CHAPTER VMETHODS OF RELIEF
He who has taken the pains to master the details given in the chapter on English sounds and the signs which are intended to represent them, will have received some conception of the nature of the orthographic slough in which we are wallowing, and also of the difficulty which exists of getting out of it. He will recognize that the obstacles which stand in the way of the reform of English spelling are not merely greater in number but are harder to overcome than those which beset any other cultivated tongue of modern Europe. Incomplete as is the survey, it is a melancholy picture which it presents. To him who has not become so accustomed to disorder that he has learned to love it for its own sake, the view is distinctly disheartening. The present orthography fulfills neither its legitimate office of denoting pronunciation nor its illegitimate one of disclosing derivation. It is consistent only ininconsistency. It is not necessary for us to consider here how this state of things came about. It is enough to know that it exists. A thorough-going reform of English orthography would therefore be one of the most gigantic of enterprises, even if men were fully informed about it and their hearts were set upon it. But a distinct majority of the educated class, though not educated on this subject, are opposed to it. Naturally the profounder their ignorance, the more intense is their hostility. It is no wonder, therefore, that many, in contemplating this dead-weight of prejudice that must be unloaded, have come to despair of the language ever being relieved in the slightest of the burden.
Let it be assumed, however, for the sake of the argument, that a general agreement exists that a reform of some kind is regarded not merely as desirable, but as practicable. At once arises the question: What shall be its nature? How far shall it be carried? Two courses are clearly open. One is to make a thorough-going reform of English orthography in order to have it accord with a genuine phonetic ideal, so that when a man sees a word he will know how to pronounce it, and when he hears a word he will know how to spell it. Then harmony between orthography and orthoepy will becomplete. Now there is certainly nothing either irrational or of itself offensive in the idea, whatever opinion we may hold as to the practicability or desirability of its attainment. Were we starting out to create a brand-new language, it is not likely that any one would be found wrong-headed or muddle-headed enough to look upon such an aim as improper or unwise. But conceding this ideal to be incapable of realization in the present state of public opinion, there is presented to our consideration the other course. This is to reduce the existing anomalies in our spelling, serving no use and displaying no sense, to the lowest possible number; to discard from words their unneeded and misleading letters; to bring all the words of the same general class under the operation of phonetic law, so as to produce uniformity where an unintelligible diversity now prevails. These are distinct objects. They constitute two separate movements which may be characterized by a slight difference in the wording. One is reformofEnglish orthography; the other is reforminEnglish orthography.
There have been in the past, and are likely to be in the future, many attempts at solving the perplexing problems involved in the furtherance of the first of these two movements.Some of them have been logical and consistent throughout. But one difficulty there is which has stood in the way of their acceptance. It will for a long time to come stand in the way. They must necessarily be addressed to generations which have not even an elementary conception of what the sounds of the language are, what are their real values, and what is the proper way of representing these values. As language is now learned full as much by the eye as by the ear, if not, indeed, more so, the form of the word as it is spelled, not as it is pronounced, becomes what is associated in the common mind with the word itself. In modern times this has begot an unreasoning devotion. Accordingly, as difference in a hitherto unheard method of pronunciation has always affected men by the mere sound of it, so does now a new spelling affect them by the sight of it. It arrests the attention of all. Of some it excites the resentment; to others it almost causes convulsions of agony. Hence, those who advocate a pure phonetic spelling—in itself the only strictly rational method—are holding forth a counsel of perfection to a body of persons who are so steeped in orthographic iniquity that they have come to think it the natural condition of the race. This is a situation which has to be recognized.Therefore, in the present state of public opinion, largely unintelligent and hostile in proportion to its lack of intelligence, it seems to me that reformofEnglish orthography—using the distinction just made—is not practicable. We must content ourselves with reforminEnglish orthography, imperfect and unsatisfactory in many particulars as it necessarily must be. Still, the middling possible is better than the ideally unattainable.
