I am not sure about using _x_ without a vowel preceding it (_e.
g._ xpense). Theoretically no consonant carries a vowel, but _x_
is pronounced as if there were a short _e_ before it, though,
like any other consonant, it will take the color of any vowel.
I don't believe that I am going to be any farther reformed in
regard to vowels than _oo_ in _door_, _ee_ in _feel_, _aa_ as
suggested by the British Society in "faather," _uu_ in "suun" as
also suggested by them; and _ii_ in "tiim," as suggested by me
and probably by others whom I don't know of. I only wish you
would leave your diacritics and new letters, and fight with me
for these vowels. There seems to be some hope in such a fight, as
the English Society is for all but the _ii_, and consistent
people will naturally work for their accepting _ii_; and as
nobody that I am aware of, in the direction of either body, is
with you for new letters and diacritics.
To the same correspondent:
Your letter of the 5th is very suggestive.
I think one trouble between us is that you think it worth while
to strive for ideal perfection in spelling. If we attained it, it
would not stay put.
You say: "It seems to me simple arithmetic admonishes us that we
have to have new characters for the vowel sounds." There are two
reasons why we don't. One is that (_me judice_) there is no use
in seeking absolute perfection. Another is that we can do with
existing letters as much of the work as we need to.
It may be "important" to "develop an alphabet in which each
character stands for a precise sound" but I haven't the slightest
idea that the English-speaking people will ever do it.
Of course all existing languages have come because "peoples ...
drift so far apart in pronunciation as sooner or later to become
almost unintelligible to each other," but printing and facilities
of communication are probably obstructing farther movements in
that direction, and I should not be surprised if the present
tendency were toward unity.
I am sorry you are one of the reformers who "believe that we
should go the whole way, or let things stay as they are." It is
not often that any reform goes the whole way, and I suspect that
we would be a good deal farther along if people of reforming
disposition would be content to go only so far as practicable.
On one side, then, we have habit and sensitive associations, and on
the other side the facts which cannot be denied by anyone who is
thoughtful and educated (not always synonymous terms) that the
anomalies of English spelling not only breed lawlessness in the
juvenile mind, increase the difficulties of education, and waste much
labor and expense in writing and printing, but also seriously obstruct
commerce, diplomacy, and the peace of the world.
No wonder these opposing conditions produce the frame of mind
expressed to us by a leading city Superintendent of Schools: "I
abominate simplified spelling, but I am in favor of it."
Now between this Scylla and this Charybdis, what is the reasonable
course?
We must regard two considerations too often ignored by reformers,
though they were insisted on by as great an authority as Spencer. The
first is that feeling, more than reason, determines conduct; the other
is that everything is so inextricably connected with other things,
that raising one is like raising a strand of a net, which involves
raising many other strands with it. With this reform are tangled up
not only the feelings and habits illustrated in the foregoing
quotations, but all existing English literature, including many
thousand tons of it in electrotype plates. All these obstruct a sudden
reform. Must then the reform be as gradual as that from Chaucer's
spelling to ours? Prophecy is dangerous, but we are inclined to think
not.
We favor simplified spellings, but we don't want our attention
diverted by them from anything that we value more, and we don't want
to interfere with anybody's Shakspere or Tennyson, any more than we
want anybody to interfere with ours. We are glad, however, when we see
the sign of a "Fotografer," or an announcement of a "thru" train. We
have no doubt that a large and increasing number of people share both
these sets of feelings, and they seem to indicate the way out of the
dilemma.
Now there's no question of intrinsic beauty between the new forms and
the old. Preference for the latter is simply a matter of habit, but
habit is stronger than intelligence; and here, with the student,
intelligence balks at habit in a paradoxical way. In reading an
impassioned passage, he encounters a "_thru_"; his thoughts are not
only diverted to the spelling, but to the years of association he may
have with the problems concerning it. For ourselves, the more we study
it, if we meet it in literature the more we "abominate" it, with the
superintendent already quoted; but the more we see it in
advertisements and other indifferent places, the more we are "in favor
of it"; and this we think is apt to be the experience of those who
really bring their intellects to the problem. Nay, we even think that,
in time, the younger portion of the thinking people whose habits favor
the old forms, may perhaps come around to the new: for, after writing
the most radical of the new forms, as in the last number of the
REVIEW, we have been surprised at the way they linger in the memory
and seem for a while more habitual than the old forms. This experience
makes it seem probable that if, for our children's sake, and for the
sake of the great causes already indicated, we were to condemn
ourselves for a few weeks, or possibly even a few days, to the better
forms, they would become more natural than the worse.
* * * * *
Press of T. MOREY & SON, Greenfield, Mass.