English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

Here was a person producing a series of articles on orthography who was so utterly unacquainted with the primary elemental facts of orthoepy as to fancy that the sound of r and of c by themselves is the same as the name we give to those letters; who did not know that the name cannot be pronounced unless a vowel precedes the r in one case and follows the c in the other. Exactly the same examples were adduced in the course of the latest controversy. It is perfectly clear that not one of those who made use of them had the slightest conception of what was essential to convey the representation of a given sound. Any arbitrary symbol, pronounced in a particular way, seemed to them all-sufficient. Their action evinced hardly higher intelligence than would have been shown by considering the word five as phonetically represented by the Arabic numeral 5, which in all languages conveys the same meaning, and in all languages has a different pronunciation. One characteristic there is which denotes most distinctly the infantile state of knowledge that still continues to prevail on the whole subject. By most men any bad spelling is invariably termed phonetic spelling. That is all the idea of the latter they have. The spelling of Chaucer would in their eyes be indistinguishable in character from that of Josh Billings.

More than once have advocates of spelling reform been rebuked for the arrogance manifested by them in their references to the inaccurate assertions and loose thinking which largely make up the chatter of the uninformed on this subject. On the contrary, much of this gabble seems to me to have been treated with singular leniency. Especially has this been the case when it comes from men who have shown knowledge on other subjects and ability in other directions. These have too often missed opportunities, which were fairly obtrusive, of remaining silent on this matter. But no such forbearance is due to the rank and file of the noisy intruders into a controversy they do not understand. There was a writer who gravely informed us that it is an insuperable objection to a change in our orthography, that it would make necessary a new formative period in the history of the language. For fear that the full force of this terrible indictment should be overlooked, he proceeded to put the words containing it in italics. What possible conception could exist in the mind of such an objector as to what constitutes a formative period in the history of a language? Does spelling reform introduce new words? Does it give new meanings to old ones? Does it destroy existing inflections? Does it add any to their number? Does it vary in the slightest the order of words in the sentence? Does it cause the least modification of the least important rule of syntax? A new spelling meaning a new language! Fancy a boy refusing to wash his face, on the ground that if the dirt were removed he would not be the same boy. Fancy a man objecting to putting on a new suit of clothes, on the ground that by so doing he could never be again what he was before; that the integrity of his character and the continuity of his traditions would be destroyed; that he would no longer be the same man to those who had known him and loved him. This is not a travesty of the argument which has been advanced. It is the argument itself, applied not to the dress of the body, but to that of the speech. The men who hold such opinions are really in the same grade of intellectual development as regards language, as in literature are those who fancy that beginning a line with a capital letter is the one essential thing which constitutes poetry.

But of all the educated opponents of spelling reform, I have to confess that the most entertaining to me are women. As devotion to the present orthography is a matter of sentiment and not one of reason, it is perhaps not strange that some of the most violent opponents of the present movement are to be found among the members of that sex with which appeals addressed to the feelings are peculiarly potent. It must not, however, be assumed for a moment that this characterization is meant to apply to all women. On the contrary, among them can be found not only many of the most earnest advocates of reform, but an especially large proportion of the most intelligent and clear-headed. This observation is particularly true of those of them who are connected directly or indirectly with the profession of teaching. To the hands of women, indeed, the business of the instruction of the very young is almost entirely committed. They make themselves familiar with the character of the orthography from the side of both theory and practice. They have, in consequence, forced upon their attention, as have few men, the absurdities and anomalies of our present spelling, the unnecessary and utterly irrational obstacles it puts in the path of the learner; the time and toil which must be spent, or rather wasted, in mastering rules to which the exceptions are as numerous as the examples, and in which exceptions abound to the exceptions. The intelligent among them naturally come to know whereof they speak, and to have decided opinions born of experience and observation.

