II.

A. R. SPOFFORD.

There are few subjects of wider or more commanding interest to any people than that of their methods of expression. The influence of language is universal-the power of our mother-tongue is allpervading. So much the more important is it that we should preserve its purity, and guard against any inroads which tend to weaken its historic significance or its poetic power. Such inroads are the attempts recently made to "reform" the methods of writing and printing the English tongue. While none can question the linguistic attainments and the eminence in general scholarship of many of those who have assumed to reform our orthography, it may well be doubted whether the world of letters owes them any debt of gratitude. The ingenuity expended upon the many conflicting schemes for providing us with a new English alphabet, if devoted to the elucidation of the history, uses, and variations of existing words, might have been productive of results of more practical value. Recognizing fully the fact that all language is a growth, and that a living language must suffer constant though gradual changes in its vocabulary and expression, it still remains true that no languageat least no language having a literature-was ever formed or reformed by any such radical methods as those proposed by the spelling reformers of our day.

That there is nothing novel in the orthographic reforms now proposed, that precisely similar schemes have been many times offered to the learned world during the last three centuries, only to be rejected, and even finally abandoned by their authors, it needs but brief reference to show. The radical change involved in substituting spelling by sound for our traditional orthography has been too many times proposed and declined to justify its present advocates in any ardent hopes of success. So long ago as the year 1768 the ingenious Dr. Franklin amused himself by inventing a reformed alphabet, in which the letters represented the sounds with strict and unvarying accuracy. Some letters he omitted, and for some sounds he created new ones. A letter to a London lady, printed in the proposed new characters, and explaining the advantages of the spelling reform, appears in his correspondence, and is the earliest

American exhibition of the phonetic system which I have found. Notwithstanding the acknowledged ability of Franklin as a scientific investigator, and the world-wide reputation and influence which he enjoyed, he appears to have made not a single convert to his proposed amendment in writing and printing the English language. We do not find that he seriously proposed the subject to any of the learned societies of which he was a member, and the scheme appears to have been drawn up merely as one of those philosophical experiments which his inventive brain threw out without adhering to, to be speedily abandoned in the test of his eminently practical mind. The late Noah Webster was not of the same mind for many successive years as to his own innovations. In 1789, in his "Essay on a reformed mode of spelling," he broadly proposed to abolish all superfluous or silent letters, and to spell bilt (built), relm (realm), giv (give), frend (friend), etc.; also to spell laf for laugh, tuf for tough, blud for blood, and to write k in place of ch, as korn, kolic. But he published his first dictionary, in 1806, without these innovations. At a later day he became a zealous propagandist of spelling reform.

It is curious and instructive to note that just one hundred years ago Noah Webster put forward precisely the scheme for getting spelling by sound adopted by the government which was embodied in a resolution before the Printing Committee of the last Congress. "The only steps necessary," said he, "to insure success in the attempt to introduce this reform would be a resolution of Congress ordering all their acts to be engrossed in the new orthography."

I have prepared a chronological summary of the various schemes for simplified spelling by sound which have appeared, from Dr. Franklin's, in 1768, down to Prof. Alexander Melville Bell's notable "World-English" alphabet, published in 1888. They number between forty and fifty in America alone; but I will not detain you by describing them. I omit also a statement of the different attempts to secure the sanction of the Government of the United States to methods of phonetic expression, as not specially pertinent to this inquiry.

It is now more than forty years since the absolutely phonetic scheme of writing known as the Pitman system was invented and applied to print; and although it had a temporary vogue in England and America, and dictionaries, grammars, readers, and even an

edition of the Scriptures were produced in phonetic type, it is now practically abandoned, except for the uses of phonography.

The plausible idea of spelling by sound has to undergo a severe ordeal when reduced to practice. We may call this prejudice, ignorance, obstinacy, conservatism, or what we will; but the majority of the English-speaking race will continue to write their language after the model of the great masters of literature, no matter what plans may be brought in to simplify it. The existing English alphabet is no doubt bad enough, and its combinations into written speech are full enough of solecisms, inconsistencies, and absurdities; but still it is the English alphabet, the only key to a great historic language and literature, and this no device of modern phonetics is or can be.