In a certain sense the latter course is, or ought to be, included in the former. Any reforminEnglish orthography which conflicts with the ideal of reformofEnglish orthography is not really a reform at all. It is nothing more than a temporary makeshift which puts an obstacle in the way of proper future effort. A piecemeal restoration of anything which is not in full conformity with the just restoration of the whole will do more than leave something to be desired. It will introduce much to be deprecated. Any process of simplification in a language whose spelling is so inherently vicious as ours is sure to be attended with inconsistencies. In any partial reform there will always arise exceptions which can never be swept away until that thorough-going reform is made for which the public mind is not prepared. These exceptionswill be seized upon and triumphantly paraded by the opponents of change as proof that as the reform proposed cannot be made perfect at once, it ought not to be begun at all. There would be truth in the last contention if the alterations recommended were not, as far as they go, in full conformity with that phonetic ideal which, though we shall never reach, we ought always to keep in view. The one essential thing to be insisted upon in the reforminEnglish orthography is that it shall follow the path of reformofEnglish orthography, no matter how far it may lag behind it. There should be no resort to temporary expedients which result in bringing out about a mere external uniformity at the cost of sacrificing the principle that the spelling should represent the sound. Furthermore, it must not bow down to the false god of derivation when such a course brings the form of the word into conflict with its pronunciation.
Much, indeed, of the discredit and ill success which have attended previous efforts in behalf of spelling reform have been due to the imperfect knowledge and erroneous action of those who have undertaken them. They saw that there was an evil; they did not see what the nature of the evil was. Hence, they adoptedwrong methods of relief. They did not propose their half-measures as preparations for something better. They looked upon them as final in themselves. It need hardly be said that reform of this particular kind could never be pressed consciously as reform until after uniformity of spelling had practically been established. Consequently, changesinorthography, as distinguished from changeoforthography, can hardly be said to go back to an early period. Nearly all noteworthy attempts of the sort took place in the latter half of the eighteenth century or the former half of the nineteenth. Johnson’s method of spelling was felt, especially in the earlier of these two periods, more than it was later, as a tyranny. It was still so new that all had not become used to it, and none had learned to love it with the gushing affection of our time. Many there were who still remembered the former state of freedom. A few were found who sought to set up rival thrones of their own. The crotchets, moreover, in which individual writers indulged have been numberless. In the vast majority of cases the changes proposed by them have been based upon no scientific principles. Still less have they been the product of any thoroughly worked-out theory. Accordingly, they haveserved little other purpose than to arrest momentarily the attention of the curious, and have had absolutely no influence whatever upon the orthography generally received.
In truth, many of these attempts at reform have been worse than partial. They have been merely in the direction of a mechanical uniformity which was not based in the slightest upon the nature of things. One illustration of this effort to bring about change which was not improvement can be found in the alterations proposed at the end of the eighteenth century by Joseph Ritson. To scholars Ritson is well known as the fiercest of antiquaries, who loved accuracy with the same passion with which other men love persons, and who hated a mistake, whether arising from ignorance or inadvertence, as a saint might hate a deliberate lie. He is equally well known for his devotion to a vegetable diet, and also for the manifestation, noticeable in others so addicted, of a bloodthirstiness of disposition in his criticism which the most savage of carnivorous feeders might have contemplated with envy. The alterations he proposed and carried out in his published works tended in certain ways toward formal regularity; but they also tended to make the divergence between the spelling and the pronunciationstill wider. For instance, the so-called regular verb in our tongue adds ed to form the preterite. Ritson made the general rule universal. He appended the termination also to verbs ending ine. Accordingly the past tense, for illustration, oflove,oblige, andsurpriseappeared asloveed,obligeed, andsurpriseed. As nobody pronounces the oneewhich already exists in these preterites, the insertion of another unnecessary letter could have only the effect of adding an extra weight to the burden which these unfortunate words were carrying as it was.
There were other changes proposed by Ritson. None were so bad as this, but they were all valueless. He himself, however, was too thoroughly honest a man to pretend that he had arrived at any knowledge of the principles which underlie the reconstruction of our orthography. He appears at last to have lost all confidence in his own alterations. Under his influence his nephew had also been affected with the fever of reform, and spelled many words in a way different from that commonly followed. In a letter written in 1795, Ritson informed his kinsman that he—the latter—was entirely ignorant of the principles both of orthography and of punctuation, and rather wished to besingular than studied to be right. “For my part,” he added, “I am as little fitted for a master as you are for a scholar.”
