Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

AN ACRE OF WORDS ABOUT AKER.

Our spelling acre according to Webster’s former method[1]—aker, has attracted no little attention, in a small way, both far and near. It is very difficult to fix on any rule for anything in our language. Etymology is chiefly useful in settling the primitive signification, and is, or ought to be, scarcely at all authoritative in orthography. Where two languages are very different, it is absurd to attempt the forms of the one in the other. In respect to idiom, no one dreams of transferring it from one to another. Oftentimes it is equally absurd to transfer mere literation, as in the Greek-blooded word Phthisic for Tisic, or as Walker would have spelled it, Phthisick! Who rebels because demesne, as it is written in our best authors until within a little time, is now spelled domain? We see no reason why Anglicized words should, against all our notions of sound, retain a cumbrous foreign spelling. Words adopted into a language by the ear, which are spoken before they are written, generally conform, on being written, to our modes of spelling. But words introduced first by the eye, as they are written, for a long time wear the original spelling. Thus some foreign words are spelled by one method, and some by another.

Custom is usually regarded as determinate, in the matter of spelling, pronunciation, idiom, purity, etc. But, in respect to spelling, custom is not long the same. If one will examine our literature from the time of Henry VIII., he will find a constant succession of changes in spelling, both for good and for bad. I has been generally substituted for Y, as in Lykwyse, accordynge, beyng, certayne. Sir Thomas More wrote hym, thynges, desyer, myndes. Skelton, the Poet Laureat, has centencyously, dyd, advysynge, hyll, etc., etc.

There has, too, and wisely, been a constant tendency to drop all unsounded letters. What earthly use is there of lugging along letters which are entirely mute? In old but classic authors we have Godde dydde, nowe, whiche, pulle, beste, suche, couerte (court) beetwene, begunne, etc.

Within our own memory the final k is lopped of from words where it had a perfect sinecure, as in musick, etc. “Kan’t kum it,” does not look any more odd to our eyes than our spelling would have looked to those who wrote one hundred years ago.

If it be asked why we do not spell every word by the same rule that we do some; we reply, that violent, and sudden changes in languages are impracticable; and as in everything else, are not desirable. We are glad to see spelling simplified, and shall move along just as fast as we can do it with a reasonable prospect of carrying the public.

It is not a matter of conscience; we have no necessity laid upon us to reform the language; no call to be literal martyrs; it is a matter of convenience and taste, to be done or omitted as one pleases. It would be more inconvenient to stand alone with all writers against us, for the sake of spelling consistently, than to spell foolishly and superfluously in conformity to inveterate practice. Therefore, for the sake of company, we still spell quite absurdly.

It is called inconsistent; and by men, too, who spell trough, cough, enough, though; through, bought, six dissimilar sounds (ou, ow, oo, o, uf, off), by the same combination of letters! If consistency be the question, every English writer that ever lived, is a mere bundle of inconsistencies. Every continental living language, and the dead classic languages, have thrown in their contributions, and our tongue comprises the scraps, odds and ends, of all lands, with all the diverse peculiarities of each language more or less retained. Under such circumstances, when no man writes a sentence without spelling inconsistently, it is quite ridiculous to oppose a simplification of spelling, because

we cannot do, at once, what it is only practicable to do gradually. As fast as the public is able to bear it, we shall be glad to reduce all cumbrous spelling to a consistent simplicity.

An acquaintance declares, that the derivation of AKER from the Latin and Greek, is “without the least foundation in the words as used in the Greek and Latin and in the English, and built entirely on the resemblance of sounds,” etc. The facts are the other way. In the Greek, and in the Latin, it meant simply a field, an open, cultivated spot. Now, this was the meaning of the word in English, until it was by statutes limited to a particular quantity (31 Ed. III.; 5 Ed. I., 24; Henry VIII., as quoted by Webster) and this is the meaning yet, of the word in German (acker) Swedish (acker) Dutch (akker). There is, therefore, ample foundation in the use of the word; and the sound our friend gives up.