Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-01
More About Spelling.

To the Editor Of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Since the publication in the JOURNAL AND COURIER of my remarks spelling in our schools my eye has fallen upon an article by Bishop Coxe on 'EAmericanisms in England'
 in the October number of the 'Forum, 5
 from which I ana glad to cite his testimony
 ''to the splendid gymnastics of mind to
 which our language subjects the growing
 boy. He learns hundred things besides
 spelling in his spelling class. He gathers
 the history of words, the roots of speech,
 the philosophy of language and the clements of many languages besides his own" In this article Bishop Coxe with characteristic good sense, fine taste, and withal conserva- tive spirit, criticises very justly some forms of expression current in England which have been by i'll informed critics designated as Americanisms Prominent among those criticised usages of English is that of inter posing a modifying word or phrase between the sign ''to" and the verb in the infaitiye, in the expression ito immediately dis solve," ''I continue to happily maintain,' D occurring in the Queens address to Parlia- ment last June. This, albeit the Queens English, the bishop justly thinks is bad English. After some other criticisms of what we may call Anglican provincialisms he passes to criticise an American usage in these words: f'Webster has corrupted our spelling sadly; on what principle it is hard to imagine. He writes honor and favor and savior. Why melt out," he pathetically asks, "the beautiful Norman flament of gold which adorns orthography and softens nrthQanV He 6rOnS the vowel that nttal and retains that which disappears. We do not say savi or but savi ur Saviour is not formed from salvador, but from sauveur. < Honour comes from honneu1, not from honor." This criticism appears to me for the following reasons to be unsound: We have in our language nearly four hundred worlds not including derivativ s from them, of the class referred to in the criticism, be- ing all derived originally from Latin words ending in or eIn, the last syllable but one be- ing always accented. In it's transformation into the French dialect the old Latin dropped the final syllable em, retaining the accent on the preceding or, but changing the into GU. This was a universal law; the was changed to GU and the accent was tained on what was in the Latin the penult, but had now, by the dropping of the em, become the final syllable The English vo- cabulary received most of these nearly four hundred words directly from tue original lLat1u; a I6W tue Presumably, however, the learned men who introduced the word had ever before their view the original Latin form in or em; at first the accent was kept on the same sylla- bic as in the Latin; but in order to mark the accent it became necessary to strengthen the vowel element by inserting Il. Thus in Chaucer:
 For with the rose colour strove hire hewe.
 Also:
 But thou yeve me my saviour.
 For exemplifcation of this process let us take three like words. We have thus in Latin, gubernatorem, imperatorem, salvato- rem; but in French, gouverneur, empereur, sauveur; and in early English, governour, emperour, both forms used by Wiclif in Matthew c, xii, and savyour, used by Plus Plowman. But these words on coming into our vocabulary suffer change in this i'm portant particular, that the accent is drawn back to the preceding syllable. The u, which did not belong at all to the original L Latin word and which was introduced sim ply to strengthen the vowel while under the accent, now if retained would only mislead the pronunciation and therefore should i'll all reason be dropped. So in majority of the words of this class it has been dropped. A few, however, remain which some Angli- cists would spell with the Il, as honour, col our. These number less than one-seventh of the whole, and some of these even are spelled both ways by Anglicists themselves. There is no good reason why, if any one, all these words should not be spelled with out the u. And there is no reason why any should retain it, except that one proffered by Bishop Coxe, viz, the supposed derivation immediately from the French. But if we spell governor and emperor why not savior, honor, color and the resta Or if the French form must be followed, why not throughout, and so spell gouverneur, empereur, sauveur, tl,, 1itt1l- of that EEhaaIJ- tiful Norman flament of gold which adorns orthography and softens orthoepyW Very strange it is indeed that Bishop Coxe him. self in his preferred spelling rejects all that is of proper Norman French in the word. Thus from the French honneur he rejects one and the e, for the is not peculiarly Norman or French. To insert this vowel af ter another vowel to strengthen it when un- der accent was a usage indigenous to our tongue not an exotic from the French; as we see in numerous pure English words; as plough from Anglo Saxon ploh; mould from A. S. molde; thought, A. s. thoht; so from A. S. flor we have floor; but Wiclif wrote ''evil pourge his foure." The doubling of the and the insertion of the have the same aim, to show the long sound of the o. The Norman flament" consequently does not really appear at all ln honour; to obtain it we must write honneur. The only argu- ment for retaining the u thus fails On the other hand every consideration from reason and history, and ali the regular principles of language, require that every word of this class be spelled without the u. Uniformity and consistency require it, as also simplicity. This vowel does not belong to the word. It is an alien, temporary squatter, never nat uralized It was introduced simply an orthoepic expedient to mark the accent. This accent being removed the retention is not only useless, but positively misleading. Derivatives from these words are spelled even by these Anglcsts without the u, as cobra bic, honorary, etc. The tendency in the lan- guage is towards the universal disuse. There are some who, disusing it in all the other words, yet cling to it in the word savior. But it seems to me the name, as specifically applied to one we all revere, is not worthi ly honored by a violation of the laws of speech, of which, as the former of our