Chapter III · THE ORTHOGRAPHIC SITUATION (continued 2)

There are a few words, almost all of Latin derivation, in which a final n appears unsounded. Kiln is perhaps the only one of English extraction in which this peculiarity appears. In the case of most of them the retention of the letter may be defended—at least it may be palliated—on the ground that in the derivatives its pronunciation is resumed. In autumn, column, condemn, hymn, and limn the n is silent, but it gives distinct evidence of its existence in words like autumnal, columnar, condemnation, hymnal, limner, and solemnity. In fact, this resumption of the sound has at times been made to appear in other parts of the verbs containing this silent letter. Especially has this been true of hymning and limning, the participles of hymn and limn. It was a practice which much grieved certain of the earlier orthoepists. They took the ground that analogy forbade any sound not belonging to the principal verb itself to be heard in any of its parts. The observation is only noticeable for its revelation of the fact that it should enter into the head of any advocate of the existing orthography to set up analogy as a convincing reason for pronouncing any English word in a particular way.

Three of these final unpronounced letters do not need protracted consideration. In the digraph ow, ending such words as low, flow, and sow, the w serves no particular use. According to some it justifies its existence by indicating the quality of the preceding vowel. Its value in this respect may be estimated by comparing the pronunciation of bow, a missile weapon for discharging an arrow, with bow, an inclination of the head, or bow, the fore-end of a boat. The next letter t, when a final consonant, is invariably heard, save in some imperfectly naturalized words. Of these eclat and billet-doux may be taken as examples. In England, however—not in the United States—there is a single and singular survival of the original French pronunciation in the case of a word received into full citizenship. This is the noun trait, which came into the language in the eighteenth century. Naturally its final letter was at first not sounded. The tendency so to do, however, soon showed itself. Lexicographers authorized it, indeed favored it; but for some inexplicable reason Englishmen have never taken kindly to the complete naturalization of the word. “The t,” said Walker, at the end of the eighteenth century, “begins to be pronounced.” Had he been living at the end of the nineteenth, he would have been justified in saying precisely the same thing as regards England. It was beginning then; it is beginning now; but it is only beginning.

A final h is not pronounced when preceded by a vowel; when preceded by the consonant g it forms a digraph which will be considered later. There are fewer than a dozen words of the former class in which it appears. Among these are the interjections, ah, eh, and oh. Here again, as in the case of w, the existence of the letter is defended on the ground that it indicates the quality of the preceding vowel. Yet for this purpose it can hardly be deemed a necessity. We use it in the case of ah; but we get along very well without it in the case of ha. This, too, was formerly sometimes spelled hah. Oh, likewise, was once widely found in the very instances and the very senses where we now use the single letter O. In two other words, Messiah and hallelujah, the h may be retained because of the sacredness of associations which have gathered about them. Yet the former word was itself a sixteenth-century alteration of the previous Messias.

The unpronounced final k belongs strictly to the class of double letters of which it is not my purpose to treat. It invariably follows c, and is really nothing but a duplicate of it. Still, as the sign is a different representation of the same sound, it may be well to bestow upon it a brief attention. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century it was dropped, after a warm contest, from words of Latin derivation. But the reform did not extend to those of native origin. In many cases a k has been added to words which originally ended in c. Especially was this true of monosyllables. Thus the earliest form of back was bæc, of sack was sac, of sick was seoc. This was the case not only with a good many monosyllables to which a k is now appended, but to a certain extent with dissyllables also. The fact is best exemplified in the words which have the ending ock. This sometimes represents the early English diminutive uc, which became later oc or ok. From the point of view of derivation the modern spelling is distinctly improper. Thus, for illustration, bullock, haddock, hassock, hillock, and mattock were in their earliest known forms bulluc, haddoc, hassuc, hilloc, and mattuc. Several words not of native origin have also adopted this ending. Hammock, from the Spanish hamaca, itself of Carib origin, has conformed to it. It has supplied itself with a final k. During the last century havoc managed to get rid of this consonant, with which it had been encumbered, without exciting any special remark. But now that the uselessness of a letter has become to many one of the chief recommendations of the spelling, the dropping of an unnecessary k from any of the other words of this class would bring unspeakable anguish to thousands.