But experience and observation of this sort have not been forced upon the majority of even educated women. Acquaintance with the real nature of our orthography is not, in their eyes, a matter of intrinsic importance. Accordingly, in the case of those who feel intensely on this subject and exhibit a virulent hostility toward reform of the spelling, we can observe the peculiar mental effervescence which is produced when the maximum of emotion is allowed to operate upon the minimum of knowledge. With them the question is not at all one of argument. It is entirely one of taste, as they regard taste; though occasionally there seems to be an honest even if unfounded belief that arguments have been employed. It is their sensibilities that are outraged, not their reason. I confess to liking the attitude of these opponents of spelling reform, and to receiving gratification from their extremest utterances. They are entirely free from the sham in which men indulge, of pretending to be influenced in their beliefs on this subject by logical principles. Sojourning in that upper rarefied air of sentiment in which common-sense staggers and reason swoons, there is an indefinable charm in the irrationality they display in resolutely ignoring facts they find inconvenient to consider and arguments they disdain to comprehend.

No pleasure, indeed, can be conceived more delightful than in listening to the discussion of this subject by its female opponents. As this is largely a book of personal confessions, I may be permitted to say that I like to hear them talk and to read what they write. They feel about reform of the spelling as did in another way certain of their high-born sisters who have left behind memorials of their experiences when the great cataclysm of the French revolution took place. It was apparently not the scenes of horror and massacre that shocked these scions of noble families; not the victims carted in tumbrils to the guillotine; not the fusillades which swept the streets and stained the pavements with the blood of those who felt fighting for the old régime. Nor was it the question of right or wrong, of relieving oppression, of establishing justice. Not one of these things seems to have made a particular impression upon their minds. What really affected them was something altogether different. The revolution was in such bad taste. Men like Danton and his associates did not behave in a gentlemanly way. They were not really nice. Just so—if we can compare small things with great—is the impression one gets of the attitude of many women who are hostile to the new spellings proposed. Such may be nearer the pronunciation. They may be nearer the derivation or some other old thing for which nobody cares. But these new spellings are not really nice.

This devotion of woman to the fixed orthography is largely a modern sentiment. There was little of it in the past, either in theory or practice. In fact, high position and sex were once largely regarded as entitling those belonging to either to be exempt from orthographic trammels. Richardson represents Charlotte Grandison as describing one of her lovers as “spelling pretty well for a lord.” But in this same particular several of the most noted women in the past have also been defective. There was nothing then of the superstition of the sacredness of the orthography which now prevails. They apparently did not deem it possible to secure the leisure to make themselves as attractive as they wished to be, were they compelled to waste their time in memorizing the exact spelling of words whose forms they had the sense to see exhibited no sense. As time went on their indifference not unfrequently came to disturb those of their lords and masters who were getting to be punctilious on this point. Swift, who in one way or another was always in a state of anxiety about the English language, had frequent occasion to chasten Stella on the subject. “I drink no aile (I suppose you mean ale),” he writes to her under date of September 29, 1710. “Who are these wiggs,” he asks again on October 8, “who think I am turned Tory? Do you mean Whigs?” “Pray, Stella,” he says, in April of the following year, “explain those two words of yours to me, what you mean by Villian and Dainger.” “Rediculous, madam?” he expostulated, on another occasion; “I suppose you mean ridiculous: let me have no more of that; it is the author of the Atlantis’ spelling.”[15] One infers from this remark that the then noted Mrs. Manley was as notorious for the scandalous form in which her words appeared in her manuscript as she was for the scandalous meaning they conveyed when appearing in print.