Such changes as those of Ritson provoked amusement rather than opposition. The knowledge of them, indeed, hardly came to the ears of those devoted but never very well-informed idolaters of the existing orthography who feel that the future of the English language and literature depends upon its present spelling, and that the preservation of that spelling in its purity, or, rather, in its impurity, rests largely upon them. They did not attack Ritson’s views, because they never heard of them. The changes, again, were too unscientific in their nature to be worthy of serious consideration by him who had the least comprehension of the real difficulties under which our orthography labors. Ritson himself lived long enough not only to doubt the value of his own efforts, but to see that these efforts had been attended by positive pecuniary disadvantage to himself. The worship of the orthographical fetish was then well under way. In a letter to Walter Scott, written in 1803, Ritson told him that his publishers, the Longmans, thought that the orthography made use of in hisLife of King Arthurhad been unfavorable to its sale. Yetthis was a work addressed to a class of persons who might be presumed to be peculiarly free from prejudices which affect so powerfully the semi-educated. Such a fact speaks stronger than volumes of dissertations as to the opposition which reform of spelling must overcome before it can meet with any sort of consideration at the hands of many.
But of these partial reforms, it is the one proposed by Webster that is most familiar to Americans, and perhaps to all English-speaking readers; for the storm which it raised was violent enough at one time to be felt in every land where our tongue was employed. Nor, indeed, has it so completely subsided that occasional mutterings of it are not even yet heard. The Websterian orthography, it is to be remarked, is found only in its primitive, unadulterated purity in the edition of 1828. All the dictionaries bearing other dates than that must be neglected by him who seeks to penetrate to the very well-head of this movement; for the author himself, or his revisers for him, bent before the orthographic gale, and silently struck out in later editions every method of spelling which the popular palate could not be brought to endure or inserted everything which it earnestly craved. No more than those who preceded himdid Webster go to work upon correct principles, even when looked at from the point of view of a partial reform. One main defect pervading his plan was that it was an effort to alter the orthography partly according to analogy and partly according to derivation. He could not well do both, for they often conflicted. Furthermore, he was often not consistent in the one and very often not correct in the other.
As far back as 1806 Webster had published an octavo dictionary of the English language. From that time for the next twenty years his attention was mainly directed to the compilation of such a work on a large scale. He soon found it necessary, he tells us, to discard the etymological investigations of his predecessors as being insufficient and untrustworthy. This they largely were, without doubt; but by way of remedying the defect, Webster devoted years to getting up a series of derivations which were more insufficient and untrustworthy still. In the process of doing this he made a study of some twenty languages, and formed a synopsis of the principal words in these, arranged in classes under their primary elements or letters. The results of this study were embodied in the dictionary of 1828, and the orthography was occasionally made to conform to it. Webstertook a serene satisfaction in these new spellings; but it was upon his etymology that he prided himself. In his view, it furnished a revelation of the hidden mysteries of language and a solution of the problem of its origin. With his eyes intently fixed upon the tower of Babel, he probably never felt so happy as when he fancied that he had come upon the trace of some English word found in the tongues made use of in the courts of Nimrod or Chedorlaomer.
It is a hard thing to say of a work which has taken up no small part of the lifetime of an earnest student that it is of little value; but there is not the slightest doubt that nearly all of Webster’s supposed philological discoveries were the merest rubbish. Necessarily, inferences based upon them in regard to the proper method of spelling are utterly unworthy of respect. The derivation, indeed, had at last to follow the fate which had overtaken certain portions of the new orthography. Its retention was a little too much for later revisers of the dictionary. These, in the edition of 1864, swept away at one fell swoop into the limbo of forgettable and forgotten things the fruits of twenty years of etymological study. Those conclusions, which in the eyes of the author had given him the key to unlock the hidden secrets of language, areno longer allowed to appear on the pages of the very work which perpetuates his name.
The changes of another sort, based upon analogy, which Webster introduced with the idea of making the spelling of words uniform, were liable to little positive objection. Some of them, in spite of violent opposition, have in this country more than held their own. The consequence is that in the case of a number of words in common use we have two methods of spelling flourishing side by side. This is a state of things which, it seems to me, every one who has the reform of our orthography at heart must contemplate with unqualified satisfaction. Not that Webster’s proposed changes, even had they been universally adopted, would have gone to the real root of the evil. Far from it. At best they merely touch the surface and then only in a few places. But one effect they have produced. They have in some measure prevented us, and do still prevent us, from falling to the dead level of an unreasoning uniformity. By bringing before us two methods of spelling, they keep open the legitimacy of each. They expose to every unprejudiced investigator the utter shallowness of the arguments that are directed against change.
