Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1885-11-18

Comfort for Those Whose Memories FAN
to Keep Track of the Exasperating Meth
DDS of English Spelling.
The theory is now advanced that, in
addition to narrowing the soul and tor
menting the spirit, our system, or
rather non-system of spelling actually
tends to damage the mind. Any num-
Der of persons who have been deadly
foes of photography from their infancy,
and who freely confess to never spell
ing a word according to approved Gus
tom save by the sheerest accident, will
approve this idea off hand without for
moment accrediting it's advocate with
the discovery of a new physiological
truth. A very large part of the En-
| glish writing world is firmly of the opin-
ion that the man who devised our
wretched combinations of vowels and
consonants had especial instruction of
the Evil One with the deliberate purpose
to facilitate the population of the
neither world.
! 1t is certain the frenzied struggle of
the mind to keep account of the
arbitrary and illogical methods of
spelling is exasperating in the extreme
and there should be no wonder il
mental quality and moral rectitude
suffer grlevous consequences through
the slips of the purely mechanical
process upon which correct spelling is
dependent
English spelling is governed by no
rational rules, and it is entirely a
matter of memory whether an in
structed person spells well or i'll.
Considering the number of cantanker-
! Gus words there are in our language,
from the simplest in ordinary use to
the rarest and most complex, the strain
put upon the mind to remember the
order and quantity of letters requisite
to given symbol is out of all proper
! ton to the tax upon memory of really
serviceable information and fruitful
ideas We are compelled to
greater concern for the character than
the significance of word and exhaust
ourselves retaining the form to the fire.
quent sacrifice of the meaning. AS
letters are dry, sterile, unproductive,
suggesting no thought and controlling
no sentiment, the youthful mind pun
meled by necessity to memorize their
sound relation to various words must,
without advantage. expend a great
amount of vital power that should be
concentrated upon the acquisition of
actual knowledge. Nothing is more
difficult than making logical, thought
full, active minds good spelling appar-
abuses. Spelling is purely mechanical
science, in which even strong will
may count for little. 1t is monstrous to
oh Il
combinations of confusing sounds, lying
accents and silent excuses, irritating
their young brains, checking their
youthful imaginations by conditions
they can not comprehend and which
steal from them the time that might
better be devoted to practical studies
they would pursue with delight.
The suggestion has been made that
children should first be taught to read
by the phonetic process, leaving the ro-
mantle Inconsistency for maturer years,
a suggestion the wisdom of which has
been attested by highly successful
experiments in that very way. There
are several phonetic systems that
offer solutions to the problem,
and it is not to be doubted
the Introduction of any one of them
would be of considerable benefit in
primary education. A writer for the
Popular Science Monthly covers this
point fully when he declares, by no
means as dogmatically as it may seem,
that rational education will never
flourish as it should till reformation
in the teaching of reading and spelling
has been accomplished.
In plain terms this means. that words
should, as far as practicable be spelled
as they are pronounced. Words should
be nothing more than the outlet of
thought; but one would think the
English compounds were fendishly
planned to bewilder and debilitate the
mind, for, unless q writer plunges
desperately ahead regardless of the
choice of letters to the formation OF a
word, ideas must suffer disaster while
the exact symbol is being extracted
from the tumble of like surrounding
signs. There is demand for uniformi-
| ty Of pronunciation or difference in
! spelling for nine-tenths of the words in
our language. 1t is maddening to find
dough" cough" and tough" sport
ing such wildly dissimilar sounds, and
we can account for the lunacy that
drove '.done" so far away from cone, :"
'lone, tone" ''bone," or relegated
dog and hog to different spheres.
/. Neither can the rational rule be found
for transposing the vowels in receive"
and 'belieye, for changing the final
sounds of ''indct" and .'interdict," or
for loading down word with letters
that are forever silent.
The defenders of all these monstrosi-
ties of composition as constrasted to
speech make plea for the preservation
of the signs that indicate the origin of
words. Who cares for the origin
OF words when laboring to give
birth to q sentiment? Words are not
esteemed for their pedigrees, but for
their uses, and their usefulness depends
upon the intelligent facility of their
being brought into play. It is the en-