One could fill page after page with the extraordinary views on spelling reform which have come from men and women of education and sometimes of genuine ability. The controversy, indeed, which has been going on of late has brought out more sharply than ever before the existence of the singular situation which prevails in regard to it. The highly trained expert opinion is practically all on one side; the large preponderance of educated lay opinion is apparently on the other. Several eminent men have taken part in the discussion in opposition to change. But in all their ranks cannot be found a single one who would be recognized by special students of English as entitled to speak with authority. Not a single one of the latter class has come forward in opposition. Some of them are very possibly indifferent; but so far as they have spoken—and many have spoken—they have pronounced in its favor. If there is among them one who entertains hostility, he is sufficiently in awe of his professional brethren to deem it wise to keep his opinion to the sanctity of private intercourse. No applause of the multitude could make up to him for the condemnation that would be his from his peers. By ranging himself among the opponents of spelling reform he would be well aware that he would distinctly lose caste. He would be placed in a dilemma on one of whose two horns he would be impaled. He would be looked upon as guilty either of lack of knowledge or of lack of judgment.

This is a state of things that could not well exist in the case of any other subject than language. Nor, indeed, could it well happen with any other race than the English, where on both sides of the Atlantic ignorance of our tongue and of its history has been sedulously cultivated for centuries. Accordingly, the raggedest of penny-a-liners or the callowest of story-tellers considers himself as much entitled to speak with authority on the subject as he who has devoted years of study to its consideration. Of course, this is a state of things that cannot continue permanently. In the long run the opinions of the few who know will triumph over the clamors of the many who do not know. Indeed, a distinct advance has already been achieved. The subject is no longer treated with indifference. It calls forth hostile criticism, ridicule, vituperation. Furthermore, certain things can no more be said which were once said with smug satisfaction. We are now a long way beyond that provincial faith in Worcester which permitted, fifty years ago, so eminent a man of letters as Oliver Wendell Holmes to remark that Boston had for one of its distinctions “its correct habit of spelling the English language.” In these days an author of his high grade would be saved by his inevitable association with English scholars from perpetrating an observation so singularly crude. Views of such a sort now find their home only in the congenial clime of the remote rural districts. For slow as has been the progress in this matter, it has been steady. In the immediate future it is destined to advance at a much more rapid rate. The leading universities of America are regularly sending out a small body of trained special students of our speech. In the face of this steadily increasing number of experts whose opinions are based upon adequate investigation and full knowledge, sciolists will in time conclude for their own safety to learn a little before they talk much.

Yet, neither now nor in the past has the advocacy of spelling reform been confined to the specialists in English study. It has embraced scholars of all lands who paid attention to our language or to some form of its literature. Long ago Grimm pointed out that the greatest obstacle to the predominating influence of the English tongue was the character of its orthography. But without going so far back, let us select as types of advocates of reform three representative men of the generation which has just passed away. They are Professor Max Müller, of Oxford; Professor Child, of Harvard; and Professor Whitney, of Yale. Of course, these scholars were cranks—“crazy cranks,” if you will. Much learning had made them mad—insanity from that cause being something from which the critics of their orthographical views feel the sense of absolute immunity. Of course, we know further that professors are a simple, guileless folk, constantly imposed upon by arguments whose speciousness is at once seen by the clearer vision of the men engaged in the struggle and turmoil of practical life. To them unhappily has never been given the easy omniscience which is enabled to understand the whole of a subject without mastering a single one of its details. Still, as a member of this unpractical fraternity, and sharing in its intellectual limitations, I cannot get over the impression that there are difficulties connected with English orthography which even the very youngest newspaper writer cannot settle summarily, and questions which he cannot answer satisfactorily offhand.

In truth, the real nature of our spelling and the real difficulties connected with its reformation are not in the least understood by the vast majority of the educated class. Otherwise it would be impossible for men, sometimes of genuine ability, to give public utterance to the views they entertain. One has only to read articles in magazines and communications sent to the newspapers to gain a view both vivid and depressing of the wide-spread ignorance that prevails. It is manifest, indeed, that the nature of these difficulties is not always understood, even by those who are earnest in their desire for reform of some kind. Accordingly, before the subject can be discussed intelligently, some knowledge of the general orthographic situation must be secured. The irrepressible conflict that goes on in our speech between spelling and pronunciation can never be really appreciated, save by him who has mastered a portion at least of the details in which that conflict has reached its highest degree of intensity.