English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

Johnson. Then you would imitate cards of invitation, where we find favor and honor.

Tooke. We find ancestor and author and editor and inventor in the works of Dr. Johnson, who certainly bears no resemblance to a card of invitation. Why can we not place all these words on the same bench?

But fashion comes and goes, while the dictionaries are ever present. As a rule, lexicographers are a timid race of men. They have little disposition to deviate from the paths marked out by their predecessors. Even the revision of Dyche’s work, which appeared toward the end of the eighteenth century, discarded his alternative use of honor, to which it had once given the first place, though at the time itself this usage had become fashionable. So far as I have observed, the only eighteenth-century lexicographer after Johnson who fell in with the current tendency was Ash, whose dictionary first appeared in 1775. He entered separately the two forms of these words, giving, for illustration, honor, color, and labor as “the modern and correct spelling,” and honour, colour, and labour as “the old and usual spelling.” But his action availed little against the agreement of the others; for apparently, with this exception, the dictionaries stood their ground manfully. Their combined authority had necessarily a good deal of effect upon the general practice, especially with that numerous class of men who did not feel themselves familiar enough with the subject to act independently.

At a still later period international prejudice came in to strengthen the disposition in England to stand by the letter u in the comparatively few cases in which it had continued to survive. In America, Webster had thrown out the vowel in all words of this class. In so doing he was followed, half apologetically, by Worcester. Their agreement had the effect of making the practice of dispensing with the u almost universal in this country. One singular result of it was that in time the termination in or instead of our came to be considered an American innovation. To this very day the delusion prevails widely on both sides of the Atlantic that the form of a word which entered the language more than two centuries before America was discovered, which has been in more or less use in every century since its introduction, owed its existence to an American lexicographer. Naturally this was enough to condemn it in the eyes of any self-respecting Englishman. The belief just mentioned has been a very real though unacknowledged reason for retaining in that country the termination in our. Have we not been told again and again in countless English periodicals—quarterlies, monthlies, weeklies—that Britons will never, never tolerate any such hideous monstrosity as the American spelling, honor?

But whatever may have been the causes which brought about, or concurred to bring about, the reaction in this matter which took place in Great Britain, there is no question whatever as to the fact. The tendency, once prevalent and steadily increasing, to drop the u from all the words of this class, as they had been dropped from most, was effectually arrested. Even the lexicographers who could see no sense in the maintenance of this inconsistency in the spelling accepted it while they deplored it. After the passing of Walker, Smart’s remodelling of his dictionary became, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the leading orthographic authority in use in England. The reviser recognized the absurdity of the disagreement which prevailed in the spelling of this class of words. Still, he saw no way of remedying it. In describing his method of dealing with them, he remarked that he might have followed Webster’s course, and adopted throughout the termination or. This clearly struck him as sensible, but he as clearly felt that it would never do. “Such, however,” he wrote, “is not the practice of the day, though some years ago there was a great tendency towards it.” For in the meantime a peculiar regard for these exceptions to the general rule had sprung up among the orthographically uneducated, a class to which most educated men belong. These exceptions were not very numerous. They were all dissyllabic words; for the retention of the u in the polysyllables was too much for even the Anglo-Saxon love of the anomalous. Still, for the comparatively few exceptions which had been saved from the general wreck which had overtaken the our forms, there had begun to display itself that peculiar enthusiastic zeal which always prevails when devotion defies reason. No one assuredly can maintain that the latter quality exists in an orthography which insists upon inserting a u into honor and withholding it from horror.

A few more than thirty words in common use have partially outlived the revolution that has brought the vast majority to the termination in or. They constitute, in consequence, a limited body of exceptions to the general rule. As in every case the spelling of the particular word must be learned by itself, they together contribute an additional perplexity to the existing perplexities of English orthography. In certain cases they are enabled to interpose a further obstacle in the path of the learner. When he comes to the derivatives of several of them which are spelled in our he is called upon to master exceptions to the exceptions. In order to save the language from ruin, he is assured that he must be careful to insert a u in clamor; but when it comes to clamorous, he must be equally careful to leave the u out. The same sort of statement can be made of several other words of this same class. We can pardon laborious from labour. But what excuse can be offered for writing humour and then humorous, odour and then odorous, rancour and then rancorous, rigour and then rigorous, valour and then valorous, vigour and then vigorous? Yet this business of making a still more inextricable muddle out of the already muddled condition of English spelling is held up to us as something essential to the purity and perfection of English speech.