There are more consonants which are unpronounced in the middle of words than at the beginning or the end. They are b, c, l, g, h, p, s, t, w, and z. In the case of some of them—the two last, for instance—the words in which the unpronounced letter appears are very few. In rendezvous z is not sounded. It is the only instance in which this consonant is not heard, and this is due to the fact that it is not heard in its French original. Again, it is only in answer, sword, and two that the medial w is silent. Unpronounced consonants are more frequent in the case of the other letters, but, after all, they are not numerous in themselves. Still, their presence has its usual effect. In every instance it raises a stumbling-block in the way of the proper pronunciation. Furthermore, it has in some cases either hidden the right derivation entirely or given a wrong idea of it.

Take the example of the medial b in debt and doubt. These words, coming originally from the French, were introduced into the language with the spelling, dette, det, and doute, dout. So for a long time they were spelled. Deference to the remote Latin original, which sprang up with the revival of learning, introduced the unauthorized b into the world. It has already been pointed out that this has given an opportunity, which has been fully improved, for the devotees of derivation to exhibit their usual inconsistency. When the presence of unpronounced letters in the case of other words presents an obstacle to correct pronunciation, then its retention is insisted upon as essential to our knowledge of its immediate origin, to the purity of the language itself, and to the happiness of those speaking it. But no advocate of the existing orthography could be induced to part with the b of debt and doubt, though its presence comes into direct conflict with the views he is championing in the case of other words. At times attempts were apparently made to pronounce the inserted b. In the full Latinized form debit, which was early in use, there was no difficulty. Indeed, it was a necessity. Not so in the form debt. Yet it is evident from Love’s Labour’s Lost that there were men who sought to accomplish this feat. It is difficult to ascertain whether speaker or hearer suffered more in consequence of this effort. If unsuccessful, it was the speaker; if successful, the pain was transferred to the hearer.

One curious blunder has been foisted upon our spelling by the desire of men to go back to the Latin original of these words instead of contenting themselves with the immediate French one. The insertion of b is bad enough in redoubted and redoubtable. These came to us from the latter tongue, and at first appeared in English in the forms redouted and redoutable. Later the classical influence made itself felt and the b was inserted. Palliation for it could be pleaded on the ground that the letter belonged to the remote original. But no defence of this sort could be of avail in the case of the word denoting the military outwork called a redoubt. This has not the slightest connection either in sense or origin with the two adjectives just specified. It comes directly from the French redout and remotely from the Latin reductus, ‘withdrawn,’ ‘retired,’ which received at a later period the meaning of ‘a place of refuge.’ But it was ignorantly supposed that it came from the same source as the verb redoubt and its past participle redoubted. So from the beginning of the introduction of the word into the language, in the early part of the seventeenth century, an unauthorized b was made part of it. It is now dear to the hearts of millions. What the blundering of one age perpetrated the superstition of succeeding ages has invested with peculiar sanctity.

The cases in which c follows s present several choice examples of the vagaries which make English orthography a wonder to those who study its history, and a perpetual joy and boast to those who in this matter succeed in keeping the purity of their ignorance from being denied by the slightest stain of knowledge. In the words scene, scepter, and sciatica, coming directly or remotely from the Greek, the letter represents an original k. So, useless as it is, its retention may be defended on the ground that if it be not the same letter, it ought to be, since it has the same value. The similar apology of respect for derivation may be urged for the unpronounced c of science, scintilla, and sciolist. But in the case of scent, scion, scimitar, scissors, and scythe, no such plea can be made. In the instance of all these there is not the slightest justification for the unnecessary c. Scent comes from the Latin sent-ire, ‘to perceive.’ Until the seventeenth century it was regularly spelled sent. Scythe, from the Anglo-Saxon sîthe, once frequently and now occasionally has its strictly correct etymological form. Scion is from the old French sion. Scimitar and scissors have had a wide variety of spellings during the course of their history. English orthography has exhibited, as is not unusual, a perverse preference for the ones which depart furthest from the pronunciation.

