English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

We now reach the digraphs of which the vowel u is the first letter. In a large number of words this has, if pronounced, the sound of w. Especially is this true of syllables upon which no accent falls, or at most a secondary accent. Nothing of this characteristic is seen in the case of uy—in which the diphthongal sound of i is heard in the two words buy and guy—but it is noticeable in the case of the first four vowels. We can see it illustrated by the ua of assuage, persuade, language; by the ue of conquest, request, and desuetude; by the ui of anguish, languish, cuirass; and by the uo of quote, quota, quorum. In this last case the u strictly belongs with q. Of ua, the first of these digraphs, all that needs to be said is that in certain words, such as guard and guardian, the u is not pronounced at all. The same statement can be made of ue in guess, guest, guerdon. It is as useless as it is silent. A plea has been put forth in justification of its existence on the theory that it acts as a sort of servile instrument to protect the hard sound of g. If this digraph were invariably so employed, it may be conceded that there would be some sense in its existence. But he who expects to find either sense or consistency in English orthography has strayed beyond the limits of justifiable ignorance. There is a large number of instances in which the consonant g continues to exhibit its hard sound when followed directly by e. Get and geese and gewgaw and eager and anger are a few of the words which could be adduced to show that there has never been felt any necessity of the presence of a protecting u to indicate this pronunciation.

When at the end of a word the digraph ue has often the sound of long u, as in blue, pursue, true, and rue. But no small number of instances occur in which it is entirely silent. This is especially noticeable in words derived from the Greek which have the final syllables logue or gogue. Catalogue, prologue, dialogue, demagogue, pedagogue, and synagogue will serve as examples. But the list of words in which this digraph is silent is far from being confined to those with these two terminations. Antique, oblique, intrigue, colleague, fatigue, rogue, and plague will testify to the uselessness of it as far as pronunciation is concerned, unless it be maintained that it justifies its existence by indicating that the preceding vowel has a long sound. If this be true, it ought not to appear when the vowel is short. One sees so much of the results of freak and wantonness in our spelling that it is permissible to cherish the fancy that any intelligent principle has been sometime somewhere at work in it, and that a feeling of this kind was the unconscious motive that led to the adoption of packet in place of pacquet and of lackey for lacquey; at any rate, of risk for the once prevalent risque and of check for cheque. But no such reason can be assigned for the ue of tongue. Its original was tunge. The final e ceased to be pronounced, and in course of time to be printed. The insertion of a u in the ending, after the fashion of the French langue, was an act of combined ignorance and folly.

The digraph ui follows in general the course of ue. As in the case of the latter the u was found unneeded in guess and guest, so it is equally unnecessary in guide and guile. Here again a not dissimilar sort of defence for it has been set up. Its retention, we are told, is desirable in order to indicate the diphthongal sound of i in these words. The argument is as futile as in the case of the preceding digraph. It illustrates forcibly the capabilities of our spelling in the way of confusing pronunciation that the same combination which is responsible for “long i” in guide and guile and disguise is equally responsible for the short i of guilt, guinea, and build. With the statement that ui has still another sound in such words as fruit, bruise, and recruit, we leave the consideration of the vowels and vowel sounds. But after the survey of the subject which has just been made, no one is likely to pretend that the pronunciation he hears of any one of these in a strange word will furnish him the least surety that he will be able to reproduce its authorized form in writing.

V
THE CONSONANTS

So much for the vowels. When we come to the consonants we are approaching much more solid phonetic ground. In a general way, they have remained faithful to the sounds they were created to indicate. Not but that here also there is need of reform. This will be made sufficiently manifest when details are given in the case of individual letters. But the disorganization of the consonant-system is slight compared with that of the vowel-system. There is, indeed, a fundamental difference between the two. With the vowels conformity to any phonetic law whatever is the exception and not the rule. With the consonants the reverse is the case. Fortunate it is for the English-speaking race that such is the fact. Were it otherwise, were there with the consonants the same degree of irregularity which exists with the vowels, the same degree of variableness in the representation of sounds, the same widely prevalent indifference to analogy, knowledge of English spelling would not be delayed, as it is now, for no more than two or three years beyond the normal time of its acquisition; it would be the work of a lifetime. Mastery of it, under existing conditions never fully gained by some, would in such circumstances never be acquired by anybody who learned anything else.

