The Richmond palladium. (Richmond, Ind.) 1906-1907, 1906-10-06

lei. am sun aiioweo TO speaK OF
East Ham" and West Ham" because
the words are written separately, blu;
when l speak OF Lewis Ham," .Elt
Ham" or Peters Ham, am suspected
of defect in nay speech. almost as il
had spoken of Cars Holton" properly
rhyming to ..Walton'1 instead of .Ker
Shalltn." The received pronunciations
nowadays are Louis sham." Peter
sham lei them and so on. and peo-
pie who support the bad spelling which
Is corrupfing the language in this fash
ion pretend TO have special regard for
II and prattle of the Bible and Shake
speare. They remind me of the New
York police commissioner who once ar
rested whole theatrical company for
performing one of my plays and ex-
planned on being demonstrated with
that the sermon on the mount was
good enough for him
The worst of it is this want of con-
science in spelling has led 10 anarchy
and Indifference in the Interpretation
of spelling. London children are DELHI
erately taught to speak hideously by
selves. / have passed public element
airy school and have heard a class of
children chorusing the alphabet as fol-
lows: ~ "ber-ee,' ser ee,' ''der-ee."
"er-ee." aft" ..ger-ee." ..iche." ANY"
iii" Xxi" al am AN" "ow."
perez" ''kioo." "aw." lass" "ter-ee."
.'yer-eoo," "ver-ee." "dabblyew," AK"
.wawy." "zad.'
Already the west end. a section of
London, and Oxford have acquired
more than half this horrible pronuncia-
ton. and they will soon acquire it COM
pleteiy. They are lulled into false Sc
curity by the fact that the coarsely ma
sal resonance of the costermonger dis
tinguishes him socially from the Ok
ford graduate in spite of the identity
of their INSTRUMENTATION. But the
snarl will no doubt conquer oxford in
time. When smart society says low,
now" for "oh. no." and dahntahn" for
downtown" and calls ..humbug with
gum 'hambag with agan" it is not
very far from complete mastery Of the
language of what it already calls Mile
End rowd" and will soon call with ma
tive perfection of accent "Mawl Enn
Rowd."
I insist on this aspect of the case be-
cause. while we seem incapable of
grasping the enormous advantage Of
making English the universal language
both for writing and speech or OF un-
Outstanding how our spelling obstructs
that consumma ton, most English men
and women would almost rather die
than be convicted Of speaking like cos
termongers and flower girls. Our gov
erning classes dropped half the CONT
nent Of North America from sheer care
lessness. Sooner than drop an "h"
they would steep Europe in blood. 1t
therefore hits them purposely in their
vulnerable point.
For this very reason, however, the re-
form cannot be effected by shortened
spelling, which is indistinguishabl
from ordinary wrong spelling If any
man writes me a letter in which
through is spelled thru and
"above" "abuv" shall at once put him
down as illiterate and In consequence
plebeian. no matter what board or
what potentate sanctions his orthogra-
ply. Really phonetic spelling is quite
unmistakable In this way. No lady or
gentleman will ever be persuaded to
spell like the late Sir Isaac Pitman,
who was a very energetic bookseller
and a very bad phonetician, but any
body might spell like Henry Sweet
without compromising himself-indeed.
with positive affirmation Of having
been at Oxford. A practically correct
phonetic spelling justifies itself at once
to the eye as being the spelling OF an
educated man, whereas shortcomings and
so called simplifications suggest moth
ing but blunders.
1 therefore respectfully advise the
president and the board to take the
bull by the horns without wasting fur
Their time and enlarge the alphabet un-
til our consonants and vowels are for
all practical purposes separately repre-
scented and defined. By rhyming with
words in daily use we shall then get O
word notation which may be strange
at first-which does not matter-but
which will be neither ludicrous nor APP
very much indeed.
One other point Is Of Importance. The
new letters must be designed by an
artist with a fully developed sense of 4
beauty In writing and printing. There
must be no diacritical signs to spoil
the appearance of the pages Of new
type 1t is mistake to suppose that
the Bible teaches us the sacredness OF
chronological spelling, but it
does teach us the comeliness Of a page
on which there are no apostrophes and
no inverted commas.