The instances where g is silent within a word are those in which it is found preceding m or n. Its presence it owes, in most instances, to derivation. Examples of it can be found in a number of words of Greek extraction, of which paradigm, diaphragm, and phlegm may be given. With a following n it can be represented by campaign, feign, sign, and impugn. As has been the case with the final n of certain words, so also the pronunciation of the g is resumed in the derivatives. That may be deemed by some a justification for its retention in the primitive—at least, for the time being. With sign we have signify, with malign we have malignity, with phlegm we have phlegmatic. But the g is a particularly ridiculous intruder in the words foreign and sovereign. The former is from the Old French forein, which itself comes from the popular Latin foraneus, and this in turn comes from the classical Latin foras, ‘out of doors.’ Sovereign is a spelling just as bad. It comes from the Old French sovrain, the Low Latin superanus, ‘supreme,’ which was formed upon the preposition super, ‘above.’ The insertion of a g was a blunder for which our race has the sole responsibility.

There are two kinds of words in which h is silent following an initial letter. This is invariably true of words of Greek extraction beginning with rh. Rhetoric, rheumatic, and rhubarb may serve as specimens. In these, as in those like them, the h was wanting in Old French. Consequently, it was at first wanting in English also. But the deference to derivation which prevailed among the classically educated after the revival of learning, raised havoc here with the spelling as it did in so many other instances. The unpronounced h was inserted into all these words. This began in the sixteenth century. It gradually established itself firmly in the orthography. There it has remained ever since, though no one pretends that it serves any purpose save that of indicating to the few, who do not need to be informed, that the aspirate existed in the original from which these words were derived. But even this pitiable reason cannot be pleaded in the case of the noticeable words in which h follows an initial g. These are ghastly and aghast, ghost, and gherkin. In not one of them, except the last, did h appear till many hundred years after the words had been in existence. To not one of them does the useless letter belong by right. Indeed, it was apparently not till the nineteenth century that it was foisted into gherkin as the regular spelling, though it had cropped up before. There would be just as much sense in spelling German as Gherman, and goat as ghoat, as there is in the intrusion of the h into the words just mentioned. This is equally true of anchor.

There is, however, one further peculiarity about this letter. In the spelling of certain words it follows w, in the pronunciation of them it precedes it. But the fashion of suppressing the sound of the aspirate in the combination wh is very characteristic of the speech of England, at least of some parts of it. The prevalence of this sort of pronunciation which makes no distinction, for example, between where and wear, between Whig and wig, between while and wile, was a subject of great, and it may be added, of justifiable grief to the earlier orthoepists. Walker complained bitterly of the extent of its use in London. He was anxious that men should “avoid this feeble Cockney pronunciation which is so disagreeable to a correct ear.” Fortunately for the speech this suppression of the aspirate has not extended much beyond the southern half of England. In America it rarely takes place. There is, therefore, every likelihood of this pronunciation being eventually crushed, not so much because of its own inherent viciousness as by the mere weight of numbers.

There is a limited body of words in which l and p are silent. The former letter in such cases as balm and calm, for instance, may perhaps have been effective in preserving the sound of the preceding vowel. The most signal example of its appearance, where it has no justification for its existence, is in the word could. This takes the place of the earlier and more correct coude, coud. The l was introduced by a false analogy with would and should. These two last words, it may be added, at times dropped this letter, to which etymologically they were entitled, out of deference to the pronunciation, just as could, though not entitled to it, assumed it in defiance of the pronunciation.

The most noticeable instances in which p is not pronounced are when it follows m and is itself followed by t. Empty, tempt, prompt, and sumptuous will supply a sufficient number of illustrations. In most of these cases the letter still appears because it was in the original. In empty, however, it is a later insertion. There are two or three sporadic instances in which a p is present but fails to be called upon for duty. Such are raspberry and receipt. In the first of these two rasberry seems to have been for a long time the preferred spelling. Unless there is a prospect that the sound of the letter will be resumed in the pronunciation, there is no apparent reason why we should not go back to the once more common form. But receipt, with the allied conceit and deceit, furnishes as good an illustration as can well be offered of the vagaries of English orthography, and of the system which has prevailed in and the sense which has presided over its development. These three words all come remotely from the three closely allied participial forms receptus, conceptus, and deceptus. The earlier most common spelling of the first was receit or receyt. While the form with the inserted p existed previously, it was not till the Elizabethan period that it began to be much in evidence. Furthermore, it was not till the latter part of the seventeenth century that the unnecessary letter established itself in the unfortunate word. Conceit and deceit went through what was in many respects the same experience. The forms conceipt and deceipt were found not unfrequently. But in them the p failed to maintain itself. So words from a common Latin root have developed two different ways of spelling, with not the slightest reason in the nature of things why any distinction whatever should be made between them.

