Now, language is just as much a natural growth as trees or rocks or human bodies, and it can have no more irregularities, even in the matter of spelling, than these have. Science would laugh at the notion of memorizing every individual form of rock. It seeks the fundamental laws, it classifies and groups, and even if the number of classes or groups is large, still they have a limit and can be mastered. Here we have a solution of the spelling problem. In grammar we find seven fundamental logical relationships, and when we have mastered these and their chief modifications and combinations, we have the essence of grammar as truly as if we knew the name for every possible combination which our seven fundamental relationships might have. Since rhetoric is the art of appealing to the emotions and intelligence of our hearers, we need to know, not the names of all the different artifices which may be employed, but the nature and laws of emotion and intelligence as they may be reached through language; for if we know what we are hitting at, a little practice will enable us to hit accurately; whereas if we knew the name of every kind of blow, and yet were ignorant of the thing we were hitting at, namely the intelligence and emotion of our fellow man, we would be forever striking into the air,—striking cleverly perhaps, but ineffectively.
Having got our bearings, we find before us a purely practical problem, that of leading the student through the maze of a new science and teaching him the skill of an old art, exemplified in a long line of masters.
By way of preface we may say that the mastery of the English language (or any language) is almost the task of a lifetime. A few easy lessons will have no effect. We must form a habit of language study that will grow upon us as we grow older, and little by little, but never by leaps, shall we mount up to the full expression of all that is in us.
WORD-STUDY
INTRODUCTION
THE STUDY OF SPELLING.
The mastery of English spelling is a serious under-taking. In the first place, we must actually memorize from one to three thousand words which are spelled in more or less irregular ways. The best that can be done with these words is to classify them as much as possible and suggest methods of association which will aid the memory. But after all, the drudgery of memorizing must be gone through with.
Again, those words called homonyms, which are pronounced alike but spelled differently, can be studied only in connection with their meaning, since the meaning and grammatical use in the sentence is our only key to their form. So we have to go considerably beyond the mere mechanical association of letters.
Besides the two or three thousand common irregular words, the dictionary contains something over two hundred thousand other words. Of course no one of us can possibly have occasion to use all of those words; but at the same time, every one of us may sooner or later have occasion to use any one of them. As we cannot tell before hand what ones we shall need, we should be prepared to write any or all of them upon occasion. Of course we may refer to the dictionary; but this is not always, or indeed very often, possible. It would obviously be of immense advantage to us if we could find a key to the spelling of these numerous but infrequently used words.
The first duty of the instructor in spelling should be to provide such a key. We would suppose, off-hand, that the three hundred thousand school-teachers in the United States would do this immediately and without suggestion——certainly that the writers of school-books would. But many things have stood in the way. It is only within a few years, comparatively speaking, that our language has become at all fixed in its spelling. Noah Webster did a great deal to establish principles, and bring the spelling of as many words as possible to conform with these principles and with such analogies as seemed fairly well established. But other dictionary-makers have set up their ideas against his, and we have a conflict of authorities. If for any reason one finds himself spelling a word differently from the world about him, he begins to say, “Well, that is the spelling given in Worcester, or the Century, or the Standard, or the new Oxford.” So the word “authority” looms big on the horizon; and we think so much about authority, and about different authorities, that we forget to look for principles, as Mr. Webster would have us do.