Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (63 page)
The argument that phonetic spelling would be easier to learn than the present spelling is not supported by the known facts. In some cases it no doubt would be, but in plenty of other cases it would certainly not. Moreover, the number of “hard” words in English is always greatly overestimated.
2
It is undoubtedly surprising to a child to learn that
cough
rhymes with
off
, but it is probably a good deal less disconcerting than adults may fancy, for everything new is surprising to a child, and one marvel is taken in as facilely as another. Even adult foreigners find the standard spelling less baffling than is sometimes alleged, as more than one witness experienced in teaching them English has testified.
3
It is not infrequently argued that the inconsistencies of English are unknown to their native languages, but this is moonshine. No civilized language is really spelled
phonetically, not even German, Spanish or Italian. German is actually full of sounds that are represented in its orthography by different characters,
e.g., ch
and
g, f
and
ph, c
and
k
, and letters that have different sounds in different situations,
e.g
., the
ch
of
loch
and
licht
, the
s
in
essen
and
hase
, the
r
in
rad
and
mutter
. So long ago as 1876 the Prussian minister of education, Adalbert Falk (1827–1900), one of the chief figures in the
Kulturkampf
, called a conference of philologists, pedagogues, publishers and printers to give the archaic German spelling of the time an overhauling, and in 1880 his successor, R. V. von Puttkamer (1828–1900), ordered the adoption of some of the changes this committee recommended,
e.g
., the omission of the silent
h
after consonants. But the changes thus effected did not satisfy the more radical spelling reformers, who pointed out,
inter alia
, that there were still six signs for the sound of
k
, to wit,
k
,
c, ck, ch, qu
and
g
. These enthusiasts had formed a General Association for Simplified Spelling (Allgemeiner Verein für Vereinfachte Rechtschreibung) in 1876, and after 1877 it published a monthly journal,
Reform
. Unhappily, their scheme advocated the introduction of new characters for
ch, sch
and
ng
, and in consequence it met with so much opposition that it gradually faded out, despite the fact that the famous pathologist and politician, Rudolf Virchow (1821–1900), was in favor of it, and the further fact that the young Kaiser Wilhelm II, in 1890, ordered the ministry of education to “take the matter into consideration.”
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Spanish and Italian come much closer to phonetic spelling than German, but their orthography is made difficult by the dialectal variations that are so plentiful in both. Says Hugh Morrison:
In Latin-American Spanish
ll
and
y
are pronounced alike, and
z
and
c
before
i
and
e
are pronounced like
s. B
and
v
are universally pronounced alike, and
h
is always silent except in
ch
.… The Mexicans have the best pronunciation of all Spanish-speaking peoples,… [but] ask an average Mexican to write
vayas
, a form of the verb
to go
, and he will spell it in any one of eight different ways:
vayas, vallas, vayaz, vallaz, bayas, ballas, bayaz
and
ballaz
.…
Can you imagine anyone misspelling the pronoun
l
, or any word as common as that in any language in the world?… [In Spanish] the word is
yo
, and I have seen [Mexicans] write it
llo
hundreds of times.
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Of Italian Morrison says:
Italians in New York … assured me that Italian phonetics were foolproof, unlike Spanish, as
b
and
v
were pronounced as in English, there was no
y
at all,
z
was pronounced like
ts
, and
c
like
ch
, so neither one could possibly be confused with
s
. The
h
, they said, occurred only in the
ch
and
gh
combinations, which were phonetically watertight, and in four forms of the auxiliary verb
to have
, and these latter forms,
ho, hai, ha
and
hanno
, were all I really had to remember.… [But] I soon found out that standard Italian is a dialect of just one part of Italy, Tuscany, and that words are spelled as they are pronounced in that one province only. So, to a Neapolitan or a Sicilian, or, in fact, to nine-tenths of the people of Italy, the simplicity of the spelling system is a total loss.… Just as Mexicans misspell words as common as
l
, so Italians misspell words as common as
you
.… There are several second person pronouns, including
tu, ti, te, voi
and
vi
, and I have seen them spelled
du, di, de, foi
and
fi
many times.
Russian spelling, which had been static since it was fixed in the Eighteenth Century by M. V. Lomonosov (1711–65), the grammarian, was reformed by fiat by the Kremlin in 1924. The number of letters in the alphabet was reduced from thirty-seven to thirty-two, the crossing of the
t
and the dotting of the
i
were abolished, and various other simplifications were effected. But a proposal to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet for the Roman was rejected. In Bulgaria, in 1923, when the dictator, Alexander Stambolsky, undertook to anticipate the Kremlin’s reforms, his Bulgarian lieges would have none of them, and the literate among them joined the Army in a revolt which led to his butchery on June 9.
2
In Turkey, a few years later, Kemal Pasha had better luck, for the Army was under his thumb and at least nine out of ten Turks were illiterate. He was therefore successful in substituting the Roman alphabet of Europe for the clumsy and difficult Arabic alphabet, and in bringing in what almost amounted to phonetic spelling.
3
In France the learned
men of the Academy began considering spelling reform in 1893, and after six months of hard sweating decided to confine the silent
e
, as much as possible, to the feminine forms of nouns, and to substitute
f
for
ph
, also wherever possible. It turned out to be
im
possible in most cases, and by 1905 a savant named Paul Moyer was beating a tub for a new reform movement with teeth in it. Nothing came of it, and to this day French spelling is even less phonetic than English.
