[7] The second work of our Phonographer is entitled “The New Art of Spelling, designed chiefly for Persons of Maturity, teaching them to Spell and Write Words by the Sound thereof, and to Sound and Read Words by the Sight thereof,—rightly, neatly, and fashionably, &c.,” by J. Jones, M.D., 1704.
I give a specimen of his words as they are written and as they are pronounced—
| VISIBLE LETTERS. | CUSTOMARY AND FASHIONABLY. |
| Mayor | Mair. |
| Worcester | Wooster |
| Dictionary | Dixnary |
| Bought | Baut. |
“All words”, he observes, “were originally written as sounded, and all which have since altered their sounds did it for ease and pleasure’s sake from
| the harder to the easier the harsher to the pleasanter the longer to the shorter | sound.” |
[8] The Grammar prefixed to Johnson’s Dictionary, curiously illustrated by the notes and researches of modern editors, will furnish specimens of many of these abortive attempts.
[9] When we began to drop the letter K in such words as physic, music, public, a literary antiquary, who wrote about 1790, observed on this new fashion, that “forty years ago no schoolboy had dared to have done this with impunity.” These words in older English had even another superfluous letter, being physicke, musicke, publicke. The modern mode, notwithstanding its prevalence, must be considered anomalous; for other words ending with the consonants ck have not been shorn of their final k. We do not write attac, ransac, bedec, nor bulloc, nor duc, nor good luc.
The appearance of words deprived of their final letter, though identically the same in point of sound, produces a painful effect on the reader. Pegge furnishes a ludicrous instance. It consists of monosyllables in which the final and redundant k is not written,—“Dic gave Jac a kic when Jac gave Dic a knoc on the bac with a thic stic.” If even such familiar words and simple monosyllables can distract our attention, though they have only lost a single and mute letter, how greatly more in words compounded, disguised by the mutilation of several letters.
[10] A most serious attempt was made a few years ago to establish English spelling by sound. A journal called the Fonetic Nuz (sic to give the idea of the pronunciation of the word News) was published, and Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” printed with a type expressly cast for the novel forms. The ruin of the projector closed the experiment.—Ed.
