22
if we confine ourselves to the actual letters of the alphabet, as shown by the capital letters in the second table, instead of including the effective, the result of the analysis is as follows:—
This gives an average of 3·88 or very nearly 4 meanings to each letter, and rather more than 4 meanings to each of the 25 letters which have any meaning at all.
From this analysis, then, it appears that it is easier to guess the meaning to be assigned to a given heterotypic symbol, or combination, than to guess the symbol or combination to be assigned to a given sound, in the proportion of to , or 1 to . Hence, if we have six symbols or combinations to guess the meaning of, and six sounds for which to guess the symbols, while in each case only one set of results will be right out of the very many which could be selected, the difficulty of finding the true one in the first case would be to that in the second as : , or 1:1074, very nearly. Thus it would be 1074 times more difficult to spell a word with six sounds in it, than to read a word consisting of six effective letters; and similar for any other numbers.(29) It is therefore not surprising that we should find a great number of persons who read with fluency and correctness, while we find so very few who spell well, we mean who spell well on all subjects; for almost every one who writes much, learns to spell correctly the one or two thousand words which he is constantly in
carded their historical name, Seymour, and reassumed that which they brought from Normandy,—St. Maur."
There is a degree of aristocracy in these faulty spellings; the owners of a name with an e at the end of it, look down upon those who have it not; and y's disdain simple i's. Strange that the true cause of this diversity of spelling names is not felt as something to be ashamed of, namely, the great and prevailing ignorance of their first possessors. With this pride of false spelling is also a tenaciousness of the true pronunciation, which their owners seem to expect every one to know intuitively; as in the story of Lord Cholmondeley, who, when asked by a person who had never seen him before, whether "Lɵrd Colmondel'ɩ" were at home, is said to have replied, "Nɷ, bųt sųm ov hiz pɩɷ'pul (pɩpul) ar." We must own that, in our ignorance, we are content to suppose that a person's name is what he tells us it is, and that, if we write it in such a manner that any one who sees it will pronounce it in the same manner as its owner, we really and indeed write his name, and our spelling is correct, his false. Hieroglyphical names which could not be pronounced, were very well in the days when persons could not write or read, but sealed a deed, instead of signing it, and painted a monster on their shields by way of an address card.
(29.) Generally for n effective letters and n sounds the proportion is 1:(3·2)n". It may assist the reader to know that (3·2)2=10·24; (3·2)3=32·768; (3·2)4=104·86 nearly; (3·2)5=335·54 nearly; (3·2)6=1073·74 nearly; (3·2)7=3435·97 nearly; (3·2)8=11004·01 nearly; (3·2)9=35190·8 nearly; (3·2)10=112560 nearly.
