The Reconstruction of Orthography

Reconstruction is a blessed word, and very comprehensive: but I doubt whether the Government, when it established the Reconstruction Committee, anticipated that it would be asked to consider the problem of Spelling Reform. The Simplified Spelling Society, however, has sent it a memorial urging that “the reform of English spelling is eminently one that merits the practical consideration of the Committee.” The signatories include a number of scientific and other professors, scores of teachers, and a tail composed of “men of business, men of letters, editors, etc.” The editors do not include any man who edits a London daily or a literary weekly, though the directive minds of the Lady’s Realm and the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald are in the movement; and the only “men of letters” are Messrs. William Archer, H. G. Wells, Eden Phillpotts, T. Seccombe (at whom I am surprised), and a few persons who combine authorship with business or with “etc.” One did not want this piece of negative evidence to convince one that authors, as a body, will fight Simplifyd Speling to the last mute k. The memorial makes the usual points about saving children’s time, facilitating the acquisition of foreign languages, lightening the work of teaching defective children, and assisting aliens who are acquiring our tongue. We are also told that “the demand for a rational spelling may be compared to that for decimalizing our coinage and our weights and measures.”

This comparison seems to me very misleading, if by decimalization is meant the introduction of the Continental metric system. For this latter is uniform in various countries, whereas the reform suggested by the Simplified Spelling Society would do nothing to approximate the sound-values of our letters to those of letters in foreign tongues. Cosmopolitan systems have been proposed, very complex and full of odd new letters; but this Society’s suggestions, whilst eliminating some difficulties for the foreigner, would leave English just as difficult for a Frenchman to pronounce as French is for an Englishman. Take the phrase (I find it here) “A Ferst Reeder in Simplifyd Speling.” A Frenchman would still mispronounce it. If he wished to indicate those sounds in the French way he would write (I am not a phonetician) something like “E Fœust,” etc. So the Society had better not pitch its promises too high. This, nevertheless, remains a minor point. The chief considerations undoubtedly are the domestic effects of this piece of Reconstruction.

It sounds all very simple and convincing when people say: “Our spoken language has diverged from our written language: let our written language be made the same as our spoken language.” But directly you go into the matter you find that the difficulties are enormous. That we have no one spoken language is a commonplace. Our speech varies from fashion to fashion and from locality to locality. “Educated” English at present has an increasing Cockney element in it. The common “cultured” pronunciation of “No,” for instance, embodies an “o” sound which is anything but pure. Many rustics, however, still pronounce it with a good broad vowel. Even the spelling reformers do not agree about words. A. J. Ellis thought the “r” at the end of “proper” was still there; Sweet thought it had disappeared. As a matter of fact, it is both there and not there: in some classes and parts it is pronounced, in some it is not. And it is quite possible that it will become universal again.

This gets us on to the question of change in time. The Reformers can be met both ways. If it be argued that phonetic spelling fixes pronunciation, why have we abandoned the old pronunciation of words once phonetically spelt? Shakespeare pronounced the initial “k” in “know” and “knee.” We have dropped it out. And we have no guarantee that spelling these words according to our present slack pronunciation would not be followed by another divergence. The history of the word “sea” is odd. In the Middle Ages it was spelt “see” and pronounced “say.” In Tudor times the spelling was altered to “sea” in order to make the spelling correspond to the sound (the same as that in “great”). We have reached a pronunciation which the original spelling would have correctly represented! If it be argued that spelling does not fix pronunciation, the case for the reform is seriously weakened. The truth of the matter is that nothing can fix a pronunciation, but that the written word, especially in an age of universal literacy, does exercise a pull. And that pull can as well be exercised by our present spellings as by new ones. I think it was Titus Oates who went to the scaffold, or somewhere, crying “Lard! Lard!” Had he been a spelling reformer he would have quite unnecessarily assimilated the spelling of “lord” with that of the name of the white stuff they keep in bladders: a distinct loss to the language. Mr. Murison, in the Cambridge History of Literature, points out that the word “kiln” was originally pronounced as spelt; then for some time the “n” was dropped; then the old pronunciation returned. The same thing happened to words containing the diphthong “oi.” “Join” and “oil” were, in Middle English, pronounced as they are now. But for centuries men called them “jine” and “ile,” a habit that still persists amongst many of the most eager supporters of Spelling Reform. “H’s” were dropped wholesale and then picked up again. We never know, in fact, whether we shall not return to an old way of speech; and we might as well do that as diverge from an old way of writing.

The great consolation of conservatives in this matter is the length of time during which the enthusiasts have continuously failed to bring about a change. This is the oldest of the Campaigns. It was already old when in 1585 a book was published with this title-page (differently accented):

“AEsopz Fable’z in true Orto’graphy with Grammar-nótz. Heryuntoo ar al’so jooined the short sentencez of the wyz Cato imprinted with lyk form and order: both of which Autorz ar transláted out of Latin intoo English. By William Bullokar.”

I don’t suppose that the Reconstruction Committee will find time to consider this matter. But if they do think of handling it they should realize that they are going to put their hands into a nestful of the largest hornets.