II
There is still another objection to be considered. We are given to understand that difference of spelling is quite essential to the recognition of the meaning of words pronounced alike. Otherwise there would be danger of misapprehension. This is a point upon which Archbishop Trench insisted strongly. He discovered that great confusion would be caused by writing alike words which have the same sound when heard, but are distinguished to the sight. Such, for illustration, are son and sun, rain and reign and rein. This is one of those difficulties which are very formidable on paper, but nowhere else. It is what comes to men of learning from looking at language wholly from the side of the eye and not at all from that of the ear. In the controversy that went on in this country in consequence of the President’s order, I noticed that in a certain communication an old friend of mine specified me personally as one setting out to destroy what he called sound English by arranging letters in a totally different way, and thereby seeking to reconstruct the language to its destruction. Naturally, he was indignant at the nefarious attempt, though had he stopped to consider the disproportion between the pettiness of the puny agent and the massiveness of the mighty fabric, there would have appeared little reason for much excitement. Personally, so far from feeling resentment at his words, I read them with even more amazement than sorrow. The argument he used is of the sort which I expect to find communicated to the press by that noble army of the ill-informed who are always rushing to the rescue of the English language from the reckless practices of those who do not use it with their assumed accuracy or spell it according to their ideas of propriety. But here the objection came from a real scholar.
His words were, therefore, a convincing argument for the necessity of reform. They revealed in a striking way the bewildering effect our orthography exercises over the reasoning powers. He wanted to know what the phonetists—they deserve that name, he told us—are going to do with words alike in sound but different in sense. He began with ale and ail. It might have been inferred from his argument that, unless ail and ale were spelled differently, no person could ever be quite certain whether he were suffering from the one or partaking of the other. Another of his instances was bear and bare. Does anybody, on hearing either of these words, hesitate about its meaning? Why should he, then, when he sees it, even if both were spelled the same way? Or again, take the noun bear by itself. If any one comes across it, does he suffer much perplexity in ascertaining whether it is the bear of the wilderness or the bear of Wall Street that is meant?
This last example, indeed, exposes of itself the utter futility of this argument. There is an indefinite number of words in the language which have precisely the same form as nouns or verbs. The fact that they belong to different parts of speech never creates the slightest confusion. Furthermore, there are but few common words in the language which are not used in different senses, often in many different senses, sometimes in widely different senses. Does that fact cause any perceptible perplexity in the comprehension of their meaning? Do reporters, who must arrive at the sense through the medium of the ear, experience any difficulty in ascertaining what the speaker is trying to say? Does any one in any relation of life whatever? When a man is returning from a voyage across the Atlantic, is he bothered by the different significations of the same term when he is trying to ascertain whether it is his duty to pay a duty? When one meets the word piece, does he suffer from much embarrassment in determining whether it means a part of something, or a fire-arm, or a chessman, or a coin, or a portion of bread, or an article of baggage, or a painting, or a play, or a musical or literary composition? Does any one experience trouble, on hearing a sentence containing the word thick, in determining whether it is an adjective or a noun, or whether it denotes ‘dense,’ or ‘turbid,’ or ‘abundant,’ or a measure of dimension? Given the connection in which it is employed, does any one mistake rain for reign or rein? The negative answer which must be made to such questions as these disposes at once of a difficulty that has no existence outside of the imagination.
In fact, language presents not merely many examples of words with the same spelling which have different meanings, but sometimes of those that have exactly opposite meanings. Yet that condition of things produces no confusion. Does any one hesitate about what course to pursue when told, on the one hand, to “stand fast” or on the other to “run fast?” Does he ever in actual life confound the word cleave, when it means to adhere with the cleave which means to destroy adherence by splitting? When you dress a fowl, you take something off it or out of it; when you dress a man, you put something on him. Or take an example which may fairly be considered as presenting a certain obscurity at the first glance. In his ode on the morning of Christ’s Nativity, Milton tells us that “Kings sate still with awful eye.” Here awful does not have the sense, most common with us, of ‘inspiring awe,’ but the strictly etymological one of ‘full of awe.’ Yet no one proposes to indicate by difference of spelling a difference of signification, the ascertainment of which depends not on the sight but on the brain. In truth, if no trouble is experienced in determining the meaning of words sounded alike in the hurry of conversation, when the hearer has but a moment to compare the connection and comprehend the thought, it is certainly borrowing a great deal of unnecessary anxiety to fancy that embarrassment could be caused in reading, where there is ample opportunity to stop and consider the context and reflect upon the sense which the passage must have. The actual existence of any such difficulty would imply an innate incapability of comprehension which, were it even justified by the individual consciousness of the asserter, it would be manifestly unfair to attribute to the whole race.
It needs but a moment’s consideration to perceive the worthlessness of this argument. Yet let us put ourselves in the place of those who advance it, and treat it as if it had some weight. Let us assume that if words having the same pronunciation are spelled alike, a confused apprehension would be produced in the reader’s mind. But are these believers in man’s impenetrable stupidity willing to carry out the doctrine they profess to its logical conclusion? For the sake of preventing this assumed confused state of mind, are they willing to change the spelling of words which have precisely the same form but a pronunciation distinctly different? It will be found that the very men who clamor for the retention of different spellings for words pronounced alike are just as insistent upon the retention of words with similar spellings which are pronounced unlike. Of these there is a very respectable number in our tongue. Especially is this true of verbs and substantives which have precisely the same form on paper, but a different pronunciation. We lead, for example, an expedition to discover a lead mine. A tarry rope may cause us to tarry. This inconsistency of attitude is necessarily more marked in words belonging to the same part of speech. In consequence, a burden is imposed upon the learner of mastering a distinction which, in a language sensibly spelled, would be ashamed to put in a plea for its existence. Slough, ‘a miry place,’ has as little resemblance in sound as in meaning to slough, ‘the cast-off skin of a serpent.’ We indicate the tear in our eyes and the tear in our clothes by words which have little likeness of sound, but have the same spelling in the written speech. We could go on enumerating examples of this sort; but to what end? It is maintained, according to the theory enunciated in the case of ail and ale, that a distinction of form in these and similar words ought to be insisted upon so that the reader may discover without effort which one is meant. But the application of this very argument would be at once scouted were an attempt made to extend the principle to words spelled alike but pronounced differently. This is but another of the numberless inconsistencies in which the opponents of reform find themselves plunged when they attempt to stand up for the existing orthography on the ground of reason.