English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

But of these partial reforms, it is the one proposed by Webster that is most familiar to Americans, and perhaps to all English-speaking readers; for the storm which it raised was violent enough at one time to be felt in every land where our tongue was employed. Nor, indeed, has it so completely subsided that occasional mutterings of it are not even yet heard. The Websterian orthography, it is to be remarked, is found only in its primitive, unadulterated purity in the edition of 1828. All the dictionaries bearing other dates than that must be neglected by him who seeks to penetrate to the very well-head of this movement; for the author himself, or his revisers for him, bent before the orthographic gale, and silently struck out in later editions every method of spelling which the popular palate could not be brought to endure or inserted everything which it earnestly craved. No more than those who preceded him did Webster go to work upon correct principles, even when looked at from the point of view of a partial reform. One main defect pervading his plan was that it was an effort to alter the orthography partly according to analogy and partly according to derivation. He could not well do both, for they often conflicted. Furthermore, he was often not consistent in the one and very often not correct in the other.

As far back as 1806 Webster had published an octavo dictionary of the English language. From that time for the next twenty years his attention was mainly directed to the compilation of such a work on a large scale. He soon found it necessary, he tells us, to discard the etymological investigations of his predecessors as being insufficient and untrustworthy. This they largely were, without doubt; but by way of remedying the defect, Webster devoted years to getting up a series of derivations which were more insufficient and untrustworthy still. In the process of doing this he made a study of some twenty languages, and formed a synopsis of the principal words in these, arranged in classes under their primary elements or letters. The results of this study were embodied in the dictionary of 1828, and the orthography was occasionally made to conform to it. Webster took a serene satisfaction in these new spellings; but it was upon his etymology that he prided himself. In his view, it furnished a revelation of the hidden mysteries of language and a solution of the problem of its origin. With his eyes intently fixed upon the tower of Babel, he probably never felt so happy as when he fancied that he had come upon the trace of some English word found in the tongues made use of in the courts of Nimrod or Chedorlaomer.

It is a hard thing to say of a work which has taken up no small part of the lifetime of an earnest student that it is of little value; but there is not the slightest doubt that nearly all of Webster’s supposed philological discoveries were the merest rubbish. Necessarily, inferences based upon them in regard to the proper method of spelling are utterly unworthy of respect. The derivation, indeed, had at last to follow the fate which had overtaken certain portions of the new orthography. Its retention was a little too much for later revisers of the dictionary. These, in the edition of 1864, swept away at one fell swoop into the limbo of forgettable and forgotten things the fruits of twenty years of etymological study. Those conclusions, which in the eyes of the author had given him the key to unlock the hidden secrets of language, are no longer allowed to appear on the pages of the very work which perpetuates his name.

The changes of another sort, based upon analogy, which Webster introduced with the idea of making the spelling of words uniform, were liable to little positive objection. Some of them, in spite of violent opposition, have in this country more than held their own. The consequence is that in the case of a number of words in common use we have two methods of spelling flourishing side by side. This is a state of things which, it seems to me, every one who has the reform of our orthography at heart must contemplate with unqualified satisfaction. Not that Webster’s proposed changes, even had they been universally adopted, would have gone to the real root of the evil. Far from it. At best they merely touch the surface and then only in a few places. But one effect they have produced. They have in some measure prevented us, and do still prevent us, from falling to the dead level of an unreasoning uniformity. By bringing before us two methods of spelling, they keep open the legitimacy of each. They expose to every unprejudiced investigator the utter shallowness of the arguments that are directed against change.

But slight as Webster’s alterations were, they met with the bitterest hostility at the time of their introduction. The love of little things is deeply implanted in the human mind. It is, therefore, perhaps not unnatural that the minor changes in spelling which he proposed should have met with attack far more violent than that directed against his tremendous etymological speculations. This culminated on the publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, which in the matter of orthography followed a more conservative course. A wordy war arose, which lasted for years. Combatants from every quarter leaped at once into the arena. They were easily equipped for the contest, inasmuch as virulence was the main thing required. Intellect was not essential to the discussion, and knowledge would have been a death-blow to it. The war of the dictionaries, as it was called, is therefore of interest to us at this point of time, not for any principle involved in it, but as an illustration, pertinent at the present moment, of how earnestly, and even furiously, men can be got to fight for a cause they do not understand.

