English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

This is the moral of the tale told of Arnold. There are circumstances in which no amount of genius can make up for the lack of a little accurate knowledge. It is not often given to an essayist to exemplify himself a practice he vehemently condemns in the very paragraph containing the condemnation. If academies really exerted the power with which Arnold credited them; if they could exercise a controlling influence over public opinion; if they could establish so broad a basis of intelligence that men would be prevented from giving utterance to crude and hasty dicta; if they could keep writers from palming off upon the public the results of imperfect knowledge acting through the medium of perfect prejudice—if these things were so, it is quite clear that in this particular instance it would have been the utterances of Matthew Arnold that would have been suppressed, and not the assumed orthographical vagaries of the London Times. In Germany, where there is no academy, but where there is a broad and lofty level of linguistic intelligence, observations of a similar character would have met with immediate and crushing exposure and censure. In England and America, where there is a broad and deep level of linguistic ignorance, this blundering statement has long been hailed by many as a proper rebuke to the miscreants who are seeking to defile the sacred altar of English orthography.

An extravagant outburst like the one just cited—it could easily be paralleled from recent utterances—coming from a man occupying a far higher position than any literary defender of the present spelling, reveals what a fathomless abyss of ignorance and prejudice must be filled up or bridged over before there can be even a calm discussion of the subject by the mass of educated men. If we are unable to treat with respect the utterances of great men who are capable of falling into errors like the one just exposed, how can we be expected to be impressed by the words of little men who cite these easily detected blunders as an authoritative justification for their own hostility? Because they deal with language as an art, they fancy they know all about it as a science. There is no intention of conveying the impression that men of letters are more remarkable than others for erroneous assertions on this subject. As a class they are probably less so. In their ranks, too, are to be found some of the most earnest sympathizers with the movement for the simplification of the spelling. These, too, stand in the first rank. It must not be assumed, therefore, that those among them who have gained an unenviable notoriety by the blunders into which they have fallen in opposing it are more ignorant than other men. They have simply had furnished them by their position unequalled opportunities to make their ignorance conspicuous.

Now, to any real student of the subject, it is evident that both in French and in English the most conservative of courses has been contemplated and taken, so far as any change in orthography has been recommended. No attempt has been made to introduce phonetic spelling. Any intention of that sort has been distinctly disclaimed by those among us who have set the reform on foot. Yet it is a charge from which they have been unable to escape. One of the most striking as well as most entertaining features of the controversy that went on was the persistent assertion of those concerned in the movement, that they had no design or desire to introduce phonetic spelling; and the equally persistent assertion of their assailants that it was the very thing they were aiming to introduce. One side laid down precisely what it sought to do. The other side denounced it for doing the very thing it disclaimed doing. One side declared that it purposely limited its efforts to the removal of some of the anomalies in our present orthography, and the obstacles put by these in the way of its acquisition. The other employed two methods of attack: on the one hand, it inveighed against its opponents for going as far as they did; on the other, it reproached them for their inconsistency in not going further.

Any one who has the slightest conception of what a reform of our spelling on pure phonetic principles means will absolve those now urging reform from putting forward any scheme of that sort. It requires, indeed, a singular innocence of all knowledge of this particular subject to make such a charge. Certain changes recommended would, indeed, have brought particular words nearer a phonetic standard. But if everything proposed were to be universally adopted—and even ten times more—the real disease which afflicts our orthography would be but partially alleviated. It would do little more than set us on the road to a thorough-going reform. No one, indeed, who comprehends what is required, in a language so lawless as ours, to bring about a perfect accordance between orthography and orthoepy, is ever likely to underrate the difficulties which stand in the way of the establishment of phonetic spelling, even were men as eager for its adoption as they are now hostile to it. In the present state of feeling, therefore, no one need distress himself about its immediate coming.

But why should any one distress himself at all? Little is there more extraordinary to witness in these days of assumed general enlightenment than the horror which many estimable persons seem to feel at the danger of being devoured by this dreadful ogre which they call phonetic spelling. They have no idea what it is, but they know from its name that it must be something frightful. Now, written language was designed to be phonetic. Its intention, however incomplete its realization, was to represent invariably the same sound by the same letter or by the same combination of letters. This idea lies at the root of the conception of the alphabet; otherwise the alphabet would have had no reason for its existence. To picture to the eye the sound which has fallen upon the ear, so that it should never be mistaken for anything else, was the problem that presented itself to the man or men who devised that invention which, imperfect as it is, still remains the greatest and most useful to which the human mind has given birth. To represent a sound by one character in one place and by another in another would have seemed to them as absurd as it would to a painter to have the figure of a horse stand for a horse in one picture, and in another picture for a different animal. Of course, in this comparison the symbol is in one case real, and in the other arbitrary; but the underlying principle is the same.