The failure of all past attempts to revolutionize the methods of expressing our language suggests inquiry as to the cause, and this leads us to consider the expediency of the proposed reform. In the first place, neither the popular sense nor the judgment of scholars (outside the limited ranks of some philologists) has ever lent any sanction to the theory that the language would be the gainer. No great reform, perhaps, was ever proposed in England or America. which has met with so meagre a following. The reasons are not far to seek. The very diversity of plans points to a difficulty which alone is enough to defeat the project. We are told of the great merits of the phonetic system or the phonetic alphabet, when in fact there are forty or more conflicting alphabets, all claiming to be phonetic. Which phonetic system are we to have? Even were competent scholars appointed to bring in a perfect alphabet, it is highly improbable that they would be able to agree upon its constituent parts. Much greater is the improbability that English and American scholars would ever agree to write it after them, and the chances of its adoption by the body of the people are so remote that it may be reckoned among the impossibilities. Dr. Franklin's phonetic alphabet consisted of 26 letters, Dr. Thornton's of 32, Mr. Pitman's of 40, Dr. Comstock's of 44, Mr. A. J. Ellis's of 45, and Professor Bell's of 44.

As all written language consists of an assemblage of arbitrary characters, it is reasonable to conclude that that particular assemblage of characters which has been rendered familiar by centuries of use and by books printed in it amounting now to millions will remain in possession of the field. The attempt to introduce a new

system by report and resolution appears too impracticable for argument. Men accept perforce the objectionable features of the present system of spelling because it has two immense advantages over any innovation: it is established, and it is understood. But how would you secure the use of any new one? Authority being out of the question, and custom being arrayed upon the other side, what means are left for securing uniformity of usage? When the learned committees have met and resolved in their wisdom, "Go to, now, let us make a language," their enterprise might be expected to end in a worse confusion than has been witnessed since that notable mishap which is said to have befallen the builders of the tower of Babel.

But, we are told, no new alphabet is now proposed-only to reform and simplify our spelling with the old one. This proposition is, from the phonetic point of view, a palpable confession of weakness, since it abandons the only possible means of achieving a complete spelling by sound. That means is found only in an alphabet which has an unvarying symbol for every sound, as well as a strictly uniform sound for every symbol. To attempt to reach phonetic results by tinkering with the present alphabet is most illogical, because foredoomed to failure by its own avowed principles. In the vocabulary of about 3,500 words spelled in what is called simplified form with the sanction of the American Philological Association in 1886, and reprinted in an appendix to the Century Dictionary, are many solecisms and inconsistencies which there is here no time to point out. Taken together, these model words all have a cropped, bald, and unhappy look to the average eye.

But the cardinal offense of this and of all other attempts at phonetic expression in the literature of our language is not an æsthetic, but a scientific one. It effaces from a multitude of words that most valuable characteristic feature, the etymology of the language as expressed by orthography. Our English words carry with them in great part, written upon their faces, sufficient traces of their origin. Sweep away the spelling which they derive from their original tongue, and all trace of the derivation of many most significant words is lost. Let a young lady who calls a gallant gentleman a “beau” read the word phonetically-thus, "bo," and straightway she loses not only all evidence of its French original, but also all traits of grace or elegance or attraction which the original conveys. In like manner, our English word beauty, from the same root, if spelled by sound "buty," is stripped of all its fine suggestiveness, as well

as of every trace of its origin. Our English word "pique," if written by the sound, becomes "peek," which leads not only to a confusion of meanings with a wholly different word, but buries out of sight the sharp significance which is contained only in the French original. The same thing happens with lieu and its derivative, "lieutenant," if spelled by sound; the idea of place is lost in the newly coined "lu," which usurps its place. The familiar Latin derivative, "science," from scio, to know, teaches two languages in one glance of the eye; but what becomes of this rich suggestiveness when it is metamorphosed by phonetics into "siens"? The reformer of language who spells bouquet "bo-ka" may plume himself upon having got rid of three superfluous letters; but he has got rid at the same time of all the aroma which gives to the word its only value. Go through the vocabulary of our noble English speech; see what infinite compass and variety, what wealth of origin it displays, and then say if it is worth the while to destroy all traces of this wondrous richness in order that a few ignoramuses may be facilitated in learning how to spell? When we have stripped this rich, composite language of all its native grace and beauty, and have got, instead of the living flesh and blood of speech, a long array of word-skeletons, the very dry bones of language, from which the soul has departed, it will be a poor consolation that we are able to spell them unerringly.

The vast body of English literature, too, already in print, knows nothing of phonetics. The culture of a people comes not so much from what their children learn at school, as from what they absorb in after-life from the great writers of the world. With all the literature of the language in another spelling, the printing of school books in phonotypy would only introduce a needless confusion. Why should an emasculated dialect be taught in which, as expressed in the new spelling, no literature as yet exists?

The phonetic system is advocated upon the ground that our English tongue is full of difficulties that are the despair of foreigners. But, as the English language was not originally constructed for the use of foreigners, the necessity of reconstructing it for foreign use and benefit is not apparent.

As for the argument that under the present system everybody must waste a deplorable amount of time in learning how to spell, the answer is plain-that every one who can learn to spell by sound needs but small additional expenditure of intellect in order to spell