Now, what kind of a school system have we in the United States? Here, as in Switzerland, there is no general or national system of school instruction. Each State regulates its own schools in all details. In 1870 the total school population, excluding the Territories, in the United States was 14,093,778; the number actually enrolled in the public schools was 8,881,848, or 63 per cent. of the whole; and the average daily attendance upon the public schools was 4,886,289, or a little over 34-1/2 per cent. of the school population. An inclusion of the Territories in the computation does not vary the percentage in any appreciable degree. In the Northern States only, excluding the Territories, and excluding also Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose returns I have not at hand, there were 8,364,841 school population, while the average daily attendance was only 3,720,133, a trifle over 44 per cent.
In the United States there is practically no compulsory attendance upon school. Schools are provided by the State, and the children attend or refrain from attendance as suits the convenience or wish of the pupils or their parents. That compulsory attendance upon school is productive of a wider and more thorough diffusion of knowledge is probably conceded by all. At least, educators so urge. What would Professor March have? Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. Shall we give no credit to compulsory systems of education, and still insist that the illiteracy of the United States is caused in any appreciable degree by the "difficulties of English spelling"?
Early in 1879, Professor Edward North assured us that the Italians and Spaniards have discarded ph for f in philosophy and its fellows. Professor March gleefully records that "the Italians, like the Spaniards, have returned to f. They write and print filosofia" for philosophia, and tisica for phthisica. Professor Lounsbury, in his elaborate articles in Scribner lately, commends the Italians for writing tisico and the Spaniards for writing tisica. These of course are commendations of those peoples for the simplicity of their orthography, and they are mentioned as worthy examples for us. Yet we are not advised by either of the three professors named that the Italians and Spaniards are for that reason gaining upon the English people in intelligence, educational progress and culture. No statistics are advanced disclosing the narrow percentage of illiteracy found in Italy and Spain, and a comparison made between that narrow percentage and the wide percentage already advertised as existing in English-speaking states. If "the difficulties of English spelling" be a serious cause of illiteracy in England and the United States, the simplicity of the Italian and Spanish spelling ought to be a cause of high proficiency in literary and educational attainments among the people of Italy and Spain. A commendation of those two nations for their taste in discarding "Greek orthography" to be effective ought to be supplemented with some evidence of the usefulness of that operation. Unless so supplemented, the commendation can have no weight as an argument. The Anglo-Saxon race has not been accustomed to follow the Latins in literary and educational matters. The past and present condition of those two countries affords no guarantee that their adoption of the so-called simpler spelling is commendable. There are persons whose corroboration of a statement adds no weight to it with their neighbors. It adds no force to the arguments of the "reformers" that the Italians and Spaniards endorse them.
The demand for "spelling reform" is based upon the assumption that the pronunciation constitutes the word—in other words, that the real word is the breath by means of which it is uttered. In the word wished philologists assure us that the letters e d are remains of did, as if it were written did wish; and it certainly has that sense. It is proposed to substitute t for the ed, because, we are told by the "reformers," the t represents the sound given to those two letters. Of course the t stands for nothing: it does not represent any idea. It is only a character, and its pronunciation only a breath, without any significance. The new word cannot mean did wish. The "reformers" must contend that wisht is the real word, or their position cannot be maintained for an instant. If the word still remains wished—"did wish"—though pronounced wisht, their proposition to conform the spelling to the pronunciation is laughable. There can be no conformation and the old words remain. Whenever a change is made in a single letter of a word, the word is broken: it is no longer the same word. The new form becomes a new word, and there can be no objection to any one giving to it any significance he chooses. In a certain sense, and also to a certain extent, letters are representative, and are not the real words. Before the arts of writing and printing were invented the sound of course constituted the representative of the idea sought to be conveyed. The invention of the arts of writing and printing brought into use other representatives of ideas. The cuneiform characters and the hieroglyphics were representatives of ideas, though there could be no pronunciation of them. Letters came into use as representatives merely. In an age of printing it is hardly correct to say that they are only used to signify sounds. They are now more than that: they have become more important than the sounds even. They are now representatives of ideas, and not of sound. Modifications of pronunciation are taking place, and there are variations in the pronunciation of many words, but the word as written and printed is the arbiter.
In the Sanscrit we find the verb kan to see, and the later word gna, to know, as the result of seeing. The words are practically spelled alike, each beginning with a guttural sound. The latter could only have, at first, the idea of acquiring or possessing knowledge by sight. It is evident that the Greek γιγνωσχω and the Latin gnosco came directly from the Sanscrit gna, after the vowel between the guttural g, or k and n, had been eliminated; and it is also evident that the g, or guttural sound, with which gna and its Greek and Latin children began, was vocalized. The other branch of the Aryan family retained the vowel between the guttural sound and the terminal n. Hence we have the Gothic kunnan, kænna, Anglo-Saxon cunnan, German kennen, to examine, to know. Hence, also, our can, to know, to be able; cunning, knowing, skilful; and know, to perceive, to have knowledge of. While we pronounce know without the guttural sound, the word itself and the significance it embodies necessitate the continued use of the k. The sound of know, as we use it, gives no idea of sight or of knowledge or of ability. When we hear it articulated, and we understand that know is the word meant, we then recognize the sense intended to be conveyed. We are able to do this because of our ability to construct and give arbitrary significance to new words, and to transfer the sense of an old word to one newly formed. When any word is used in speech of which the pronunciation does not correspond with the letters with which the word is written, we instinctively image the written or printed word in the mind, and others apprehend the sense intended. I am aware of a certain answer that may be made to this—namely, that illiterate persons are able to understand a word only from its sound as it falls on their ears; but I am speaking now of a civilized language as used by a civilized people, and illiterates and their language do not come under this purview.
