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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1881)
March, 1881. THE WEST SHORE. ma of the language and ascertains the fundamental sound. Then he devise a written symbol for each of those sounds. Thus he' has a perfectly log ical and natural 'fonic alfabct. As a matter ot fact mqst alfahets hav been formed in essentially that way. The English was an exception. By con sidering for a moment the history of our language, we" shall see the reason of its imperfection and viciousness. When the Latin missionaries went to England during the times of the erly Saxon kings, of the 8th and 9th cen turies, they employed the Latin letters for the yet unwritten Saxon sounds. Some of these Latin letters made a very imperfect fit to begin with. Some fdjd not cover and some overlapped the 1 Saxon sounds to which they wer ap ' plied. Henc the English alfabct was I a lop-sided affair to begin with. Never 1 theles .it hobbled along for some ecu turie,'constantly needing a new alfabct . and constantly departing farthur from ; it. " Then came the Norman conquest 1 in 1066, and it became confusion work confounded. - . The burdened stomach of the Ian ; Kuge, struggling with Saxon Ignor i ance, was called upon to assimilate a j mas of verbal cookery from France. Many Latin and Greek words wer added; the English became a fortuitous concurrence of Saxon, French, Latin, . and Greek. It was spelled by the laws f of permutation and accident. 7 Many of the Saxon guttcrals they tried to represent by the letters gh, but the refined French tongue dropcd the 1 1 ft r n 1 atwl f Vt ru a. 1ntta.ru lia........ O 1 ....... and hav remained so ever since. Fur thurmore, many woids really of Saxon origin, wer supposed by the Imperfect ' scholarship of the time to be from the Latin, and wer spelled so as to indicate . that supposed fact even in violation of the sound. Such words as island, from Saxon Hand, but thought to be from the Latin insula and therefore having the unnecessary s; rhymt, really from Saxon rima not from the Greek, illustrate these false derivations and consequent false spellings. There ar multitudes of similar cases. Then, after al those blunders and contradictions, the spelling has been changing at random and by accident ever since. Thousands of changes hav occurred sine the time of Shakspere. - -til btiaf, ouf tangtf has never had any system of spelling. It has been simply one grand hodjre-pnde of nrtho grafical accidents. If now any editor of a daily newspaper or of anything els is disposed to advocate the excel lenc of such a libel on spelling, he is welcome to the heroic effort. What, then, is to be done? Our present system must be obliterated and a fonic system introduct. Our language has forty fundamental sounds. It should hav forty letters; fifteen vowels, fifteen sub-vowels, and ten aspirates. Two of our present alfabct, C and X, would be dropped. Al silent letters would be dropped. We would hav no more double letters, as th or ph, to represent simple sounds. The sound of k, for instance, would be always represented by the letter k, not by ch or que or ck or c or some other absurd and accidental combination. We may say without dogmatism that there is no use in reasoning with any one who would deny that such an ideal alfabct would be Infinitly preferable to the present. Hut the next question, of vast importance, too, is this: is such a change as the adoption of that allahct would Involve, practicable? Would it not be better to submit to the acknowl edged evils of our present method than to throw the whole literary world into confusion by changing? Would the future saving counterbal ance the present waste? Here lies the practical bearing of the question. We answer, the adoption of a new system must be gradual. The leaders of this movement realize this fact and their caution must reassure all frightened conscrvativs. The Spell ing Reform Association has advanced, as an entering wedge, the following five rules, (a) omit a from the digraf ta when pronounct like t short, as in htttd: (b) omit silent after a short vowel, as in hat; (c) write f instead of fh : (d) when a word ends with a double letter, omit the last ;(e) change final W to t when it has the sound of t, as in wished. The American Philological Associa tion has made essentially similar rules and has publisht the following words as illustrating their rules, via.: ar, hav, liv, gard, catalog, tho, thru, giv, iiifluit, definit, and wiaht. x That Association h under the control of such men as Whitney, March, Marsh, Child, and others of world-wide f ime as scholars, and the public may depend on their acting with prmtenc. It wil, therefore, be seen that these changes ar to move a slowly that all MB keep up. In conclusion, let u set before us the main objections urged bv opponents of Spelling Reform. They may bo re duct to thre: 1st, People who hav ai red v acquired the old method will find, it hard to change. We hav alrcdy an swered this in part by showing that the changes wil he gradual; and the acquisi tion of the new method we may ad, wil be very easy, I hav demonstrated in my school-room that any one of or dinary brains can completely muster a fonic system in a week of honest toil. and, Many of our words prcscrv their etymological history in their spelling; wcrthat changed, their history would be lost. We answer this objection by saying that of only a very few words Is this true; that the fioflt for whom ths lan guage should exist, would never trace etymological history anyway; and that scholars must hav a gnat dial most than the spelling in order to study etymology. It is the height of absurdity to drag the corpses of ded letters around with liv ing ones, in order that every lxaly may see when they died. If a scholar wants to be familiar with thr demise of ancient words and letters, let him study the old books and manuscript. The third objection is one of real magnitude, to wit; the old libraries, worth millions, will become unintel ligible to those who ar familiar with the new svstem only. Notwithstand ing its weight this objection i some thing like saying that it would not pay to cure a cripple because then his crutches would Imj waste property. It is to le observed, however, that funic system would differ from the present but little morn than di flora from the selling of Chaucer and Wyclifle, and most any one Can, by a little pains, read those author. Fur thurmore, looks wil be only two-third as large and exenive When printed by the new method as now. We may reduce the advantage of the rroocd change to five: 1st, A chilil or foreigner could lern the lan guage in a frattio of th limt now rt Hired J ml, Our fluctuating pronunci ation would he fixed by having given sytnluils always crrcsoi,d to given sounds. 3rd, Any given amount of mailer could be printed on two-thirds of the present space. 4th, 7'ht matltry and tomta! employment of a uniiblt iyi Urn of spiling iivud giv to (hildrin at Iht oulut of study a habit of logical thought whith would In of inealeuubt valui h their subsequent mental grmth. 5th. The years now squandered in acquiring mule and arbitrary ma of verbal form would then be devoted to useful study. A child would lern a fonic system in a few months, and from that time the question of spelling would never1 trouble him. Mo oon a he should hear a word he would know from the sound what letter should compos Hi We leave any unprejudiced and thoughtful reader to d-vMe batWeen the eornpHf V