a certain real existence as a
language fact, undisturbed by the accident that it is now
pronounced _finisht_.
And this great entity, the written English language, the chief
medium of scholarship, literature, history, law, and even
business ... is what it is proposed to change. Perhaps it should
be done; perhaps the times demand an heroic sacrifice of the
organ of scholarly and literary communication and tradition, in
the interest of increased efficiency on the part of the average
man for whom the language of scholarship and literature is
negligible. But we should not mistake the meaning of the effort.
It is not the mere effort to do better what we are doing
already--writing words so-and-so because they sound so-and-so;
for we are already doing nothing of the kind. It is the effort to
transfer English from the group where, with modern French and
other tongues, it now belongs,--the group of languages whose
history has differentiated a written and a spoken form,--to the
group represented by classic Latin and modern Italian, whose
(doubtless happier) history has kept the written form a fairly
accurate replica of the spoken....
The impression often prevails that those who hesitate to commit
themselves to the enticements of the Spelling Board do so merely
because the new spellings "look so queer." Of course this very
statement is a clumsy and unpenetrating way of expressing the
fact that the whole language psychology of a _reading_ generation
is disturbed by the efforts in question.
(II) From a lady:
This unspeakable spelling is history-destroying,
tradition-annihilating, and puts the veriest hind on a semblance
of equality with a person of elegance.
As Nietsche says: "Let us be free from moralic acid"!!
Possibly to some tastes, a neck without a goitre would be more
"elegant" than a neck with one--or _tho_ than _though_.
(III) From a well-known author:
The tendency of our English speech is constantly to "reform" its
Orthography! Witness the betterment between the spelling of
Chaucer and that of Shakespeare, and between that of Shakespeare
and that of the days of Queen Anne! Well then, granting it to be
the irresistible tendency of our Orthography to better itself,
why not permit it to go on in peace bettering itself? Why assist
Fate? Are our awful Spelling Reformers, like the impatient young
gentleman in Mr. Stockton's story, appointed to the task of
Assisting Fate?
(IV) From a talented author and critic--a lady:
You must allow me, as an old friend of yours and a new friend of
the REVIEW's, to protest against the introduction of "reformed
spelling" into a literary journal of a high class, which is what
we all consider the new venture. To many of us who respect the
English language as an inheritance, and are content to leave its
simplification to the slow erosion of time, pages like those at
the end of the REVIEW give positive pain.
It would indeed be a hardened reformer who would not feel the force of
the foregoing objections.
To "Why assist Fate?" and "the slow erosion of time" the answer is
that the doctrine of _laissez faire_ has had its day, and can hardly
be regarded as open for discussion.
* * * * *
On the other side, we have received many letters favoring the reform
from the highest philological authorities:
(I) From a Johns Hopkins Professor:
Serious study of the problem becomes the duty of every thoughtful
person.
(II) From a Harvard Professor:
A discussion of orthographic possibilities can hardly fail to be
enlightening. I do not much like the scheme you tentatively
advocate, but anything that reveals existing absurdities and
opens up new vistas is useful at this stage.
(III) On the other hand, the Superintendent of Education in one of the
Canadian provinces, whose sympathies are naturally British, writes:
"Your simplified spelling appeals to me in preference to that of
the S. S. S. of London."
The main differences are illustrated in (the S. S. B. coming first)
_tiem_ and _tiim_ for _time_, _doer_ and _door_ for _door_, _tiping_
and _tipping_ for _tipping_.
(IV) A Nova Scotian, president of an important educational
institution, writes:
Your article on simplified spelling is a very courageous
one--_for an American_! Probably it has alredy brought upon you
the whips and scorns of the conventional journalist. In the Old
Country, scholars are accustomd to stand up against professional
journalists. Do you think you can do so with your new scheme? I
hope so, for it seems to me simple in principle, and, on the
whole, a good working basis. One is tempted, of course, to ask
why such inconsistencies as:
Allwaiz--Becauz.
Oonly--Molar.
We accept the _aw_ sound for _a_ before _ll_, but probably _awl_ is
better than _all_; and in _becauz_ it should undoubtedly be _aw_.
As to _molar_, we propose that a single vowel should always, as
generally now, be long at the end of a syllable.
The same correspondent continues:
Again, if long vowels are to be indicated by the doubling of the
letter, is there any need of doubling the consonant after a short
vowel?
(V) Another correspondent joins in the same charge:
It hardly seems logical to double a vowel to indicate its
lengthening and at the same time to double a consonant to
indicate the closing of a preceding vowel. It strikes me as
rather a clumsy artifice at best, and leads to some very cumbrous
forms, of which "annuthther," as you point out, is an extreme
instance.
But, as just said, it is not proposed that always "long vowels are to
be indicated by doubling of the letter," but only when the syllable is
closed by a consonant. See also the second paragraph of the following
letter answering a correspondent, which shows some aspects of the
question that may be worth presenting to other readers as well:
Thanks for your letter.... I wish all that I get on the subject
were equally sensible. At the same time, there are two or three
things that call for rejoinder.
When a consonant beginning a second syllable, is repeated at the
end of the preceding syllable, to prevent the vowel being counted
as long, the consonant is by no means "doubled" in the sense that
a vowel is doubled to make it count as long, or as the terminal
consonant is doubled in fall, call, etc.
In English spelling probably there cannot be carried out any
principle that won't land us somewhere into awkwardnesses almost
as great as "annuthther." That particular one, I have no doubt,
if ever adopted, would work into smaller dimensions, which of
course would have some elements of inconsistency. There is no
reason, however, why we should not use the methods which lead to
absurdities in that word, in hosts of other words where they
don't.
I shall never take any part in an attempt to add characters to
the English language. The only thing in that line it has done
since it began taking shape, is to get rid of two very useful
ones; and I don't believe it will ever move in the opposite
direction. My humble efforts will be concentrated on doing the
best practicable with those we have, though I wish Godspeed to
everybody who works for consistency and reasonableness, even if
he thinks he can introduce a new alphabet.
It is never going to simplify our language to introduce
diacritical marks. My little experience with French satisfies me
on that subject.