XIII
THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ENGLISH SPELLING
In a communication to a London review Professor W. W. Skeat remarked that “it is notorious that all the leading philologists of Europe, during the last quarter of a century, have unanimously condemned the present chaotic spelling of the English language, and have received on the part of the public generally, and of the most blatant and ignorant among the self-constituted critics, nothing but abusive ridicule, which is meant to be scathing, but is harmless from its silliness”; and it cannot be denied that the orthographic simplifications which the leading philologists of Great Britain and the United States are advocating have not yet been widely adopted. In an aggressive article an American essayist has sought to explain this by the assertion that phonetic-reform “is hopelessly, unspeakably, sickeningly vulgar; and this is an eternal reason why men and women of taste, refinement, and discrimination will reject it with a shudder of disgust.” Satisfactory as this explanation may seem to the essayist, I have a certain difficulty in accepting it myself, since I find on the list of the vice-presidents of the Orthographic Union the names of Mr. Howells, of Colonel Higginson, of Dr. Eggleston, of Professor Lounsbury, and of President White; and even if I was willing to admit that these gentlemen were all of them lacking in taste, refinement, and discrimination, I still could not agree with the aggressive essayist so long as my own name was on the same list.
What strikes me as a better explanation is that given by the president of the Orthographic Union, Mr. Benjamin E. Smith, who has suggested that phonetic-reformers have asked too much, and so have received too little; they have demanded an immediate and radical change, and as a result they have frightened away all but the most resolute radicals; they have failed to reckon with the immense conservatism which gives stability to all the institutions of the English-speaking race. As Mr. Smith puts it, “there is a deep-rooted feeling that the existing printed form is not only a symbol but the most fitting symbol for our mother-tongue, and that a radical change must impair for us the beauty and spiritual effectiveness of that which it symbolizes.”
A part of the unreadiness of the public to listen to the advocates of phonetic-reform has been due also to the general consciousness that pronunciation is not fixed but very variable indeed, being absolutely alike in no two places where English is spoken, and perhaps in no two persons who speak English. The humorous poet has shown to us how the little word vase once served as a shibboleth to reveal the homes of each of the four young ladies who came severally from New York and Boston and Philadelphia and Kalamazoo. The difference between the pronunciation of New York and Boston is not so marked as that between London and Edinburgh—or as that between New York and London. And the pronunciation of to-day is not that of to-morrow; it is constantly being modified, sometimes by imperceptible degrees and sometimes by a sudden change like the arbitrary substitution of aither and naither for eether and neether. Now, if pronunciation is not uniform in any two persons, in any two places, at any two periods, the wayfaring man is not to blame if he is in doubt, first, as to the possibility of a uniform phonetic spelling, and, second, as to its permanence even if it was once to be attained.
A glance down the history of English orthography discloses the fact that, however chaotic our spelling may seem to be now or may seem to have been in Shakspere’s day, it is and it always has been striving ineffectively to be phonetic. Always the attempt has been to use the letters of the word to represent its sounds. From the beginning there has been an unceasing struggle to keep the orthography as phonetic as might be. This continuous striving toward exactness of sound-reproduction has never been radical or violent; it has always been halting and half-hearted: but it has been constant, and it has accomplished marvels in the course of the centuries. The most that we can hope to do is to help along this good work, to hasten this inevitable but belated progress, to make the transitions as easy as possible, and to smooth the way so that the needful improvements may follow one another as swiftly as shall be possible. We must remember that a half-loaf is better than no bread; and we must remind ourselves frequently that the greatest statesmen have been opportunists, knowing what they wanted, but taking what they could get.
We have now to face the fact that in no language is a sudden and far-reaching reform in spelling ever likely to be attained; and in none is it less likely than in English. The history of the peoples who use our tongue on both sides of the Atlantic proves that they belong to a stock which is wont to make haste slowly, to take one step at a time, and never to allow itself to be overmastered by mere logic. By a series of gradations almost invisible the loose confederacy of 1776 developed into the firm union of 1861, which was glad to grant to Abraham Lincoln a power broader than that wielded by any dictator. Even the abolition of the corn-laws and the adoption of free-trade in Great Britain, sudden as it may seem, was only the final result of a long series of events.
The securing of an absolutely phonetic spelling being impracticable,—even if it was altogether desirable,—the efforts of those who are dissatisfied with the prevailing orthography of our language had best be directed toward the perfectly practical end of getting our improvement on the instalment plan. We must seek now to have only the most flagrant absurdities corrected. We must be satisfied to advance little by little. We must begin by showing that there is nothing sacrosanct about the present spelling either in Great Britain or in the United States. We must make it clear to all who are willing to listen—and it is our duty to be persuasive always and never dogmatic—that the effort of the English language to rid itself of orthographic anomalies is almost as old as the language itself. We must show those who insist on leaving the present spelling undisturbed that in taking this attitude they are setting themselves in opposition to the past, which they pretend to respect. The average man is open to conviction if you do not try to browbeat him into adopting your beliefs; and he can be induced to accept improvements, one at a time, if he has it made plain to him that each of these is but one in a series unrolling itself since Chaucer. We must convince the average man that we want merely to continue the good work of our forefathers, and that the real innovators are those who maintain the absolute inviolability of our present spelling.
Even the vehement essayist from whom I have quoted already, and who is the boldest of later opponents of phonetic-reform, is vehement chiefly against the various schemes of wholesale revision. He himself refuses to make any modification,—except to revert now and again to a medievalism like pædagogue,—but he knows the history of language too well not to be forced to admit that a simplification of some sort is certain to be achieved in the future. “The written forms of English words will change in time, as the language itself will change,” he confesses; “it will change in its vocabulary, in its idioms, in its pronunciation, and perhaps to some extent in its structural form. For change is the one essential and inevitable phenomenon of a living language, as it is of any living organism; and with these changes, slow and silent and unconscious, will come a change in the orthography.” As we read this admirable statement we cannot but wonder why a writer who understands so well the conditions of linguistic growth should wish to bind his own language in the cast-iron bonds of an outworn orthography. We may wonder also why he is not consistent in his own practice, and why he does not spell phænomenon as Macaulay did only threescore and ten years ago.
Underneath the American essayist’s objection to any orthographic simplification in English, and underneath the plaintive protests of certain British men of letters against “American spelling,” so called, lies the assumption that there is at the present moment a “regular” spelling, which has existed time out of mind and which the tasteless reformers wish to destroy. For this assumption there is no warrant whatever. The orthography of our language has never been stable; it has always been fluctuating; and no authority has ever been given to anybody to lay down laws for its regulation. For a convention to have validity it must have won general acceptance at some period; and the history of English shows that there has never been any such common agreement, expressed or implied, in regard to English spelling. Some of the unphonetic forms which are most vigorously defended, as hallowed by custom and by sentiment, are comparatively recent; and others which seem as sacred have had foisted into them needless letters conveying false impressions about their origins.
That there is no theory or practice of English orthography universally accepted to-day is obvious to all who may take the trouble to observe for themselves. The spelling adopted by the ‘Century Magazine’ is different from that to be found in ‘Harper’s Magazine’; and this differs again from that insisted upon in the pages of the ‘Bookman.’ The ‘Century’ has gone a little in advance of American spelling generally, as seen in ‘Harper’s,’ and the ‘Bookman’ is intentionally reactionary. In the United States orthography is in a healthier state of instability than it is in Great Britain, where there is a closer approximation to a deadening uniformity; but even in London and Edinburgh those who are on the watch can discover many a divergence from the strict letter of the doctrine of orthographic rigidity.