The movement inaugurated by Professor March and his associates contemplates the displacement of the k or guttural sound from know and knowledge, both in writing and speaking. They say, in effect, if not in so many words, that because there is no guttural sound in the pronunciation, therefore there is none in the word. Some people say again, pronouncing the word as it is spelled: others say agen, as, I believe, Professor March does. These two classes mean the same thing, but it is quite evident that they do not say the same thing. Ai cannot be the equivalent of e. To so hold would be to make "confusion worse confounded" in English orthography. By one class of literary people neither is pronounced as though the e were absent, and by another class as though the i were not present. No one, I think, will contend for the identity, or even equivalence, of i and e. If not identical or equivalent, they must be different. If ai is different from e, then again and agen cannot be the same word, and if i and e are neither identical nor equivalent, nither and neether are two different words. The logic of the "reformers" would bring the utmost confusion into the language. It would make two separate words identical in significance. It would make into one word with four different meanings the four words right, rite, write, wright. The words signet and signature are formed from the stem sign, and yet the stem when standing alone has a different vocalization from what it has when used in the derivative words. By the logic of the "reformers" the word sign when used alone is not the same as the same letters, arranged in the same order, when used in signature, signet, resignation and the like. The word is changed, but the original significance remains. When a person responds, even in writing, "It is me," grammarians say he is incorrect—that he ought to say "I." But he means the person and thing he would mean if he said "I." He simply spells "I" in a different way. Is he not just as correct as he who writes no when he means know? or he who writes filosofer when he means philosopher?
But Professor March dogmatically says that "fonetic spelling does not mean that every one is to write as he pronounces or as he thinks he pronounces. There ar all sorts of people. We must hav something else written than 'confessions of provincials.'" This may be understood as modifying the idea expressed earlier in the same paper, that the proper function of writing "is truthfully to represent the present speech." But the difficulties to be encountered in an effort to make the present speech homogeneous will baffle the wisdom of the reformers. I will not answer the question now—I will only ask it: What is the present speech? Who is to determine that? "The scholars formally recognize that there is and ought to be a standard speech and standard writing." I do not quite seize the idea embodied in the above-quoted sentences about writing as we think we pronounce and about "confessions of provincials." We may agree that there ought to be, probably, a standard speech, both spoken and written. That we have the standard written speech must be confessed, or did have until Professor March and his colaborers began the publication of their ideas in "bad spelling." The spoken speech is far from homogeneity. Some of the most pretentious scholars assume that we have a standard of pronunciation. That the standard is not adhered to, and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, no standard at all, is evident. The learned or college-bred use one pronunciation, and for that class that is the standard. Those who are deficient in education do not follow that standard. As the educated seem to drift naturally to centres of population, there is assumed to be a city standard and a country standard of pronunciation. The professor tells us that the country standard must be abolished, the city standard adopted, and then the new era will open out in beauty. Or does he mean, as his words are open to this meaning, that a spoken word is not the word unless it is spoken in accordance with the city or college-bred standard? But sound is sound, by whomsoever uttered, and if the word is mere sound a provincial can make words as well as any one else. The proposition is, the word is the word spoken and not the word written, unless the word is spoken by a provincial. To be the word, it must be intoned and articulated in accordance with the intonation and articulation of the literati. If this is the logical outcome of the position taken by the "spelling reformers," then we know our soundings.
We speak of progress in connection with intellectual, moral, religious, social and political matters and civilization. In the use of the word we discard its true meaning, "stepping forward" in a physical sense. We cannot have an idea that the mind or the morals or the manners take steps. So when we say we will consider a matter we do not necessarily mean that two or more of us will sit together about the matter. When we meet for deliberation there is no process of weighing intended, no proposal to use the scales, in arriving at a conclusion in the matter we have in mind. We say "stepping forward," "sitting together" and "weighing," but we mean something else. When Professor Whitney, in the quotation I have given in the early part of this paper, says of the spelling conservatives, "They know best their own infirmity of back," he has no idea that the back has anything to do with their refusal to follow him in his chimerical ramble after an ideal orthography. When Professor March, in the paper from which I have quoted, says that "a host of scholars are pursuing the historical study of the English language," he means something more than, and different from, what his words indicate, and he certainly doesn't mean what his words do indicate. The matter of pursuit is altogether one of physics. These words of an intellectual significance which I have noted are so used because we have no words in our language which have meanings such as those we attach to them. We are obliged to take words of a physical and material significance and use them as intimations of the sense we wish to convey. As men take a material substance—gold, silver, ivory, wood or stone—and use it as an image or symbol of the deity they worship, so we use words of a material sense to express, in some faint degree, the intellectual and moral ideas we desire to disclose.
The bald statement, expressed or implied, that the sounds we produce in our attempts to utter a word constitute the true word, requires some material modification, but to what extent it is not for me now to discuss. When that necessity for modification is admitted by the reformers, it is for them to survey its limits. They are the aggressors in the contest that is precipitated. They must outline and define their own case.
There are many considerations favorable to a modification of the present spelling of several classes of words. A reform is needed, and must come, but it will not come, and ought not to come, with the character and to the extent desired by the "reformers." A reform that shall make the spelling better, and not merely make it over, should be aided by all admirers of the English language. The just limitations of that reform have not been indicated yet by any of the "reformers." That those limitations will soon be surveyed and marked I do not doubt.