English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

IV

Another objection remains to be considered. It is not really directed against any proposals made by any organized bodies which have taken up the consideration of the subject. These, to use the distinction already specified, devote themselves to reform in English orthography and not to reform of it. This latter is the object aimed at by individuals and not by societies. Consequently, this objection does not strictly concern the plans for simplification now before the public. It is really directed against the far wider-reaching reform which would aim to render the spelling phonetic. It is regarded by some as so crushing that I have deferred its consideration to the last. It may be summed up in a few words. Variations of sound are almost numberless. They cause a marked difference of pronunciation among individuals, a more marked difference between different parts of the same country. Furthermore, they are often so delicate as almost to defy representation. You could not denote them if you would; and if you could, you would be encumbered, rather than aided, by the multiplicity of signs. It is impossible, therefore, to have our tongue spelled phonetically, because it is pronounced differently by different persons equally well educated. Whose pronunciation will you adopt? That is the point which has first to be determined. It is safe to say that it is one which can never be determined satisfactorily. That fact is of itself decisive of the matter in dispute.

This view of the question at issue is triumphantly put forward as one which can never be successfully met. Assuming for the sake of the argument that it is a genuine objection, let us look at what it involves. The very result of the lawlessness of our present orthography is given as the reason why no attempt should be made to bring it under the reign of law. It is a real maxim in morals, and a theoretical one in jurisprudence, that an offender has no right to take advantage of his own wrong. This is the very course, however, which opponents of change recommend for adoption. Our orthography has rendered the orthoepy varying and doubtful. No one can tell from the spelling of a word how it ought to be pronounced. The result is that it is pronounced differently by different men. Accordingly, there should be no attempt to reduce the orthography to order, because the uncertainty which has been fastened upon it by the pronunciation has rendered it impossible to ascertain what it really ought to be.

But it never seems to occur to those who advance this argument that difficulties of the sort here indicated are not experienced in languages which for all practical purposes are phonetically spelled, such as Italian and Spanish. Even German can be included, because its variations from the normal standard do not extend to the great source of our woes, the arbitrary and different sounds given to the vowels and combinations of vowels. But take, for example, the first mentioned of these tongues. Its pronunciation differs in different parts of the country. In some cases the variation is very distinctly marked. Yet, while the spelling remains the same, no embarrassment follows of the kind indicated. If this simple fact had been taken into consideration, it would at once have disclosed the nature of the imaginary strength and actual weakness of this supposedly crushing argument.

For of all the hallucinations that disturb the mental vision of the advocates of the existing orthography, this is perhaps the most dismal as it is the most unreal. No phonetically spelled tongue ever has or ever would set out to record the varying shades of the pronunciation of any country, still less the varying shades of the pronunciation of individuals. A system which indicates the delicate distinction of sounds characterizing the speech of different regions resembles the chemist’s scales, which detect the variation in weight of filaments of hair to all appearance precisely alike. Instrumentalities of this nature phoneticians may need and use in order to represent the slightest diversities of pronunciation. They can and do get up for their own guidance characters conveying differences even of intonation. But these the ordinary speaker does not require at all. Instead of benefiting him, they would be in his way. For the average man, even of highest cultivation, it is no more important that shades of pronunciation should be denoted in his alphabet than it would be important for him to lug about in all temperatures and in all climates an astronomical clock with a compensation pendulum. What any working phonetic system would set out to do is to give those broad and easily recognizable characteristics of educated utterance which are sufficient to indicate to the hearer what the speaker is aiming to say. It would represent a norm sufficiently narrow of limit to make understood what is said, and sufficiently broad to offer within justifiable bounds ample opportunity for the play of individual or territorial peculiarities. Its principal effect would be to set up a standard which would be ever before the eyes of men.

In truth, the comparison just made is sufficient of itself to lay this ghastly specter of an argument which haunts so persistently the imagination of many opponents of phonetic spelling. It is with our pronunciation as with our timepieces. None of our watches run precisely alike. Few if any can be called unqualifiedly correct. For all that, with the aid of these imperfect and never precisely agreeing instruments, we manage to transact with little friction and delay the daily business of a life in which we have constantly to wait upon one another’s movements. So, in the matter of sounds, a phonetic alphabet would denote only those clearly recognizable distinctions which are apparent to the ear of ordinary men. Orthography based upon such an alphabet would assume as the very foundation upon which to build itself the existence of a recognized standard orthoepy. It is that alone which the spelling would represent. Provincial speakers in consequence would have always before their eyes in the form of the word its exact and proper pronunciation. By it they would be able to compare and if necessary to correct their own.

