52
NOTES AND QUERIES. DO s. VIL JAX. 19, 1007.
a standard English not an impossible
everywhere phonetic English without
branding the latter idea as one broached
only " for the purpose of misleading and
making mischief." I will not believe that
any one would write in ' N. & Q.' with that
intent or in that humour ; and did I think
the imputation personal, I should repel it
with a positive denial. Further, I think that,
although these pages are devoted to the
literary and studious, not many of these
would represent the motive of the great
majority of their practical and intelligent
countrymen who, though their abilities
have not been directed to the academic
study of their language, have nevertheless
a clear judgment as to the impracticability
of the proposed spelling change as " the
crass ignorance of an obstinate and indocile
public." May not their vision be the clearer
as unaffected by the enthusiasm begotten
of study ?
MB. STREET has ably and temperately demonstrated the obstacles against the establishment of a standard ; and as the strenuous and worthy American President appears to have deferred to public opinion, it seems likely that the standard will not be set up either at New York or London, but that the old language occasionally emended and enriched as heretofore will be suffered to pursue its rugged course, and that we may still enjoy its analysis. W. L.
I have great sympathy with the simpli-
fication of spelling, and particularly with the
artistic appearance of print. I have given
practical effect to some of the ideas I have
on this subject in the course of the five
hundred pages of my ' Swimming ' biblio-
graphy. Dire was the prospect of lashings
from the press which printers, publishers,
and friends held out to me. But the press
never took any notice of the spelling. It
reviewed the book most favourably from
an easy standpoint, but not from a biblio-
graphical, educational, scholarly, or scientific
point of view, as I had hoped.
To get into the very simple alterations in spelling I made took my printers a very long time, during which period I had to fight them day by day. I insisted on the spelling being altered to mine, notwith- standing that I had to pay for all their mistakes. Often I made such marginal comments that I fully expected them to say, " Mr. Thomas, we are not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, and we must request you to find another printer.'*
But they did not : they kept their temper.
If there was all this trouble with a few
alterations, what would it be with many ?
So far as I know, I am the only person who has dared to publish an English educa- tional book with any simplified spellings. But then I had not to earn my living. I am glad to see PROF. SKEAT'S admirable note& on spelling reform, for I fear that very few scholars whose opinions one would like to hear will speak. At all events, I observe that those who have advocated reforms take good care that they follow the old spellings in their books.
Any sudden, wholesale change I believe to be impossible. But much might be done by degrees. Similar improvements have been made in music, but each has been objected to and fought step by step. Wilson in * A new dictionary of music ' (p. 264) says : " Every innovation tending to im- provement was stigmatised as immorality, sedition, and infidelity." This is much the position taken up by most of our present scholars, schoolmasters, and such-like inter- ested in education. From them no reforms will emanate, any more than national reforms emanate from rulers.
Instead of simplification or reform, the modern tendency seems to take a backward step, as, for example, putting French endings we do not pronounce, or leaving out letters instead of keeping words in their original form, as " typist " (which should be pronounced " typ ist ") instead of " typeist." I have always known the word " wasteful," but lately I have seen the word " waste " so altered by the omission of the e that for some time I did not know what was meant by " wastrel." PROF. SKEAT says (vi. 450) : " If a German meets a new- English word, it may easily happen that its spelling affords no clue to the sound." " Wastrel " is an instance of an Englishman finding a word which affords no clue to the sound. I do not know whether to pro- nounce it " wastrel " (like " mass ") or like wasteful."
To go on with the present muddle, how- ever, is preferable to the tyranny of coercion. To be dictated to by an " Academy " would be the worst thing that could happen for the language. Such a body would probably begin by insisting on disfiguring our letters- with accents a brainless and practically useless expedient. These accents have been enforced in France, and, worse still,* in Spain, where, contrary to the opinions 11 of scholars, a sort of Inquisition compels^ all the printers to adopt some new accents ih&