So far as the original invention of the alphabet failed to secure the individual representation of every sound then used, the invention was itself incomplete and imperfect. So far, again, as the characters of the alphabet have been diverted from their original design of representing particular sounds, it is not an application of the invention, but a perversion of it to inferior purposes, and to purposes for which it is not really fitted. One general statement applicable to all languages can be safely made. So far as written speech deviates from the phonetic standard, it fails to fulfil the object for which it was created. It shows to what an extent the English race has wandered away in feeling and opinion from the original motives which led men to seek the representation of the spoken word by written characters, that its members have come to look upon the perfect accordance of orthography and orthoepy as a result, not merely impracticable—which is a thoroughly defensible proposition—but as something in itself undesirable, as something fraught with ruin to the speech itself. The written word was devised to suggest the sound of the spoken word. Yet this ideal is more than discredited with us; it is treated as if it were in some way peculiarly monstrous. Yet all there is of value in our existing orthography is due to what still survives of the phonetic element. This is a condition of things which will be brought out fully when the orthographic situation comes to be considered.

The real life of a language consists in its sounds, not in the signs intended to represent them. The one is the soul of speech; the other can hardly be considered a necessary bodily framework, for the former could and does exist without the latter. In earlier times, when language was learned almost exclusively by the ear, this fact would naturally force itself upon the attention of every reflecting man. But with the spread of education, when acquaintance with a tongue is acquired largely through the eye, the knowledge of the symbolic representation of sounds has come to predominate in the minds of the men of our race over the knowledge of the sounds themselves. While all of us are familiar with the one, but few are with the other. Ask any person of ordinary attainments the number of letters in the English alphabet. He will unhesitatingly answer twenty-six; though the chances are that he will be ignorant of the fact that some of the twenty-six are really supernumerary. But extend the inquiry further. Go with it to the vast body of educated men, excluding those whose pursuits require of them more or less the study of phonetics. These being excepted, ask any single person belonging to the most highly cultivated class—opponents of spelling reform to be preferred—how many are the sounds which the letters of the alphabet and their combinations are called upon to represent. Ask him how many are the sounds which he is in the habit of employing himself in his own utterance. The chances are fifty to one that he will be utterly at a loss what to reply. He has learned the symbols of things; he has not learned the things themselves.

That this should be so in the case of our own tongue is not particularly surprising. It is, perhaps, inevitable. The attention of the men of our race has been more than distracted from any consideration of the subject by the character of our orthography. Their minds have been thrown into a state of bewilderment. As a single illustration, take the representation of the sound usually termed “long i.” This third so-called vowel of our alphabet is not really a vowel, but a diphthong. Its sound is most commonly represented by the single letter itself, seen, for instance, in such a word as mind. But some idea of the uncertainty and range attending its use, with the consequent perplexity to its users, can be gathered from a few selected examples. It is represented by ai in aisle; by ay in aye; by ei in height; by ey in eye; by ie in lie; by oi in choir; by uy in buy; by y in try; and by ye in dye. Or, reverse the operation, and see how many sounds the same sign can represent. Take the combination ou, and observe the differences of its pronunciation in the words about, young, youth, four, fought, would, and cough.

English orthography, therefore, instead of teaching the English-speaking man the knowledge and distinction of sounds, takes the speediest and most effectual means of preventing his attaining any such knowledge. It not merely fails to call his attention to it, it forces him to disregard it, to look upon it as an element not properly to be considered. He does not come to forget, he has never learned to know that there is a particular value that belongs or ought to belong to any vowel or combination of vowels. When he grows up, he is naturally ready to despise what he is unable to comprehend. The educated class has with us come generally to look upon the alphabet as a mere mechanical contrivance. They have so largely lost sight of the object for which it exists, that in many cases they are almost disposed to resent the proposition that they should employ it for the purposes for which it was created. It would be thinking too meanly of human nature to believe that men would delight in this condition of things did they once come fully to appreciate it. But to that point few of them ever arrive. Accordingly, ignorance of the real evil disposes them to look with distrust upon any attempt to remedy it.

In truth, as a consequence of the confusion which exists in the written speech, the English race, as a race, has no acquaintance whatever with sounds. It has largely lost the phonetic sense. One whole important domain of knowledge, which ought to have come to it through the spelling, has entirely disappeared from recognition without their being aware of it. Examples of the prevalent lack of any conception of the distinction of sounds and of their proper representation are brought constantly to the attention of those engaged in the work of instruction. But the comments and communications which appear in the course of any controversy on spelling reform, especially those intended to be satirical, furnish the most striking illustrations of this all-prevailing, all-pervading ignorance. There is rarely furnished a more edifying spectacle than the attempt made, in some cases by men of very genuine ability, to write what they call phonetically. In every discussion there are sure to come up with unfailing regularity certain examples that indicate the density of the darkness in which the minds of men are enveloped. Several years ago a series of articles appeared in a Western periodical attacking the reform of the orthography. In one of them occurred this observation: “We are asked,” said the author, “to spell are without the e, because the letter is not pronounced. Very well: then drop the a, for that is not pronounced either.” In the same spirit the writer went on to say that fanatical advocates of change should denote the words see and sea simply by c—“spelling only the letter sounded.”