But we may be told that while a standard time actually exists, a standard pronunciation does not. Consequently, no phonetic spelling can be established which will be regarded by any large portion of the general public as satisfactory. The all-sufficient answer to this objection is that the very thing which it is said cannot be done has been already done and done many times. It has been done, too, in the face of the very objection that it could not be done at all. The proof of this statement lies in the existence of the pronouncing dictionary. Works of this nature did not appear until the latter part of the eighteenth century. Before they appeared the project of producing them was criticised with extreme severity. They were denounced as irrational of nature and as impossible of execution. The same arguments, assumed to be convincing, were produced against them as those just considered against uniform phonetic spelling. Doctor Johnson brought the artillery of his ponderous polysyllables to bear upon them. He proved—at least, to his own satisfaction—the utter futility of Sheridan’s scheme of preparing a work of this nature. His argument was based entirely on the ground of the wide differences prevailing in pronunciation. In spite of these arguments pronouncing dictionaries were prepared. At a comparatively early period several appeared in rapid succession. They are now so thoroughly established in the affections of us all that were a dictionary to leave out this characteristic it would cease to have consideration and sale. But a work of such sort goes upon the assumption that there is a standard pronunciation. Otherwise it would have no justification for its own existence. Its compilers seek to ascertain and represent this standard. A word, indeed, may be and not unfrequently is pronounced differently by different classes of educated men. In that case both or all sounds of it will be recognized—at least, until such time as one has come to prevail over the other or over all others. The pronouncing dictionary was indeed a necessity of the situation. It was called by Archbishop Trench “the absurdest of all books.” On what ground it can be called absurd by an advocate of the existing orthography it is hard to determine. It is, without doubt, a clumsy substitute for phonetic spelling. It is not for him, however, who protests against such spelling to denounce the aid to correct pronunciation, imperfect as it may be, which has been rendered absolutely essential by the general prevalence of the beliefs he accepts and defends. Had pronouncing dictionaries not come to exist, the divergence which has been going on between spelling and pronunciation in consequence of our lawless orthography would have rapidly extended with the extension of the language and with the increasing number of those who came to speak it, dwelling as they do in regions far apart. Diversities of pronunciation would have been sure to spring up in such a case even among the educated classes, to say nothing of those prevailing in classes of different social grades living almost in contact. As a matter of fact such do spring up now. They must necessarily continue to spring up in a language where the spelling is not under the sway of phonetic law. But they are reduced to the lowest possible terms, in consequence of the wide use of pronouncing dictionaries. Between the authorizations of these there are at times divergences, but the agreements are far more numerous than the divergences. Hence, the authorizations are sufficient to keep the language fairly uniform. Furthermore, these works bring out clearly the truth of the statement with which this chapter began: that every speaker of English has to learn two languages. In dictionaries, the one he reads and writes is given the place of honor on the printed page. To it he turns whenever for any purpose he wishes to consult its meaning. Following after it, whenever the word is not itself phonetically spelled, is the form of it, usually in parentheses, as it is heard from the lips of men. To this he turns for its pronunciation.

No project is entertained by any organized body to establish phonetic spelling. It can hardly be said to exist outside of dictionaries. These have to employ it or some approach to it in order to convey to the users of language a conception of the proper pronunciation which the form itself does not indicate. The discussion of the subject is, therefore, an academic question rather than a practical one. But this it is desirable to say about it. Phonetic spelling is not a destructive but a conservative agency. Just as the creation of literature holds a language fast to its moorings, just as it renders it stable by arresting all speedy verbal or grammatical change, so the establishment of phonetic spelling would operate upon orthoepy. The exact pronunciation would be imposed upon the word by its very form. No one could mistake it, no one would be tempted to disregard it. From it there would never be variation save when a change in the sound imperatively demanded a change in the spelling to indicate it. This is a counsel of perfection which we can recognize as desirable, but need never expect—at least, in our day—to see realized. None the less can we discern the benefits that would result from it. Had it existed with us, the wide degradation of that sound of a which is represented in father and far could not have gone on at the rapid rate it has done in this country. There are districts in the United States where even the following l does not protect it, and calm, for illustration, is made to ryme with clam. Did phonetic spelling exist in the mother country, the pronunciation of a almost like “long i”—as, for example, late, which by American ears is apt to be mistaken for light—now so prevalent in London and apparently extending over England, could never have held its ground, even with those who had received but a limited education. With an orthography which has no recognizable standard of correct usage, degradations of this sort are always liable to occur; nothing, in fact, can keep them from occurring.