A Book About Words

by G. F. Graham

All the inflections of the adjectives also fell off; and instead of ‘godne’ (acc. sing.), ‘godes’ (gen. sing.), ‘godum,’ ‘godre’ (dat. pl.) these endings disappeared, and the word was reduced in all its cases and genders, and in both numbers, to ‘gód’ (good), as we now have it.

The verb lost its gerund, or rather the latter was confounded with the participle in ing; so that ‘writtane’ (for the purpose of writing) was used indiscriminately with ‘writende’ (writing); and many other terminations, though they did not wholly disappear, were weakened by the substitution of e for a, or en for an, as ‘bærnen’ for ‘bærnan.’ Afterwards the participle ending was changed from ende to and, thence to inge, and at last to ing, as we now have it. Thus:—‘writende,’ ‘writand,’ ‘writinge,’ ‘writing.’

Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was a constant and increasing tendency to throw off the final e. Chaucer, Wiclif, and other writers of the fourteenth century, have numbers of words written with that ending, where it is now omitted, as ‘childe,’ ‘herte,’ ‘fynde,’ &c. But, in taking away this final, it became necessary, in some cases, to make another change in the spelling, in order to prevent a mispronunciation. The earlier form ‘mete,’ being deprived of its final e, would leave ‘met.’ Therefore, to preserve the long sound, the e medial was doubled, and the word stood ‘meet.’ The same principle operated in transforming ‘cloke’ into ‘cloak,’ ‘yere’ into ‘year,’ ‘scole’ into ‘school,’ ‘grete’ into ‘great,’ &c. The e final being taken away, it was necessary, in order to preserve the pronunciation, to lengthen the internal vowel.

The art of printing exercised a very powerful influence over English orthography. The first printers assumed at once an absolute power, not only in the matter of spelling and punctuation, but even in cases of expression and grammatical forms. The result was far from favourable to uniformity; for, as every printer had his own views on the subject, each consequently differed from the others, and this entailed endless confusion. The author’s punctuation and spelling were then always sacrificed to the printer’s convenience. If the writer used any words of doubtful or unsettled orthography, of which there was then a very large number, the printer assumed it as his right to add to, or take from them as many letters as he thought proper, to suit the length of the line. Many blunders also arose from the ignorance of the copyists. The various manuscripts of one poem sometimes differ so widely from each other, that modern scholars have supposed these varieties to have been the result of the author’s own revision. But the more probable cause of these differences is that the manuscript was copied by a number of different hands, and that consequently each differed from the other according to the views of such matters which each copyist had adopted.

We may safely conclude that in orthography, as in other matters, changes will take place. The phonographers say that, as the whole object of writing is to represent on paper the sounds of the human voice, every word should be spelled exactly as it is pronounced. But there are grave objections to this view. First, pronunciation itself is in a state of transition—as the present differs from the past, so will the future differ from the present—and therefore the spelling would have to be changed as often as the words were differently pronounced. Secondly, there are so many, and such delicate shades of sound in the human voice, that, to carry out this design properly, it would be necessary to invent innumerable characters to represent them. The remedy, then, would be worse than the disease, for the multitude of new and strange characters which this system would require would be far more puzzling to a learner than any of the existing difficulties.

On the other hand, the conservative party maintain that the proposed changes in spelling should not be admitted because they would obscure, if not destroy, the derivation of words. This argument has certainly considerable force. In the study of English, a knowledge of derivation is quite as important as correctness of spelling. Surely the one should not be wholly sacrificed to the other. Are we to lose the essence of the word for the mere sake of its outward appearance? It would certainly be a great gain to simplify our forms of spelling; but if, in so doing, we destroyed the etymology of the language, would our gain or our loss be the greater? The present forms of spelling are, in many cases, a key to the derivation of the word. How did the b get into ‘doubt’ and ‘debt,’ or the g into ‘feign’ and ‘impugn?’ These letters are left in the words expressly to show us their origin. When first introduced into English, ‘debt’ and ‘doubt’ were both written and pronounced as in French (‘dette’ and ‘doute’). But when it afterwards became known that they were originally derived from the Latin verbs ‘debēre’ and ‘dubitare,’ the b was restored in the spelling.

Some argue that the influence of derivation on spelling is only partial, and that other and more powerful causes are operating changes in the forms of words. It is readily admitted that the language will, in time, yield to this pressure. But we must not precipitate matters; and there is something to be said on the other side of the question. The study of English has lately received a great impulse, and increased attention has been paid to its nature and origin. It is surely somewhat inconsistent to recommend this increased energy of study, and, at the same time, to throw obstacles in the student’s way! It is remarkable how long it takes to work a change of this sort. The writer can remember the controversy about the substitution of the final or for our for more than forty years back; and yet in that time very little progress has been made in the proposed reform. But there are obviously certain tendencies in the English language towards a new orthography, and we may point out with tolerable certainty what changes will be eventually effected.

The law of contraction is in constant operation in the spelling of words. It is this principle that has caused us to reject the final k in words of two or more syllables. K final is now confined chiefly to monosyllables. We retain it in ‘back,’ ‘peck,’ ‘stick,’ ‘rock,’ ‘duck,’ &c. Formerly ‘music,’ ‘critic,’ ‘traffic,’ &c. retained the k; now it has disappeared from these words. But it is evidently very loth to go; for it still holds its place in ‘attack,’ ‘ransack,’ ‘bullock,’ ‘hillock,’ &c., as well as in compound words, as ‘shipwreck,’ ‘weathercock,’ ‘wedlock,’ &c. It is possible that, at some future time, we shall be writing ‘bac,’ ‘pec,’ ‘stic,’ ‘roc,’ and ‘luc;’ but for the present we must, in these cases, add the k.

The same contracting tendency affects the forms of certain past tenses of verbs. We write ‘sent’ for ‘sended,’ ‘built’ for ‘builded,’ &c. Some would extend this contraction to all verbs ending in close consonants, as p, ck, f, or s. They would have us write ‘slapt,’ ‘drest,’ ‘hisst,’ ‘hopt,’ and ‘snufft.’ There is, no doubt, a leaning this way in the language. The verbs ‘creep,’ ‘feel,’ ‘sleep,’ &c. make, in the past tense, ‘crept,’ ‘felt,’ ‘slept,’ &c. But it will be some time before such forms as quafft, peept, pickt, hopt, and supt are generally adopted.