But slight as Webster’s alterations were, theymet with the bitterest hostility at the time of their introduction. The love of little things is deeply implanted in the human mind. It is, therefore, perhaps not unnatural that the minor changes in spelling which he proposed should have met with attack far more violent than that directed against his tremendous etymological speculations. This culminated on the publication of Worcester’s Dictionary, which in the matter of orthography followed a more conservative course. A wordy war arose, which lasted for years. Combatants from every quarter leaped at once into the arena. They were easily equipped for the contest, inasmuch as virulence was the main thing required. Intellect was not essential to the discussion, and knowledge would have been a death-blow to it. The war of the dictionaries, as it was called, is therefore of interest to us at this point of time, not for any principle involved in it, but as an illustration, pertinent at the present moment, of how earnestly, and even furiously, men can be got to fight for a cause they do not understand.
There is no doubt, indeed, that Webster laid himself open to attack. Perfect consistency is not to be looked for in this world; but the man who sets out to make a reforminEnglish orthography as contrasted with a reformofEnglishorthography cannot help being inconsistent. He will feel obliged to retain objectionable spellings. He will even feel obliged to authorize some that are inconsistent with his own principles, for the same reason that Moses tolerated divorce. It is the hardness of men’s hearts, clinging to ancient abuses and unwilling to break up old associations, which will force the reformer to accept what he does not approve. Inadvertence, too, will add failures of its own to the contradictions involved in the very incompleteness of the scheme which has been adopted.
Both in respect to analogy and derivation, Webster did not carry out the principles he avowed. There were whole classes of words which he hesitated to change; at least, he did not change them. Of these half-measures, whether due to oversight or to doubt, one illustration will suffice. No man who seeks to make orthography etymologically uniform can have failed to notice the difference of spelling in the case of words derived from the compounds of the Latincedo. Three end ineed, six inede. As the digrapheehas practically the same sound always, the former termination seems to me preferable. But laying aside personal opinions in the matter, what sensible reason can begiven for writingsucceedwithceedandsecedewithcede? Here was a glaring anomaly which could hardly have failed to escape Webster’s attention. If the principle of analogy met with any consideration, this demanded to be removed, if anything did. But he was unequal to the occasion. In the edition of 1828 he spelledexceedwithceedandaccedewithcede, which every one does, to be sure, but which he personally had no business to do. In conformity with his avowed views, he was bound to make uniform the orthography of all the words which come from the Latincedo. As he failed to do this, he subjected himself to the reproach of not having acted in accordance with his own principles.
The truth is that analogical spelling occupied a very subordinate position in Webster’s mind. His work is mainly deserving of notice because, unaided, he chanced in some cases to secure success in spite of virulent opposition. Its chief value, indeed, lies in the fact that it has kept alive a feeling of hostility to the existing orthography of the English tongue; that it has saved many from paying a silly and slavish deference to the opinions of a not very well-informed lexicographer of the eighteenth century and his successors; that in the matter ofspelling it has inculcated the belief that there is a test of reason and scholarship to be applied, and not a mere prescription based upon ignorance; and that by these means it has given to some a hope, to others a fear, to all a warning, that however long Philistia may cling to her idols, they will be broken at last.
It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that the feeling about the wretched condition of English orthography has been confined to professional reformers. From almost the very beginning the users of written speech have been conscious of the burden they were carrying. It has certainly lain heavily upon the hearts of many thinking men in the past, and unconsciously, perhaps, on the hearts of all. But this feeling has never been translated into successful action. In truth, men believed themselves hopelessly entangled in a network of anomalies and absurdities which hampered all intelligent proceeding. Out of it they saw no way of escape. This despairing attitude is plainly apparent in the comments of the dramatist Ben Jonson on what he terms our pseudography. In speaking of the digraphckin certain words, he remarked that it “were better written without thec, if that which we have received for orthography would yet be contentedto be altered. But that is an emendation rather to be wished than hoped for, after so long a reign of ill custom amongst us.”
Consent to be altered, the language never did voluntarily. There is nothing more absolutely false than the assertion sometimes made that it has been and still is slowly but steadily reforming the spelling of its own initiative. Of the usage of the past it requires peculiar ignorance—though of that the supply is unlimited—to make an assertion of this sort. Everything of the little which has been accomplished in the way of reform has been gained only after a bitter contest. Undoubtedly there has been a steady tendency to give exclusive recognition to one out of several spellings of a word and thereby produce absolute uniformity. But there has been no disposition to make the spelling better. Not infrequently the worst form has been selected. Any one who takes the trouble to compare the orthography of the seventeenth century with that now prevailing will have frequent occasion to observe how slight has been the tendency toward simplification; that when a choice has lain between different spellings, it is not unusual to have the more unsuitable one preferred; and that, as a consequence, the divergence between orthographyand orthoepy has increased instead of diminishing.
