The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-22
1910 MONTGOMERY 100000.

English spelling can be called so only by courtesy-only by deference to a usage that was itself deferred orig inally to- the ignorant printers and proofreaders of bygone centuries.
 Indeed, as Lord Lytton ,says;-A more lying, round about. puzzle head ed delusiou than that by which we confuse the clear instincts of truth in our eaccursed system of spelling was never conceded by the father of false4 hood. How can system of education flourish that begins by so n1onstrous a falsehood which the sense of hearing suffices to contradiet?
 Professor LOunsbury Speaks.
 Professor Lounsbury, when seen at Yale University, was as outspoken as Professor March in his denunclation of the so-called inconsistencies of Eng fish as she Is spelled
 "Of all civilized languages" said he. English is the worst spelled in Chris tendon. Originally phonetic, it is a combination of two different systems. If has been so modified that now the English speaking peoples have lost the phonetic sense. One of the best proofs of this is the ridiculous attempts which writers make when they attempt to spell phoneticalIy. l have derived much amusement from reading the phonetic satires on the proposed sirn- plification Of spelling, for they show that the men who composed them had not the faintest idea of how to ex- press sounds by means of the printed characters. t
 "There arc in Engflish forty sounds and only twenty characters which must be used in writing them. Many of the letters are therefore used in different ways. The sounds are the real life of the language. The letters are easily reduced to twenty. considering that x is really 'eks.' that a is 'cw.' that w is double 'u.' and that K and e and e and fs' are interchangeable. Some of the characters which were once used to supply this very need have entirely disappeared. There are no symbols now for such sounds as tn in 'thin,' and ,.th' in then although in earlier texts they were expressed by diagraphs.
 Many changes have in the centuries taken place in the pronunciation Of English. and as a result we have spell ings which stand for sounds which are no longer employed. The phonetic sense has been almost destroyed and spelling has become matter of au- thority-an act of memory. The con sonants alone have remained faithful; the voweIs have gone to the dogs.
 Protest from Authors.
 ''One of the most astonishing things which has resulted from the present agitation for a simplihed spelling Is the protest from English authors, who cry out against the proposed change as 'barbarous' Here Is Rider Haggard saying that the language of the Biblo and Shakespeare is good enough for him. He will ind the original spell ing of the Bible very different from that of the present day. and that Shakespeares works as originally spell ed can now hardly be read at all.
 MT. Rider Haggard Is not writing the language of the Bible and Shakes peare. We find in Shakespeare such spellings as 1heater' for theatre, and center for centre and the text abounds in numerous examples of the difference between the present orthog- raphy and that of his time.
 q know of no class of men who ars so Ignorant of the history and deriva- tion of their own language as the aV- craze English men of letters. l am not referring to English scholars, for tbev know. The English author re- gards the speech of today as sacred unmindful of the fact that it's spell Ing has undergone many changes and even now Is being constantly altered. Tn the Sermon on the Mount, Tn TYn- daIe's translation of the New Testa- ment, are many examples of the way in which English orthography has been modified. once so common. has almost disap- peared TyndaIe writes y synge, Tor T sing and y save for I say 'Heav- en- in his translation was written 'heV- en- and 1t was so written for many years. The word group even in the eighteenth century was printed 'groupe.'
 The printing house has had much to do with our present spelling The forms of spelling became hXed more or less through the introduction Of printing, although in many of the ear Her printed works words were spelled in the same book. Engllsh orthography was never the Work or scholars in any way. It was que to printing. The compositor estanllshed our sacred spelling. The result Is that English speaking races have lost the phonetic sense.
 "One of the best examples of the manner in which spelling does not give the actual sound Is furnished by the 'sh' in the word ship which appears written in many different ways III ocean 1t is e. In conscience SCI, ma tioh' has it 'ti and suspicion mas IL in 'ci.' Sherdan's dictionary printed in Ireland, actually provides that the s in 'superstition shall he pronounc. ed so as to give to the word the sound Indeed. some of the educated Irish classes still pronounce the word that way.
 PecuIarltIes Of VOwels.
 s'Numerous are ways in which the neutral vowel before r is sounded, and the spelling does not correspond to the actual sound For instance, the vowel is the e in her the 4 in 'fr:' the 'u' in fur the 'ou' in 'ad- tourn;' the 'ea' in heard
 'rFaw of us realize how much agony