All this was checked and finally reversed by the introduction of printing. Far higher requirements, as has been intimated, were needed in the work of the copyist than in the mere mechanical labor of the type-setter. The former had to understand his author to represent correctly what he said. But there is no such necessity in the case of the compositor. Whatever intellect he may have, he will not be called upon to use it to any great extent in his special line of activity. His duty is done if he faithfully follows copy, and he can perform his work well in a language of which he does not comprehend a word. His labor is and must always be mostly mechanical. The very fact that he is not responsible for results will inevitably have a tendency to make him careless in details. The blunders in spelling, and in greater matters still, shown in modern printing-offices where the most scrupulous care is exerted to attain correctness are familiar to all. These evils would be immensely increased at a period when no such extensive precautions against error were taken in any case, and when in some cases it would seem as if no precautions were taken at all. The effects of the carelessness and indifference that frequently prevailed would not be and were not confined to the work in which they were directly manifested. The orthography of printed matter necessarily reacts upon the orthography of the men who are familiar with it. These, when they come to write, will be apt to repeat the errors they have learned from the books they read. With that peculiar ability in blundering shown by all careless spellers, they will further contribute numberless variations of their own. These in turn will be followed more or less by the type-setter. Thus, new forms will be constantly added to the prevailing disorder. In this manner a complete circle is formed in which author and printer corrupt each other, and both together corrupt the public.
Such was, in great measure, the situation of things in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Differences of spelling in the same book and on the same page were found constantly. But necessarily it was a situation which could not continue. To a printing-office, uniformity of orthography, if not absolutely essential, is, to say the least, highly desirable. Toward uniformity, therefore, the printing-offices steadily bent their aim, since nobody and nothing else would. The movement in that direction was powerfully helped forward by the feeling, which had been steadily gaining strength after the revival of classical learning, that the office, or at least one great office, of orthography is to indicate derivation. Belief in this involved in its very nature the notion of fixedness of spelling. It therefore gave the sanction of a quasi-scholarship to the demand for an unvarying standard which came from a mechanic art. Under the pressing needs of the printing-office, the movement toward uniformity made steady progress during the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. Wide variations continued to be found in works bearing the imprint of different establishments. We must remember that there were then no dictionaries that men were disposed to consider authoritative. It was not until the eighteenth century that these began to exist on any scale worth mentioning, or that much respect was paid to the spellings they sanctioned. Each printing-office was largely a law unto itself.
But the desire for uniformity became more insistent as time went on. At last it succeeded in reaching the end it had in view. But unfortunately for us, the establishment of the orthography was in no way the work of scholars, though this was largely a result of their own indolence and indifference. It came into the hands of men who knew nothing about it and cared still less. In consequence, it was a haphazard orthography that was fixed upon us. In the selections made by compositors and proofreaders from the variations of spelling which then prevailed, it was the merest accident or the blindest caprice that dictated the choice of the form to be permanently adopted. Authors themselves seem rarely to have taken any interest in the matter. The uniformity, or the approach to uniformity, we have now was accordingly the work of printers and not of scholars. As might be expected, the result of it is a mere conventional uniformity. In no sense of the word is it a scientific one. In effecting it, propriety was disregarded, etymology was perverted, and every principle of orthoepy defied. Men of culture blindly followed in the wake of a movement which they had not the power and probably not the knowledge to direct. Certainly they lacked the disposition. To the orthography thus manufactured Johnson’s Dictionary, which came out in 1755, gave authority, gave currency—gave, in fact, universality. But it could not give consistency nor reason, for in it they were not to be found.
As a consequence of the wide acceptance of this orthography, the petrifaction of the written speech which had been steadily going on for at least two centuries was now practically made complete. So far as the forms of the words were concerned, it assumed more and more the character of a dead language. But in the meanwhile the spoken tongue remained full of vigor and life. As a necessary consequence, it was constantly undergoing modification. While the spelling stood still, changes in pronunciation were numerous and rapid. Whether they were for the better or for the worse is not pertinent to this inquiry. But the inevitable result was to widen steadily the gulf that had long before begun to disclose itself as existing between the written and the spoken word. That result is before us. No particular value having been attached to any vowel or combination of vowels, there is nothing to determine the exact value they should have when they appear in a particular syllable. For the pronunciation we go not necessarily to the word itself but to somewhere else. Every member of the English race has to learn two languages, every member of the English race uses two languages. The one he reads and writes; the other he speaks.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary, revised by B. H. Smart, 5th edition, London, 1857, p. xxiii., sec. 119.
CHAPTER VI
OBJECTIONS, REAL AND REPUTED
Two languages, it has just been said, we have: one we write, and one we speak. To bring them even remotely into conformity is one of the hardest problems to solve that was ever put before the users of any tongue. It is manifest from the survey which was made of the orthographic situation, that the difficulties which stand in the way of reforming English spelling are not the difficulties which are ordinarily paraded. There are arguments against any change whatever. They do not seem to me strong ones, but they are honestly held. Furthermore, they are held by men who know too much about the language to be imposed upon by the cheap objections, which come from the unknowing or the unthinking. The only one of serious importance is the existence of that period of uncertainty and confusion which must attend the transition from the old to the new. This, to be sure, has always existed to some extent. Once it existed to a great extent. It exists at the present day. The introductions or appendixes to our larger dictionaries contain lists of from fifteen hundred to two thousand words which still continue to be spelled in different ways. But many of these are not in common use. Hence, the number of them makes little impression upon the common mind.
But as no reform of any kind ever yet proved an unmixed blessing, so will not reform of English orthography. Especially will this be true of it at its introduction. A change of spelling on any large scale will involve for the time being certain disadvantages. The conflict between the old that is going out and the new that is coming in cannot fail to produce more or less of annoyance. These disturbances, indeed, last only for a time; but to some they are very real while they do last. Those of us who believe that the permanent benefits accruing to the users of our tongue from a reform of our orthography outweigh immensely the temporary inconveniences and annoyances to which they will be subject, can well afford to bear with the hesitation of those who like the end in view, but dislike the time and toil that must be gone through in order to reach it. There must always be taken into consideration the existence of a class of persons who look upon the present state of our orthography as an evil, but an evil that cannot be got rid of without costing more than the benefits received in return.
But such reasons for reluctance to unsettle the existing condition of things are widely different from the pretentious objections that are regularly advanced by those who have not studied the subject sufficiently to understand the real difficulties that lie in the way. Yet these imaginary obstacles loom up so large in the minds of many that they must receive a respectable amount of consideration, even if they are hardly entitled to respectful consideration. It is not for any value they have in themselves that they are discussed here. It is because they are constantly urged by men whose opinions on other subjects are frequently of highest value. The utter hollowness of these common objections to spelling reform will be shown in the course of the following pages, as well as the unconscious insincerity of those advancing them. I say unconscious, because the insincerity has not been caused by any attempt to ignore the facts or to conceal them. It is simply that these have never occurred to them. But I further say insincerity, because the moment the real facts are brought to their attention, they refuse to apply to particular cases the general principles upon which they have been loudly insisting. The further great difficulty in dealing with the honest objector does not consist merely in showing him that he is wrong in his facts. It is to make clear that his reasoning is wrong in the few instances in which his facts are right.