The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1875-12-01
SnClllng ILeinrrll.

llwmlh, LONDON Now', So,. ~
There remain some improvements in
spelling which would be useful II they
Conldbe made. Spelling is almost rs diff.
icnIt to interfere with as the growth Of
language, concerning the possibility Of
making conscious changes in which is
not bitter war waging among philolo.
gist'' Probably it is more by crude nat.
ural selection that our modern spelling
has grown up out Of wilderness OF anal.
ogie', phonetic CllOrt9to represent sound,
and SO on, than through any conscious
Interference Of grammnrans. Gramma.
rliO', as NangcIaS knew, can only select
the forms which seem the best in usage"
and try to give pCrmancnce to them.
Even in this process usage changes, and
the grammarian has been compared to
the barber who shaved so slowly that the
patients beard had grown rough on one
side at the moment when II was trimmed
on thcolhcr, We see American efforts to
introduce honor for honour being made,
and probably most OF us resist the intru-
SION. The difficulty Of reform can scarce.
be shown more clearly than by the ease
Of classical names. We all know that we
should Use k'sin place OF e's, for instance,
lnmany familiar Greek names. We know
that the retention Of the diphthong
where English drops it would save many
lil'c quantities. Yet who darcs write
IhOnknddcs for Thucididcs, or Aisculos
Tor E3chylns2 II We might print Eu.
boulos instead Of Eubulus, we should not
hear it accented on the first syllable in
the rcading.dcsk; and il we could only
have some generally accepted system Of
accents no one would pain lis with
S'ephainaa, when Slephanas Is the man
We know Oi course a system Of new
letters to express varieties Of sound, so
mat We could have n long "O' aud short
% and so On, would solve the worst part
OF the difficulty; but nations, like EN-.
peF"r', are above grammar, and will not
permit the letters they are used to, sacred
a. the hicroglyphs, to be intCrfeted with
by phonetic societies. Besides, though II
new alphabet would make learning to
read easier to children, how about the
gtown'np people, who would find
impossible to 20 osclool? Nor could
NSllrary shapes be easily accepted MS
'nO'tiinies for symbols that go back be.
yVhd Phenecian culture, II the recent
theories Of N, Rongc be true, to the hier.
ogIyPhic9 OF Egypt. The system Of "con.
ye0''o9al inetaphs," such rs the odd,
winch /, in Welsh the hard "th," Is more
plausible and possible, but how il tleir
GENERAL acceptance to be sccnrcd2 We
W, mot press the historical objection that
Pa'Iology would he bailed by the omis
aC9 OF letters now soundless, like the
gu IN daughter and night, which ARE
now sounded only in the Scotch, dochtei
sni hlcht, because the philologists could
unl the old form Of n word in dictiona
ue ana old books, even though IL np
PelTed in q new shape in the daily papers
ihll9logy would still have all the past o.
ne English language through which t.
WacG trlmm's and other laws. But there
would he great gulf, in outward seem
Jug, between Victorian and post.vic
%'Ian English; and as we are not font
W revolutionary changes, II Is probable
.u' The reform Of English spelling viii
,3me ny degrees AZ there are already
l'Sn' Of i,' doing on the other side Of TIL