It is assumptions of this sort that are irritating. In an orthography where so much is lawless, there is no need of becoming excited over some particular one of its numerous vagaries. What is offensive in the spelling of honor as honour is not the termination itself, but the reasons paraded for its adoption. A man can cling to the form with u because he has been taught so to spell it, because by constant association he has come to prefer it. To this there may be no objection. But there is distinct objection to his implying, and sometimes asserting, that in so spelling the word he is upholding the purity of the speech. This is to give to his perhaps excusable ignorance the quality of inexcusable impudence. His fancied linguistic virtue is based upon fallacious assumptions which are themselves based upon facts that are false.

Even were the facts true, they would not justify what is inferred from them. The argument for insisting upon the ending our, drawn from derivation, might seem to have been fully disposed of in the account of the introduction of this word into English, and of the various forms which it then assumed. But, in spite of the poet, it is error, not truth, which crushed to earth rises again. Men, presumably of intelligence, continue still to repeat the assertion that the word should be spelled honour because it came from the French honneur. The proclaimers of this view seem honestly to think that the lives of all of us would be irremediably saddened did not the presence of the u in this particular English word remind us of its assumed French original; though the absence of the u in no small number of words with the same termination, and having essentially the same history, does not seem to cause in any of us etymological depression of spirit. But even in this instance deference to derivation manifestly does not go far enough. If we are to write honour because it came from the French honneur, what excuse can be offered for omitting the e? Even more, what excuse can be offered for omitting one of the two n’s? Assuredly there is no sacredness belonging to the vowel which does not attach also to the consonant. The happiness of the devotee of derivation would be still further enhanced by spelling the word honnour; in fact, in the sixteenth century this was occasionally done.

The real objection, however, to this particular argument for the spelling honour is that it has not a particle of truth in it. It is based entirely upon complete ignorance of the facts. Neither honor nor honour was derived from honneur. It is doubtful if that French form existed when honor came into the English language. However that may be, such was not the form in Anglo-French from which the English word descended. In that it was sometimes spelled honor. From it so spelled came our one modern form. In that again it was sometimes spelled honour. From it so spelled came our other modern form. The English word had, therefore, a history independent of the French. Its development took place not on the same but on a parallel line. Under these circumstances there is something peculiarly ridiculous in the assertion so constantly made, that if the u were dropped from honor, the history of the word would be lost.

There still remains to be noticed an objection—the utmost strength of the human imagination cannot well term it an argument—which has been raised against the spelling in or in such words as have succeeded to a certain extent in retaining the u. It is that a change of this sort is certain in some undefined way to ruin the nobler sentiments of the soul. It is conceded that the u contributes nothing to the pronunciation of the word, but it conduces to the edification and spiritual elevation of him who is particular to insert it. It is intimated by such as take this view that it is not those who belong to the cold, proud world who could share in this sentiment or rather sentimentality. Still less would it weigh with those mechanical utilitarians who think it enough to be guided in their spelling by sense and reason. To them no ray of the divine rapture has been imparted which transports the heart of him who finds his whole nature expand at the presence of a u in honor and favor and chilled by its absence. Let no one fancy that this sort of objection is too ridiculous to be advanced seriously. There has not been a discussion of spelling reform in modern times in which it has not been brought forward. In the case of those who have taken part in the latest controversy, I have already expressed my unwillingness to employ that severest form of personal attack which consists in citing their own words. I shall accordingly confine myself here to some remarks of this sort which were made more than a quarter of a century ago. In 1873 a controversy was going on in England as to the proper way of spelling the or, our class of words. In the course of it a correspondent sent to the periodical entitled Notes and Queries a communication which contained the following exalted sentiments: