Litchfield enquirer., 1875-08-05
Spelling.

AuOccu, tO kuOW LudG uODOuy clSc Cstu
 spell, but not much. Consequently peo-
 ple are more favorably inclined than ever
 before to try to make written English
 something less of tumble of letters than
 it now is. A complete reform would of
 course consist in the adoption of phono-
 graphic alphabet by the use of which
 every word can be spelled precisely as it
 is pronounced. Such reform in spelling
 would have two obvious and very great advantages It would save children the years of study it now costs them to master the present system and it would correct those errors of pronunciation and provin- cialisms which abound among imperfect ly educated, and are noticeable even among
 we'll educated people.
 Few reflect upon the vast amount of time wasted in early life upon the dread ful inconsistencies of our orthography. There is nothing like it in any other al- phabetic writing. The Chinese scholar spends lifetime learning to read his word-signs. The Italian, on the other hand, requires but few months to master a system of spelling that follows the sound of their spoken language with almost ab- solute accuracy. Intermediate between the Italian and Chinese comes our English orthography. Innumerable words are so abominably spelled that they are really nothing but word-signs, as difficult of mastery as the Chinese. As if to discour- age the learner, these mis-spelled words are those which meet him most frequently at the outset. He makes no headway till he has learned arbitrarily-as word-signs, not as alphabetically spelled words, hundreds of the commonest words in the language. Hence the adult who has not learned to read in childhood seldom has the patience to overcome the preliminary discouragements thrown in his way by our arbitrary spelling These spellings once mastered, it is true, the worst of the work is done. The thousands and thousands of uncommon words which fill our diction- aries are in the main spelled us they are pronounced. It is not here. as in China, our scholars that suffer from a clumsy mode of writing, but our common people. Hence bad system of spelling becomes 0 great political evil. A republic based on universal suffrage can only be safe with universal intelligence and yet it is not too much to say that our miserable ortho- graphy keeps millions of our citizens in ignorance. Phonetic spelling might have saved the South millions of dollars within the past ten years. We all remember the rush made by four million emancipated slaves for the spelling book. Its difficult ties repulsed nine-tenths of them; and when, subsequently, the men they elected to office betrayed their trusts and plum. dered instead of governing the states placed in their charge, their constituents lived in ignorance of the fact, because they could not read. So, too, at the North, the foreign emigrant who comes to this country unable to read the English language seldom learns, and his ignorance keeps our city governments full of thieves who rob and misgovern precisely as the Southern carpet-baggers rob and misgov- ern. because the public press cannot reach their constituencies. Moreover, such an orthography as ours is a continuing curse. It not only prevents the average unlettered adult from ever learning to read our lan- guage, but it bids fair to keep rising generation in ignorance. Many states of the impoverished South cannot support the schools necessary to teach either their poor whites or their poor blacks to read, and the proportion of illiterate youth of those states is perhaps greater to-day than it was before the war. To everyone, there fore, who feels what prime necessity general intelligence is to the successful working of republican government, this question of spelling reform becomes some thing more than a question of conven- ienc. It seems almost public necessity.
 The advantage such reform would be to our pronunciation is worthy of consid- eration. Everyone has been amused at the bungling over unusual words which mars the efforts of the newspaper reader of the country grocery. His eye is con- stantly misleading his tongue. With phonetic alphabet the newspaper would teach daily lesson in pronunciation, and every man who could read would soon learn to pronounce correctly.
 Still we must not overlook one obvious that would result from the introduction of any system of improved spelling. For several generations our schools would have to teach both the old and the new systems Even if the print ing of any new books with the old spell ings could be prohibited by law, the old books would finger about for a century. It is not at all probable that conservative England would soon unite with progress sive America in such a reform, so that written English would continue to be mis- spelled long after written American had come to be spelled correctly. Moreover, for centuries the scholar would be obliged to learn both alphabets, and to him re- form will seem to promise only addition al labor. It is this consideration which induces many people to desire a reformed spelling rather than a reformed alphabet. such as would place our language on par with most foreign languages, in which a reasonably uniform spelling prevails. This seems to be the mode of reform preferred among the philologlsts who are
 urging the matter on the attention of the public, and we presume the commission authorized hy our recent legislature will report some such plan, if any. Still we should prefer thorougher work. A few ad- ditional letters, slightly varying in form
 from letters of similar sound in our pres-
 ent alphabet, would give us that true