English Kakography.

Vast and revolutionary as are the changes that the century has seen, a no less remarkable characteristic of the time is the dogged conservatism that has blocked reforms of most pressing necessity. In nearly every sphere the restless spirit of innovation has had free course. Venerable ecclesiasticisms are rapidly disintegrating; the fountains of the political deep are breaking up; social relationships are in a state of flux; scientific systems and art methods have been revolutionized; and a half-educated generation is arising in whom to a large extent the faculty of reverence is a minus quantity. We find one thing only that appears to be held sacred—that is guarded with almost superstitious veneration—and that is what Gladstone has called the « national misfortune » of English Spelling—absolutely the worst system on the face of the earth. It outrages both logic and etymology; ostensibly phonetic, it is as cumbrous and arbitrary as the Chinese system of fifty or sixty thousand ideograms. Within the compass of the English dictionary is grouped every uncouth and obsolete device of representing sounds by graphic symbols that perverted ingenuity has ever devised.

Avoiding such an unnecessarily minute discrimination of vowels as would only tend to confusion, there are in English the thirty-six sounds set forth in the accompanying table. To indicate these, we have twenty-six letters, and as most of these have two and some three distinct forms, they are represented by forty-nine separate characters. Of the twenty-six letters, three consonants are redundant, and two of the vowel characters, i and u, represent diphthongs, leaving a deficiency of letters, as compared with the sounds, of six consonants and nine vowels. Each letter is employed to indicate from two to five sounds; each of the thirty-six sounds is represented in from two to thirty ways—altogether amounting to over two hundred sound-symbols with absolutely no rule for the use of any one of them. The best years of the student's life are wasted in the effort to master this chaotic scheme; and it is pretty safe to say that there is no Englishman, however well educated, who has learned either to spell or to pronounce his mother-tongue aright. What the feelings of a foreigner must be when he becomes involved in the labyrinth of English « orthography, » it would be hard to say. English is the only written language in which spelling and pronunciation have no ascertainable relation to each other, and every lexicographer has to construct a phonetic key to enable the student, with the accepted spelling of the word before his eyes, to learn how to pronounce it.

Reforms have been attempted; but so far without success. It is true that the current spelling is subject to the universal law of slow change. The final k, for example, has been dropped from « music, » « public, » and all the rest of that group of words—save « almanac, » where old-fashioned folk still retain it. Again, the superfluous u is now rarely found in « author, » « error, » or « control, » though many cling to it in « honor » and « labor. » A comparison of the latest editions of the Authorized Version of the Scriptures with the original of 1611 will show that printers have made numerous changes in the orthographic form of the most sacred of all texts: still, at the present rate of change, our spelling would be only very imperfectly reformed in a thousand years. Our language has outgrown its alphabet. We have all manner of devices for economising time and space —we travel by steam and converse by electricity; business letters page 109are dictated to the stenographer and written by machinery—but in all our manuscripts and printed books we still toil under the burden of the most barbarous and irrational system of spelling that has ever existed.

It has been the butt of humorists from time immemorial, but perhaps was never more happily satirized than by the learned Doctor Gregory in his celebrated « leabtor » to the late Mr Ellis in 1846, in which he illustrated the « infignit vareyeety » sanctioned by English orthography. « Ey fompt, » he wrote, « aizz moast peaple dou, thacht ibt wowz ichmposible toeu maic ienney theng ovue thei caumun spealing, frogm thuay toatal wont owf rheulz; soa Hi meighed op meye migned tou discuard orthougrafuy, uand tho spul bey psownd, bute en ai malnor verry differeignt phrom yewrs; eand, Eigh flatour miselph, veiri seauperier thoeu uit. » Every one of the aberrant forms in his long letter was warranted by analogy.

Only two objections to a reform have ever been raised. The first is, that the various spellings show the history of the words,—that, in fact, in mastering English spelling the student insensibly acquires an insight into etymology. This is pure nonsense, and is refuted by such foremost philologists as Max Müller, Skeat, Sayce, and Murray. As often as not, the false spelling tends to conceal the etymology. Witness « sovereign, » « rhyme, » and the once-common « lanthorn » — each of which is an innovation to fit the spelling to a gross etymologic blunder. Take the monstrosity « euchre, » the analogue to « poker » — modern slang from the Far West, grotesquely tricked out in Grecian garb. Even if inconsistent spelling did throw light on the history of words, ؟where would be the gain? Etymology is a beautiful and fascinating study; but is of interest and practical value to comparatively few. It is outrageous that every child should lose years of its most precious time in order that a dim twilight should be thrown on the history of language. Words are tools. ؟Must each hammer or axe, to be efficient, bear some mark to indicate its evolution from the flint implement of the savage? and ؟must the artizan, to intelligently use it, know the whole history of its development? There is a word which our forefathers wrote « jail, » according to analogy. It is now pedantically written « gaol, » standing absolutely alone in its orthography, and containing within the compass of its four letters three anomalies of spelliing. ؟Why? To indicate, forsooth, that it comes to us from the corrupt Low Latin gabiola a cage, through the obsolete French form gaole. Anyone who takes the slightest interest in this fact could find it out quite as readily if the word were spelt in a reasonable fashion.

The other objection has more weight. Every printer would need the thirteen new letters shown in the rational English alphabet in another column. These repeated in italic, in caps and lowercase, and multiplied by the number of fonts in use, would be pretty expensive. On the other hand, the printer would soon make it up in reprints, while the adoption of the characters would mean a « boom » to letter-founders and punch-cutters.

It is in this direction that we believe the reform will ultimately come. We are indebted to the kindness of Mr Isaac Pitman, of Bath, the inventor of phonetic shorthand, for the illustrative alphabets, which have now had a trial of more than forty years. No one who looks without prejudice at the scheme, with its scientific arrangement of sounds and symbols, and who considers that by this notation every word in the language may be accurately represented in print, can fail to acknowledge its value. It differs but slightly from the system adopted by the late Dr Ellis, in his celebrated Phonetic News, and such defects as it possesses affect mechanical details, not principles, and are inherited from our present system. We regret that, not having the types, we cannot show a few lines of English in this guise. The practical value of a notation in which each symbol has a fixed value may be judged from one fact—a truly startling one to all who have had to teach the present system. By means of this alphabet, a child has been taught to read in twenty hours! In certain English schools the alphabet has been introduced as a preliminary to the accepted system, and the children initiated into the art of reading by the phonetic alphabet were found to master the current system with greater ease than those who were taught in the ordinary manner, and to leave them far behind.

Still, the cost of special types is a practical difficulty which every printer will appreciate. It is so great an obstacle, that the reformers have for the time being made phonotypy a secondary consideration, and have devised a « First Stage, » which any printer may adopt. It is unsightly, but its defects are those of the current orthography, while its advantage is that it is systematic, and sufficiently indicates the sound of the written word. We may in a later issue give the Five Rules of the First Stage, and an example of this more practicable, though less scientific reform.

Educational questions have come a good deal to the front in this colony lately. In place of the trivial points of detail so hotly discussed, it would be better worth while to consider the advisableness of deducting three or four years of painful and profitless drudgery from every child's school-life, and devoting the time thus saved to education. New Zealand has led the world in more than one reform. ؟Why not in reformed spelling?