The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-12-19
PHONETIC va. coaMoN SPELL.
 INC.


 Oh. how it puts me in . rage,
 To see upon the printed page,
 So many silet letters !
 They notaing do but block the way, And to Ine others piainiV say,
 We think outselSe> your heters," -PAsHeti< 6sfssissS.
 While, in the last fUy years the raul road and telegraph have threaded the inhabited globe English spelling remains to-day almost as Jonson tound and fixed 1t in his dictionary one hundred and tifY years ago. crude, irregular and illogical with an alphabet inadequate aud gov eTned by no kno~n nor Sxed la~s. !a thls alphabet there are too few letters to properly represent the sounds of the Ian Euage To represent thirty five simple and eight compound sounds, there are only twenty-six letters, and three oi these, ( ' and T. are redundant; and of the others, ; and s are diphthorgs, and the remainder signs of simple sounds. lf. in order to remedy th,s. each ofthe fifteen simple and two compound signs not represented each by a single charac. ter, were represented each by single combination of letters, as h in think, through, etc, 1t would not be so bad out such is not the case To represent simple and com pound sounds which do not have single characters to represent them, numerous letters aud combinations ot letters are used thus the sound in ball is represented by a in all, q! in talk, av in hawk, oEgA In thought, akch in tau ,ht etc. Sounds that have sep IT. ate and distinct characters allotted them in this system have many other letters and combinations of letters as their signs q as in ale, has sixteen letters and combin ations of letters to represcnt IL. Each letter has numerous powers q has six four, etc; and there arc no rules deter mining the pronunciation of letter in any given case, nor whether 1t shall be pronounced at all. And each combina ton of letters has several powers oHeA has seven in the single sentence:
 Though the tough cough and hiccough plough
 me through,
 will keep my way OCT life's stormy iongh,
 A distinguish ed German scholar has said l. aglsh would become the uniVcr- sal lans uage but for its bilArre uni un- reason able spelling Professor Knowl. ton has shown by analogy that ph -ough- phth eigh-tte-eau IS a proper and logical spelling of potato. In like manner we might use tte.eau-mme-eigh phth ough for tomato, and violate no idea of com mon sense that has not already been violated. Think of rite, write, i-g-h.t, and w.r-i h-,, when r-i-t would answer bet ter, be more easily learned, and take less time and space to writeis. And to these, ache, b a.r-q-u-e, c,i n.q ue, aEd ten thousand other words equally and many of them more devoid of reason and con- mon sense in their formation, and you have far presentation of the idIosyn- crasies of English spelling. What won. der so few boys and giils become good readers and spoilers. Is it not a wonder that they ever are able to read and spell at all2
 Every child is first told that is pro- nounced as in ale; and as soon as he has mastered this fact he is told it pre- nounced as in dI; then, succes' lively, as in aIk, arf, bdiI, and what No wonder the Il tie fellow accused his teacher oi lying, who told him to pronounce as in ssf, after having taught him it was pro- nounced as in eel When any system Is tound to be false 1t is our duty to seek better, and when that better is found 10 adopt it. What is needed Is an alpha bet which is as easy 10 use correctly as our present one is difficult. From the above cursory ex animation of our present alph Abet and its tf:cts we may gather the principles upon which to base a sim pie aRd intelligent one, that It's results in good reading and spelling may be as cer- tam as the sum of an algebraic equation. @trh lrh shnstlA HFa as many characters as there are element ary sounds in the language 1; second. bu, one character to represent each sound {; third, a compound character for each diph,hong fourth, no silent letters filth, each character should be as simple in form as possible, since such forms are more easily memorized and written than the complex; sixth. prominence should be given the vowels as the body of the words, since by theii use alone ideas may Dc conveyed. With such an alphabet we would pronounce a word we had new CT seen with as great certainty as one with which we had lifelong acquaint- ance.
 Such an alphabet, in the main, Isaac Putnam gave the world in i8J7, and the vowel and consonant scale oi which is the basis of his own and all other pho nographic and nearly all short hand sys- tems. ln the main this alphabet is cor rect, but i. does not separate the simple from the compound sounds properly; in i, eh and / are each represented by sim pie char Acters and prominence is given in this system to the consonants and not the vowels But, not ~iihstanding these defects, it is vastly superior 10 the old al- phabe,ic system. fl 1t were adopted, years would be saved that are now wasted in learning to read and spell by an im- proper sys,en. Time is money econo- my of time and energy is just as important as economy of money, and as important to the child as to the person of mature years. At least one-third the time of every boy and girl is spent in learning to read and spell. What a frightful waste