The silence of s in some few words, such as isle, aisle, and island, has already been mentioned. In viscount it is also suppressed, doubtless in deference to the French original. But in the middle of words t is far more frequently left unpronounced than s. This is especially noticeable when it is followed by le on the one hand, as can be seen in castle, wrestle, thistle, ostler, and rustle; on the other hand, when followed by en, as in fasten, hasten, listen, and moisten. There are a few other words besides those with these endings in which it is silent. Such are Christmas, chestnut, mortgage, bankruptcy. That it should not be heard in words of French origin like billet-doux and hautbois is not hard to understand; they have never been fully naturalized.

This exhausts the list of simple consonants that are found in the written language, but are not heard in the spoken. There remains, however, a digraph which is encountered too frequently not to receive brief mention. This is gh, both at the end and in the middle of words. In these positions it once stood for something. It had, therefore, originally a right to the place in which it now appears. But the guttural sound it indicated disappeared long ago from the usage of all of us. Even the knowledge that it had ever existed has disappeared from the memory of most of us, if it was ever found there. Accordingly it serves now no other purpose than to act as a sort of tombstone to mark the place where lie the unsightly remains of a dead and forgotten pronunciation. The useless digraph is still seen at the end of numerous words of which weigh, high, and dough may be taken as examples. Again an unpronounced medial gh is seen in neighbor and a large number of words ending in ght, such as caught, height, fight, and thought. In many of these words the digraph was frequently dropped in those earlier days when there was a perverse propensity to make the spelling show some respect to the pronunciation. High, for instance, often appeared in the forms hye, hy; nigh in the forms nye, ny. This is now all changed. The disposition to pander to any sneaking desire to bring about a scandalous conformity between orthography and orthoepy is steadily frowned upon by those who have been good enough to take upon their shoulders the burden of preserving what they are pleased to call the purity of the English language.

This survey of the subject, brief as it is, brings out distinctly the superiority of the consonant system over the vowel, in the matter of unpronounced letters. Far from perfect as is the former, it shines by contrast with the latter. The useless consonant appears in but a few words, where the useless vowel appears in scores. But when we pass on to the cases in which the sign is represented by any but its legitimate sound, the contrast between the two classes of letters becomes far more noticeable. It is the superiority in this particular which alone makes our present spelling endurable. Most of the consonants, if pronounced at all, have in all cases one and the same sound. Any possible acquisition of the speech in the term of a man’s natural life has depended upon the fact that these members of the alphabet are in general really phonetic. Their faithfulness to their legitimate sounds stands in sharpest contrast to the almost hopeless disorganization which has overtaken the vowels. In the case of some of the consonants there is never any variation from their proper pronunciation. In the case of others the exceptions to the regular practice are purely sporadic. The p of cupboard, for instance, has the sound of b, the j of hallelujah has the sound of y. Even these exceptions which have prevailed in the past there has been a tendency to reduce, owing to the operation of agencies of which there will be occasion to speak later.

This last statement needs modification in the case of one letter. In modern times there has been a tendency to represent the sound of t in the preterite and past participle by d, or, rather, ed. As compared with the usage of the past, this practice has made a good deal of headway. It is the substitution of a formal regularity of spelling which appeals to the eye over its proper use to indicate the sound to the ear. We have not yet got so far as to write sleeped for slept or feeled for felt, but we have frequently dwelled for dwelt and builded for built. This is all proper enough if the d sound is given to the ending by pronouncing the word, as is often done, as a dissylable. But no reason can be pleaded for it if t is heard as the termination. In this matter we are far behind our fathers.

