15. Lastly, teachers (particularly male teachers) require to be warned against shouting; this only tires them and irritates the nerves of their pupils, while the same object can be achieved by careful articulation. Where it is used "to keep the class in order," the teacher should earnestly consider how it is that others can keep order without shouting; usually his difficulties in maintaining discipline are due to ill-health, overstrain, or general incapacity.
When the throat is relaxed, a gargle with some astringent will be found a simple remedy; a solution of alum in water may be recommended for this purpose, or a bit of borax may be held in the cheek.
16. From a very early time the attempt has been made to represent the spoken language by means of signs. Picture writing is a primitive and clumsy expedient. It was a great step forward when signs were used to represent syllables, a still further improvement when a separate sign was used for each separate sound.
At first writing was roughly phonetic, in other words, one sign was intended to represent one sound (or set of sounds), and one only; and this is still what is required of an ideal alphabet. It is a commonplace remark that the English alphabet largely fails to fulfil this requirement. The same sign represents different sounds (sign, sure, easy); the same sound is represented by different signs (catch, kill, queen, lack). Some signs are superfluous (c, x); sometimes a sound is written, but not pronounced (lamb, knee); sometimes two signs, which separately express two sounds, when used together designate a third sound altogether different from these two (ch in chat and rich).
17. How are we to explain this bewildering state of things?
It is due to two causes—the natural development of the language, and the pedantic interference of the learned.
Language is constantly changing. The rate of change is not perhaps always the same, but change there always is. As we have seen above, the older generation and the younger do not speak exactly alike. Now the changes in the spoken language are gradual, and quite unconscious; but a change in the recognised spelling of words is something tangible. It conflicts with a habit we have acquired.
In mediæval times, when there was no printing, no daily paper, no universal compulsory education, there was a good deal of freedom in the spelling, and people wrote very much as they pleased—phonetically, if they were not spoilt by "a little knowledge." But the invention of printing and the dissemination of learning changed all this. A uniform spelling came to be recognised; the nation acquired the habit of regarding it as correct, and would tolerate no deviation from it. Though it represents the pronunciation of a former age, we still use it; and we are quite upset when we read the spellings labor, center, therefor, nay even when two words are, contrary to our usage, run together, as in forever.
When our spelling received its present form not only was the language very differently pronounced, but the pedantic had already been able to wreak their wicked will on it. Thus the "learned" men of mediæval France spelled parfaict, though the c of Latin perfectum had developed into the i of parfait, and they did not pronounce the c which they introduced into the spelling. The word passed into English, and here also the c was at first only written; later on it came to be pronounced. The "learned" similarly introduced a b into the French words douter and dette (because of the Latin dubitare and debita), but had the good sense to drop it; we have it still in doubt and debt, though we leave it unpronounced. In later times we find something similar: the learned force us to spell philosophy with ph and not f. The word comes from Greek through Latin; the Greeks pronounced the ph actually as p plus h at the time when the Romans took to spelling Greek words in their language, and these continued to spell ph even when the Greeks no longer pronounced p plus h, but f, as we do now.