1
In their effort to point up the inconsistencies and other absurdities of the latter, spelling reformers have frequently resorted to a kind of
reductio ad absurdum
. That is to say, they have undertaken to show how bad it would be if it were really as bad as, in their more soaring moments, they say it is now. Sometimes they concoct rhymes showing the unlikeness in current spelling of words that rhyme, and sometimes they carry the thing a step further by respelling words in what that spelling would come to if it were consistent in its worst inconsistencies. Everyone is familiar with such limericks as:
There was a young girl in the
choir
Whose voice rose up
hoir
and
hoir
Till it reached such a
height
It was clear out of
seight
And they found it next day in the
spoir
.
2
And such pedagogical rhymes as this:
Write
we know is written right,
When we see it written
write
;
But when we see it written
wright
,
We know ’tis not then written right;
For
write
, to have it written right,
Must not be written
right
nor
wright
,
Nor yet should it be written
rite
,
But
write
— for so ’tis written right.
3
The other device produces such monstrosities as
foolish
spelled
pphoughtluipsh
– the
f
as in
sapphire
, the
oo
as in
through
, the
l
as in
hustle
, the
i
as in
build
and the
sh
as in
pshaw;
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fish as ghotti
— the
f
as in
rough
, the
i
as in
women
, and the
sh
as in
nation;
1
potatoes
as
ghoughphtheightteeaux – gh
as in
hiccough
,
2
ou
as in
dough, phth
as in
phthisic
,
3
eigh
as in
neigh, tte
as in
gazette
, and
eaux
as in
beaux;
4
scissors
as
psozzyrrzz – ps
as in
psalm, o
as in
women, zz
as in
buzz, yrr
as in
myrrh
,
5
and
z
as in
whizz
—;
6
root
as
lueed – l
as in
colonel, ue
as in
rue
, and
ed
as in
liked —
;
corn
as
kougholpn – k
as in
book, ough
as in
though, ol
as in
colonel
and
pn
as in
pneumonia —
; and
wish
as
juoti – ju
as in
Juanita, o
as in
women
, and
ti
as in
nation
.
7
The same words often appear in many of these somewhat feeble inventions,
e.g., colonel, nation, pshaw, pneumonia, rough, dough, women
and
through
. Sometimes they deal with proper names, as when
Turner
becomes
Phtholognyrrh – phth
as in
phthisic, olo
as in
colonel, gn
as in
gnat
and
yrrh
as in
myrrh
.
8
One of the earliest is to be found in Alexander J. Ellis’s century-old “Plea for Phonetic Spelling,”
9
where it is ascribed to William Gregory, professor of chemistry at Edinburgh. It takes the form of a letter to Isaac Pitman, then editor of the
Phonotypic Journal
, and runs in part as follows:
Eye obzerve yew proepeaux two introwduice ay nue sissedem ov righting, bigh whitch ue eckspres oanly theigh sowneds anned knot thee orthoggerafey oph they wurds; butt Igh phthink ugh gow to fare inn cheighnjing owr thymeonird alfahbeat, aned ading sew menny neau lebtors.
10
All the American spelling reformers, beginning with Noah Webster, have made the capital mistake of trying to cover too much
ground at one operation. A very impressive number of Webster’s innovations were accepted and are still the preferred American spellings, but many, many more were rejected.
1
The Simplified Spelling Board and its associated soothsayers suffered the same failure, and on a larger scale. When the National Education Association brought out its first list of proposed new spellings in 1898, to wit,
tho, altho, thru, thruout, thoro, thoroly, thorofare, program, prolog, catalog, pedagog
and
decalog
, they were met with considerable politeness, and some of them are in wide use today, but when the Simplified Spelling Board, intoxicated by Carnegie’s money, began making the list longer and longer and wilder and wilder, until by 1919 it included such items as
eg, hed, bild, tipe, laf
and
leag
,
2
the national midriff began to tickle and tremble, and soon the whole movement was reduced to comedy. Of it Arthur G. Kennedy has said:
Enthusiasm outran discretion, too many changes were urged in too short a time, and the movement soon lost momentum and lapsed into a state of indecision and discouragement. The discouragement was due, not so much to the opposition of “the ignorant and stubborn educated” against whom [Thomas R.] Lounsbury railed as to the great difficulties that would naturally be experienced by publishers, stenographers, teachers and all writers and users of the present well intrenched system of spelling. When the activities of the Simplified Spelling Board culminated in a Handbook of Simplified Spelling in 1920, the list of reformed spellings offered had become so formidable that one glance at the thousands of simplifications was sufficient to discourage most students of the English language.
3
Sir William Craigie, one of the editors of the NED and chief editor of the DAE, made the same point in a wise paper printed in 1944:
There would be better prospect of some success if the aim were less ambitious. Gradual changes in certain words or types of words, such as have been made in the past, might well be introduced by writers and printers, which in time would become so familiar that the older forms would take their place with those already discarded, as
horrour
and
terrour, musick
and
physick, deposi’e
and
fossile, chymical
and
chymist
. Such changes, however, could only be of a limited character, and would still leave the essentials of English
spelling intact. When all is said against it that can be said, it is well to bear in mind that it has now stood the test of three centuries, and in spite of all its alleged defects has not prevented English from attaining the world-wide position it now holds.
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