Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1896-04-08
Rules OF photography Contrary to ETY.
molosy and Pronunciation.

Rules OF Orthography Contrary to ETY.
mology and Pronunciation.
That prooereaders and compositors
should be anxious for fixed rule of
spelling is ineligible, and one can
easily sympathize with their difficulties
when dealing with words which may
be spelled in more than enc way. New
ortheless the proposal that all these
doubtful spellings should be determined
has met with most vigorous opposition
from men of letters and students Of the
English language Scholars like Profess
or Skeat strongly object to any attempt
to further fix system of spelling which
cannot be defended on any rational or
scientific grounds.
To good many people, who as girls
and boys were taught to regard correct
spelling as almost more important than
correct speaking, this questioning of
the whole base OF our orthography will
come with shock of surprise. 1t needs,
however, only little careful reflection
to enable one to realize that the schol-
;ars are right. The popular notion that
our speaking indicates the etymology Of
words, and that this is task which
spelling ought to perform, will not bear
serious examination. ALI that our SPELL
ing really does is to retain archaic forms
of words which are now in use with a
changed pronunciation. But these forms
were themselves changes from some
thing that had gone before, and if we
consider the profound antiquity Of the
language it is easy to understand that
the assistance which philologists can
get from an Elizabethan or Georgian
spelling is practically worthless.
As matter of fact, however, many of
these older spellings are positively mis-
leading. In the last century, for exam
pie, our ancestors spelled lantern, Ian
thorn, not because they SO pronounced it,
but because some ingenious person
thought that the sides of lantern had
originally been made Of horn. and that
the name had thus arisen.~ The word, of
course, comes from the French lanterne.
This particular instance of pedantic folly
the present generation has dropped. but
we have preserved many others. We
istill, for example, have rhyme. as if the
word were connected withrhythm, while,
lin fact, it is nothing but the French
rime. Could is another absurdity. The
word never is and never has been pro-
:nounced with an l. Its old English or
.Anglo-Saxon forms are coud and couthe,
and the ! has crept into the modern
spelling solely from false analogy with
would and should. Yet a girl who left
out this unhistoric and inaccurate in
AN examination paper would probably be
.ridiculed.
In other cases modern spelling, though
mot absolutely inaccurate, is still mis-
leading. The word debt is case in
point. Here the insertion of the silent
b obscures the fact that the word comes
to us through the French dette, and not
direct from the Latin. Our French
-neighbors, by the way, have little more
reason to be content with their spelling
than we have, though our blunders are
not always identical. We, for instance,
spell marriage with two RS, and they,
more correctly, with only one; but, in
revenge, we have only one t in litera-
ture, while they have two. The truth Of
the whole matter is that our spelling,
like most of our institutions. has grown
up entirely haphazard, ignorance play
ing at least as great o part in its forma-
ton as learning. London Queen.