Take the usage of Spenser, as illustrated on this point in the first canto of the first book of the Faerie Queene. This contains about five hundred lines. In every case whenever a preterite or past participle has the sound of t, it is spelled with t. In this one canto—and it fairly represents all the others—can be found the preterites advaunst, approcht, chaunst, enhaunst, forst, glaunst, grypt, knockt, lept, lookt, nurst, pusht, y-rockt, stopt, and tost. Along with these are to be seen as past participles accurst, enforst, mixt, past, promist, stretcht, vanquisht, and wrapt. Now, to a certain extent this is an unfair illustration. No one can read the Faerie Queene without becoming aware that Spenser was a good deal of a spelling reformer. Necessarily, he was largely dominated by the ignoble idea that orthography should have a close connection with the pronunciation. Still, though in certain particulars he took very advanced ground, he only practiced on a large scale what on a small scale was followed by very many of his contemporaries and immediate successors.

We pass on now to the consideration of the six sounds for which the alphabet has no special sign whatever. Two of them are the surd and sonant sounds, already considered, for which the digraph th has become the common representative. It may be right to add that this same digraph is also equivalent in a few cases to the simple t, as in thyme and Thames. The four other sounds can be recognized perhaps most easily in the ch of church, the ng of bring, the sh of ship, and the s of pleasure. But here, as elsewhere in our orthography, reigns the usual lawlessness. The signs here given represent other sounds than those just specified. Take the case of ng. Any one can detect at once the difference in the pronunciation of this digraph by contrasting it as heard in singer and as heard in finger. Nor has ch been limited to the sound indicated in chair, cheer, child, choose, and churn. It has another, perhaps more frequently denoted by sh in the beginning, middle, and end of words, as, for illustration, in chaise, machine, and bench. It has likewise the sound of k in many words, especially in those of Greek origin, such as character, mechanic, monarch. The uncertainty caused by this variety of pronunciation is particularly noticeable in words in which arch appears as the initial syllable. In archangel, for instance, ch has one pronunciation, in archbishop it has another. The difference between the two must therefore be painfully learned. There is, furthermore, the sporadic example of choir, in which ch has the sound of kw, ordinarily represented by qu. But choir was a late seventeenth-century importation into the language. Though to some extent it has replaced the original form quire, it has invariably retained the pronunciation of that word.

Finally, there are the two sounds specified above, as denoted by the s of pleasure and the sh of ship. The former has a respectable number of signs to indicate it. Besides the s found in such words as measure, usury, enclosure, it is represented by si, as seen in decision, evasion, occasion; by z, as in azure, razure, seizure; by zi, as in glazier, grazier, vizier. It is, however, the second of these sounds that has the greatest variety of signs to denote it. In this respect it rivals many of the vowels or vowel combinations, and surpasses some of them. It is heard in the ce of ocean, and in particular in no small number of words mainly scientific, with the ending aceous, such as cretaceous and cetaceous; in the ci of words like social, gracious, suspicion; in the s of sure, sugar, censure, nauseate; in the t of satiate, expatiate, substantiate; in the ti of martial, patient, nation, and the vast number of words which have the termination tion; in xi in anxious, obnoxious, complexion; in sci in conscience, prescience; in si, as seen in no small number of words, such as mansion, vision, explosion. Finally, to illustrate the confusion which in the case of these signs has been still further confounded, we may instance the ci of social with the pronunciation just indicated, and the ci of the related word society with a pronunciation entirely different. A precisely similar observation could be made of ti in the case of the words satiate and satiety.

Enough has certainly now been said to put beyond question the fact of the irrepressible conflict which goes on in our language between orthography and orthoepy, and to make clear its nature. The treatment of the subject has, indeed, been far from complete. Nothing whatever has been said on the large subject of the representation of sounds in the unaccented syllables. No account has been given of the usage of some of the letters or combinations of letters. In particular, in the matter of doubling the letters both in accented and unaccented syllables, contradictions and incongruities abound with us on a scale which ought to bring peculiar happiness to those devotees of the present orthography who believe that the worse a language is spelled the more distinctly it is to its credit. Still, of this characteristic there has been no consideration. Furthermore, page after page could have been taken up with illustrative examples of the anarchy of all sorts which reigns in every nook and corner of our spelling. We write, for instance, knowledge with a d; but the place with the same terminating syllable where we go presumably to acquire it, which we call a college, we are careful to write without a d. In the past one finds at times the forms knowlege and colledge. It is nothing but an accident of usage that we are not employing them now instead of the ones we have adopted.