There is no doubt, indeed, that Webster laid himself open to attack. Perfect consistency is not to be looked for in this world; but the man who sets out to make a reform in English orthography as contrasted with a reform of English orthography cannot help being inconsistent. He will feel obliged to retain objectionable spellings. He will even feel obliged to authorize some that are inconsistent with his own principles, for the same reason that Moses tolerated divorce. It is the hardness of men’s hearts, clinging to ancient abuses and unwilling to break up old associations, which will force the reformer to accept what he does not approve. Inadvertence, too, will add failures of its own to the contradictions involved in the very incompleteness of the scheme which has been adopted.

Both in respect to analogy and derivation, Webster did not carry out the principles he avowed. There were whole classes of words which he hesitated to change; at least, he did not change them. Of these half-measures, whether due to oversight or to doubt, one illustration will suffice. No man who seeks to make orthography etymologically uniform can have failed to notice the difference of spelling in the case of words derived from the compounds of the Latin cedo. Three end in eed, six in ede. As the digraph ee has practically the same sound always, the former termination seems to me preferable. But laying aside personal opinions in the matter, what sensible reason can be given for writing succeed with ceed and secede with cede? Here was a glaring anomaly which could hardly have failed to escape Webster’s attention. If the principle of analogy met with any consideration, this demanded to be removed, if anything did. But he was unequal to the occasion. In the edition of 1828 he spelled exceed with ceed and accede with cede, which every one does, to be sure, but which he personally had no business to do. In conformity with his avowed views, he was bound to make uniform the orthography of all the words which come from the Latin cedo. As he failed to do this, he subjected himself to the reproach of not having acted in accordance with his own principles.

The truth is that analogical spelling occupied a very subordinate position in Webster’s mind. His work is mainly deserving of notice because, unaided, he chanced in some cases to secure success in spite of virulent opposition. Its chief value, indeed, lies in the fact that it has kept alive a feeling of hostility to the existing orthography of the English tongue; that it has saved many from paying a silly and slavish deference to the opinions of a not very well-informed lexicographer of the eighteenth century and his successors; that in the matter of spelling it has inculcated the belief that there is a test of reason and scholarship to be applied, and not a mere prescription based upon ignorance; and that by these means it has given to some a hope, to others a fear, to all a warning, that however long Philistia may cling to her idols, they will be broken at last.

It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that the feeling about the wretched condition of English orthography has been confined to professional reformers. From almost the very beginning the users of written speech have been conscious of the burden they were carrying. It has certainly lain heavily upon the hearts of many thinking men in the past, and unconsciously, perhaps, on the hearts of all. But this feeling has never been translated into successful action. In truth, men believed themselves hopelessly entangled in a network of anomalies and absurdities which hampered all intelligent proceeding. Out of it they saw no way of escape. This despairing attitude is plainly apparent in the comments of the dramatist Ben Jonson on what he terms our pseudography. In speaking of the digraph ck in certain words, he remarked that it “were better written without the c, if that which we have received for orthography would yet be contented to be altered. But that is an emendation rather to be wished than hoped for, after so long a reign of ill custom amongst us.”

Consent to be altered, the language never did voluntarily. There is nothing more absolutely false than the assertion sometimes made that it has been and still is slowly but steadily reforming the spelling of its own initiative. Of the usage of the past it requires peculiar ignorance—though of that the supply is unlimited—to make an assertion of this sort. Everything of the little which has been accomplished in the way of reform has been gained only after a bitter contest. Undoubtedly there has been a steady tendency to give exclusive recognition to one out of several spellings of a word and thereby produce absolute uniformity. But there has been no disposition to make the spelling better. Not infrequently the worst form has been selected. Any one who takes the trouble to compare the orthography of the seventeenth century with that now prevailing will have frequent occasion to observe how slight has been the tendency toward simplification; that when a choice has lain between different spellings, it is not unusual to have the more unsuitable one preferred; and that, as a consequence, the divergence between orthography and orthoepy has increased instead of diminishing.