The Richmond palladium. (Richmond, Ind.) 1906-1907, 1906-10-04
BERNARD SHAW FOR
ENLARGEDsAL PHABET
Method to Reform Spelling
Urged by Irish Critic.
PRESENT PLAN ONLY sHORTENs
Phonetfcs Are Inevitable, He Claims,
but Correct Ph0netfcs Need More
Letters-DecIares Reform Cannot BE
Effected by Shortened Spelling
Which Looks Uneducated.

George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dram
atist and critic, has set forth his views
on spelling reform in the following ex-
tract from chara cteristic letter to the
editor of the London Times:
1t is to be regretted that the scheme
of the simplitied spelling board so ener-
getically and wisely forced on our at
tention by President Ruzvelt IF he will
allow me to simplify him to that ex
tent has been received not only with
the outburst of ignorance and folly
which any sensible proposal may now
adays count on, but with false deli
cacy which has led genuine phonetic
experts to withhold serious technical
criticism 1t is bad enough to have
men of letters passionately defending
such a recent absurd and transient
alteration ssour. pseudo-etynologica
spelling on tie ground that it is the
spelling of tile Bible and Shakespeare
Ga libel gross enough to make Tyndale
and Shakespeare turn in their graves,
but it is far verse ito have the defects
of the scheme passed over in polite
silence by thespe0ple who know au-
thoritatively that though the president
does not overrate'the enormous impor-
lance of spelling reforms, his methods
cannot be regarded as an advance on
those of Artemus Ward and Josh Bill
ings
/ tried to express this myself by COM
pairing his action to the reform calen-
dar by Mohammed. who divided the
year into twelve lunnr months. with
results on the Caravan season: arrange
ments from Mfifeh eAraRlan commerce
has not recovered to -tEiss day, but
find that moatsQf your contemporaries
regard Mohammed's arrangement as an
excellent one and accordingly report
me as enthusiastically in~favor of the
presidential scheme.
Pending some really y authoritative
comment by Henry Sweet. whose pro-
posals of 1881 are hardly to the point
today, or by home expert of his
school, let me point out q few obvious
shortcomings in the scheme. To begin
with, it is not7realiy. simpIified. spelling
1t is shortened spelling, which is quite
different mattcr,.aS the short spelling
may leave foreigner or a child quite
as much in the dark as to the sound of
a word as the long one, and 1t anxious
" disclaims any pretense to be phonet
ic. Now. it is doubtless wise when
reform is introduced 10 try TO persuade
the British public that it is not a re-
form at all. but appearances must be
kept up to some extent at least, and
the fact is that a board which dis
claims phonetic spelling puts itself out
of court.
Unphonetic spelling is as impossible
a fgment as secular education Unless
we adopt the system OF Chinese ideo-
graphs and learn by heart a separate
arbitrary symbol for every word in the
dictionary we must spell phonetically.
We may corrupt and confuse our spell
ing by etymologic fads spelling Diet
with f'b'' and loren with an zig
just as we might spell man" .mapn"
or '.mByan,' to show that we are de
scended from the apes or monkeys
But we shall not spell man" APE" nor
shall We ever spell cat dog" If we
did the only result would be that we
should presumably spell dogma '-cat
ma" We cannot get away from pho
netic spelling because spelling is as
necessarily and inevitably phonetic as
moisture is damp.
To say that English and Trench
spelling not phonetic is absurd. All
that it rs -. is that the French and
English sl,t.sl much worse than the
Germans and Italians. being relatively
conceited and inhIbitiye people who
take an uppish delight in making
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