There is one pervading characteristic of the consonants which differentiates their position in the orthography from that of the vowels. Wherever they appear they have ordinarily the pronunciation which is theirs by right. Ordinarily, not invariably. There are exceptions that demand full discussion. Still, the usual way in which consonants vary from the phonetic standard is not by being pronounced differently but by not being pronounced at all. In some instances the useless letter represents the derivation; in others it defies it. They have been retained in the spelling, though never pronounced, either because they are found in the primitive from which they came; or they have been introduced into it under the influence of a false analogy, or as a consequence of a false derivation. In any reform of the orthography it may not be desirable in some cases to drop—at all events at the outset—these now silent letters. It assuredly would not be so wherever the tendency manifests itself to resume them in pronunciation.

There are four of the consonants which practically do not vary from phonetic law. They are never silent; they always indicate the precise pronunciation which they purport to indicate. In the case of two of them there is in each a single instance in which the rule does not hold good. In the preposition of, f has the sound of v. In the matter of inflection the temptation to retain this letter in spite of the change of sound has been successfully resisted. So we very properly say calves and wolves instead of calfs and wolfs, though this course exhibits what some must feel to be a scandalous tendency toward phonetic spelling. The other letter is m. The only exception to its regular pronunciation is found in the word sometimes spelled comptroller. Here it has the sound of n. But this has already been pointed out as a well-known spurious form based upon a spurious derivation. Its first syllable was supposed to come from the French compter and not from its real original, the Latin contra. The affection for this corrupt form now felt by some is in curious contrast with the attitude taken toward count both as a verb and a noun. These words were once often spelled like the corresponding French compte and compter. There was justification for this. They all came from the remote Latin original computare, in which the p is found. Naturally this particular spelling was especially prevalent in the sixteenth century, when derivation ran rampant in the orthography; but the practice extended much later. Had compt continued in use and fastened itself upon the language, we can imagine, but we cannot adequately express, the indignation that would now be felt by many worthy people at the proposal of any reformer to substitute for it count, and the picture of ruin to the speech that would be drawn as a result of such a wanton defiance of the derivation.

Let us now consider the unpronounced consonants. In the remote past such letters when no longer wanted were regularly dropped. Now they are as regularly retained. They are retained not because they are needed, but because they have become familiar to the eye. They naturally fall into three classes, according as they appear at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of a word. To the first class belong g and k when followed by n; w followed by ho or by r; and the aspirate h. The failure to pronounce this last in certain words is too well known to need here more than a reference. Elsewhere, too, I have given an account of the gradual resumption of the sound of this letter.[23]

There are about half a dozen words in which an initial g is silent. Of these gnaw and gnat may be taken as examples. There are more than double this number in which an initial k before the same letter n is not heard. These are adequately represented, with the different vowels following, by knave, knee, knife, know, and knuckle. Still more frequently unsounded is an initial w. There are fully two dozen and a half of words in which this letter is not pronounced. The class finds satisfactory exemplification in who, whole, wrap, wrest, wrist, wrong, and wry. In making up these numbers it must be kept in mind that neither derivatives nor compounds are taken into account. Were such to be included, the list would be largely swelled.

In the cases just considered a letter once sounded has disappeared from the spoken tongue. The fact of its disappearance from pronunciation has not, however, induced men, as was once the practice, to discard it from the written tongue. But there are instances in which the initial consonant has never been heard at all in the utterance of any speakers. The words to which they belong are of foreign origin. They come to us with the foreign spelling. In many cases, or rather in most, they are from the Greek. The conspicuous examples are the c of czar, now frequently spelled tsar with the t sounded, the p of psalm and pseudo and of several compounds in which the psi of the Hellenic alphabet furnishes the initial letter. The same uselessness extends to ph—seen, for illustration, in the form phthisic—and to the p of words of Greek origin beginning with pt. It may be remarked in passing that there is a curious blunder in the spelling of the name of the bird called the ptarmigan. This is a pure Celtic word, which begins with t. To it a p was prefixed, possibly because it was supposed to be of Greek origin.