It would be easy to go on multiplying examples of these inconsistencies. But though all that could be said is far from having been said, surely enough has been given to prove beyond possibility of denial the existence of the chaotic condition which prevails. Furthermore, while the subject has been by no means exhausted, the same statement cannot safely be made of the patience of the reader, to say nothing of that of the writer. If any one of the former body finds it tedious to wade through the account of the situation which has been given in the preceding pages, let him bear in mind how much more tedious it was for the author to prepare it. If he finds it exceedingly tedious, let him take to himself a sort of consolation in the reflection of how easily it could have been made even more so. Instead, therefore, of complaining of the abundance of minute detail which I have supplied, he ought to be thankful to me for keeping back so much of it as I have done. Moreover, as Heine pointed out long ago, the reader has at his command a resource to which he can always betake himself when his powers of endurance give out. He can skip. This is a blessed privilege denied to the writer.

Incomplete, however, as has been the survey of the subject, it has been sufficient to give a fairly satisfactory idea of the way in which the orthography represents, or rather misrepresents, the pronunciation. It makes manifest beyond dispute the truth of the intimation conveyed at the outset that the form of a particular word is often, with us, little more than a fortuitous concourse of unrelated letters in which neither they nor the combinations into which they enter can be relied upon to indicate any particular sound. In addition, hundreds of those which appear in the spelling have no office in the pronunciation. Genuine derivation has led to the retention of some, spurious derivation to the introduction of others. There are, consequently, few of the common words of our language which cannot be spelled with perfect propriety in different ways, sometimes in half a dozen different ways, if the analogy be followed of words similarly formed and pronounced. Our orthography is, therefore, often a matter of contention and always a matter of study. Knowledge of the accepted form of words must be gained in each case independently, for there exists no general principle, the observance of which will guide the learner to a correct conclusion.

As an inevitable result, the acquisition of spelling never calls into exercise, with us, the reasoning faculties. On the contrary, its direct effect is to keep them in abeyance. The ability to spell properly is an intellectual act only to the extent that attention and recollection are intellectual acts. It can and not unfrequently does characterize persons who are very far from being gifted with much mental power. All who attain proficiency in it are compelled to spend time which, under proper conditions, could have been far more profitably employed. There are men who do not attain it at an early age, and some even who never attain it at all. Moore, for illustration, speaking of Byron, tells us that spelling was “a very late accomplishment with him.”[25] The case of William Morris was far worse. This poet never learned to spell at all. The fact is recorded by his biographer. In speaking of the beauty of his handwriting, he had to admit the failure of his orthography to reach the standard set by it. “The subsidiary art of spelling,” he writes, “was always one in which he was liable to make curious lapses. ‘I remember,’ the poet once said, ‘being taught to spell and standing on a chair with my shoes off because I made so many mistakes.’ In later years several sheets of The Life and Death of Jason had to be cancelled and reprinted because of a mistake in the spelling of a perfectly common English word; a word, indeed, so common that the printer’s reader had left it as it was in the manuscript, thinking that Morris’ spelling must be an intentional peculiarity.”[26]

The ignorance which exists in regard to the orthographic situation is bad enough; but the superstition which has been born of it is still worse. It is assumed to have come down to us pure and perfect from a remote past. Hence, it must be religiously preserved in all its assumed sacredness and genuine uncouthness. Even improvements which could be made with little difficulty, which would have no other result than bringing about with the least possible friction uniformity in certain classes of words—these slight alterations are assailed with almost as much earnestness and virulence as would be encountered by sweeping changes designed to make the spelling really phonetic.

As men are more apt to be interested in particular illustrations than in general discussion, it may be worth while to follow up the survey of the situation which has just been given with an account in detail of the history of a special class of words. In this once prevailed the tendency to bring about absolute uniformity. The movement was arrested before the desired result was attained. It left a few over thirty examples as exceptions to the general practice. In the derivatives of some of these it went back to the regular rule and consequently contributed exceptions to the exceptions. This condition of things has endeared these anomalies to the hearts of thousands. The class itself consists of the words ending in or or our. About the proper way of spelling this termination controversy has raged for more than a hundred years. The examination of the whole class can be best carried on by selecting one of the words belonging to it as typical of all. To its story the next chapter will be largely confined.

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