The west shore., March 01, 1881, Page 60, Image 2

THE WEST SHORE.
March, i8fci
SI'F.I.LING KKFOKM.
W. I). I.VMAN.
This article is culled forth primarilly
y the writer s conviction of the need
of the above reform, and secondurilly
by the unexpected attitude toward it of
the leading newspaper of the state.
When a newspaper asserts that a move
merit supported by nearly al the great
scholars of England and America in
out of the panning shams of the day, it
becomes a matter of interest to ascertain
the grounds of the assertion. To such
readers, therefore, as prefer the testi
mony of Max Mullcr, Whitney, and
others, to the random assertions of the
eminent journal alluded to, we address
this article. , Wc may add tliut it em
ploys the spelling sanctioned by the
Spelling Reform Association hereafter
giVen:
Thirty-thrc per cent, of the English
people can neither read nor write.
The illiteracy of the U. S., though
not nearly so great, U sullicicntly m
pulling. In Prussia, the illiteracy is
nothing. This extraordinary different-
Ixilwcen peoples so closely allied in
origin, in religion, and industrial pur
suits is largely due to our system or
rather lack of system of spelling. We
state this on the authuiity of Max
Mullcr, the greatest of Biologists, The
German language is essentially fonclic
Heme, when the 1'russian loy has
Icrnetl a thing, he keeps it.
His progres is by a scries of natural
logical steps. As to the kind of step
that the Lnglish boy takes, wc will
call for the testimony of l'rof. Morell,
one of the government inspectors of
Lnglish schools.
He states that eighty per cent, of the
children In those schools leave without
having accomplish enough of the
language to do them any good. Dr.
Morel) says that the spelling is rcspon
aible for this practical failure of the
government schools of England. "The
main difliculty of reading English," he
remarks," arises from its intrinsic irregu
larity. A confusion sets in in the mind
of the child respecting the powers of
the letters, which is very slowly cleared
up by chance, habit, or cxperienc, and
his capacity to know words is gained
by an immense series of tcntaliv efforts.
1 apears that out of 1,971 failures in
the civil service examination, 1,860
failed In spelling."
To nrofcusinnal scholars who have
almost forgotten the difficulties of their
childhood's study, the above may seem
an exaggeration. Cut any one who
has any acqtiaintanc with the poor
children of creat cities and of sparsely
o w
settled country regions, where school is
"kept" only three months and very
wasteful months at that in the year,
knows that our faith-destroying and
rcason-distractim? method of spelling
presents an almost unsurmountable
olmtaclc to progres. lhe innocent
child is launcht on a tossinir sea of ex
ceptions, compasslcs and rudderlca.
lie soon finds that almost every word
is an exception to all the other words.
Every new word contradicts everything
he has previously lerncd.
His instinctiv efforts at loirical sys
tematization and generalization, efforts
which ar the foundation of al knowl
edge, ar shattered at the very beginning
by those unaccountable exceptions in
sK.'lling. JNot only docs the child lern
the language very slowly and painfully,
but his nativ logic is half paralized.
He lerns to spell fly, f-l-y; and then
is marked incorrect for spelling high,
h-y. One contradiction. Then having
Icrned the proper spcllinir of hiirh. he
spells tie, t-i-g-h. Incorrect. Another
contradiction.
It is a crime against human nature to
spell might m-i-g-h-t, and then laugh
at a boy for spelling kite, k-i-g-h-t.
1 he brighter the boy, the greater
the mystification. In brief, a person to
be a correct speller of the English
language must be personally familiar
with at the eccentricities of the Ave or
six thousand words in common use.
This requires from eight or ten years
to a life-time; and there ar compara
tivly few who accomplish it even then.
It would seem that a mere mention
of the monstrosities and alwurdities of
our spelling should convince any reason
able person of the need of change. But
there ar always some people who, even
amid the iconoclasm of this ape and
nation, instinct! vly shrink from change.
Like the Dutchman who, having been
accustomed to go to mill on horseback,
with wheat in one end of a sack and a'
stone in the other to balance it, viewed
with horror the heresy of his ton in
flllinir both ends urilK wk.t .u
.v..i, mcac tun-1
servativs regard any attempt at discard-
iiik incucu we ir 111 leu hv th .mnr....
of past ages, as fraught with unknown
terrors.
Having by years of drudgery ac
quired some knowledge of that lingual
hash called ixngUsh spelling, they
strenuously resist any- attempt'' ' to
mitigate the orthografical " throes, of
futur generations. Permit me to tug
gest the possibility of improvement in
a language which uses the same char
acters for the following sounds : through,
though, rough, bough, ought; or which,
on the other hand, employs for the; same
sounds tne ionowing cnaraciers: aiiie,
sleight, eye, die, choir, guide1, buy, try,
ay, and I; or once more ; any, said, says,
dead, heifer, leopard, friend, : guess, '
bury, end; ten words in 'whichXtKe
same sound is expressed in' ten- ways)
It hag been demonstrated that scissors
may be spelled by English analogies in
596,580 ways.
Our spelling ranges from the mild
idiocy of o-n-e, wun, to the hopeless in
sanity of e-i-g-h-t, ate. Consider a mo- -ment
the monstrous absurdity of so
spelling youth that its two sounds are
expressed by five letters; or thought, of
which the three sounds are expressed
by seven letters. There are hundreds '
of words in which half the characters
(the silent letters) ar just so much ded
weight.
Such is the character of our spelling.
Now, first, is improvement possible?
Some say that spelling is entirely a
matter of convention anyway, mainly
arbitrary, and hence we can never ex
pect a fonic alfabet. We ar about as
near perfection now as we can hope to
be, and there is no use in trying to im
prove. All that nonsens is sufficiently
disproved by the fact that numerous
languages, both ancient and modern,
hav had fonic spelling. . German has
it now, Spanish and Portuguese ar
mainly fonic. French is as bad as
English. Improvement, then, is pos
sible in the natur of the language. The
next question is, how must the improve
ment be made? 1
We answer, by a tonic alfabet. What,
then, is fonic alfabet? , It, is one in
which every sound has its own char
acter and every character; its own
sound. That it the natural way of
growth of alfabett. Of the two forms
of language, written and spoken, the
spoken necessarilly comet first. Then
a time comes in the history of the
language, wheu it occurs to tome genius
that the fundamental sounds can be
represented by written characters. That
genius forthwith analyzes the fonetic