In truth, in this matter we have often gone back not merely from the practice of the seventeenth century, but from the more rigid practice of the eighteenth. In the second half of the latter period Johnson’s Dictionary settled the standard. The changes which have taken place since his time have all been haphazard. They have been sometimes for the better; they have as frequently been for the worse. Take, for illustration,catcall,downfall,downhill,bethrall,miscall,overfall,unroll,forestall. In Johnson’s Dictionary these appear ascatcal,downfal,downhil,bethral,miscal,overfal,unrol, andforestal. As might be expected, there was no consistency in his treatment of the terminations found in these words. While he spelleddownhilwith a singlel, he spelleduphillwith two. While he spelledinstallwith twol’s, he spelledreinstalwith but one. Contradictory usages of this sort are liable to turn up anywhere in his work.Reconcilable, for instance, appears in it with aneafter theil;irreconcilablewithout this vowel. Naturally, arbitrariness of spelling of such a sort tended much more to the complication of orthography than to its simplification. There was sufficient love of uniformity in our natureto reduce many of these variations to one form; but as a general rule the form selected has been the one which carried the largest number of unnecessary letters. Take, for instance, the wordfulness, so spelled by Johnson. It is now often writtenfullness, after the analogy ofillnessandsmallness. But there is no consistency even in this practice. No one, for illustration, now spellsforgetfulnesswith twol’s, though that method was once not uncommon.
In fact, on no side has any rational principle been at work, or if it has shown itself, it has never been allowed to carry out fully the results at which it has arrived. Against the agencies which have tended to widen the gulf between orthography and orthoepy counteracting influences, indeed, have at times manifested themselves. Two measures, in particular, the language has unconsciously taken to lighten the load under which it has been staggering. One of them is a natural action on the part of the users of speech; the other, though a growth, partakes of the nature of an artificial device. Both, however, have exerted an appreciable influence in making the spelling indicate the sound. The first to be considered is very limited in its operations. In ancient days, when pronunciation was changed the spelling was changed inorder to denote it. With the petrifaction of the orthography this in time became generally impossible. Since, therefore, the spelling could not be altered to accord with the pronunciation, there sprang up a tendency to alter the pronunciation to accord with the spelling. Letters once unsounded came to be heard. Syllables previously crushed out of all recognition were restored to their full rights. These agencies never have exerted and never can exert influence on any large scale. Still, they have been operative in some degree and continue to be active. Accordingly, when the disposition manifests itself to bring about in such ways consonance between orthography and orthoepy, it is not worth while to make now any change in the spelling. A few examples will make this point perfectly clear.
Any one who compares the pronunciation given in the dictionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century with that now sanctioned by similar authorities, will be struck by a number of instances in which a given word was once not pronounced in accordance with its spelling, but is so at the present time. Take, for illustration,housewife. A century and more ago its regularly authorized pronunciation washuzzif. This continues still. Much more commonly,however, each syllable which enters into the compound is heard exactly as it would be were it used separately. The older pronunciation has mainly died out in consequence of men learning the language more through the eye than the ear; though in this particular case the degradation of the word tohuzzyhas probably contributed its aid to produce the result.
Chartwill supply us with another illustration. A century ago it was frequently pronouncedcart.Cognizanceandrecognizance, too, have now taken up generally the sound ofg, though in legal circles this letter still frequently remains suppressed. Take, again, the case of some words in whichquhad once the sound ofkas it is still heard inetiquetteandcoquette. Walker informs us that in his dayharlequinandquadrillewere pronouncedhar-le-kinandka-drill. In both these instances, under the influence of the printed word, thequhas generally abandoned the sound ofkfor the regular sound which we ordinarily associate with this digraph. The same thing is going on in the case ofmasquerade. The dictionaries, which rarely record such changes till they have been fully accomplished, give us no intimation of this fact. This last observation applies also topretty, in whichehas regularly the sound ofshorti. But the disposition to give the vowel here its strictly proper sound is showing itself in the case of this word. If left to run its natural course, it is likely in time to become predominant.
As a general rule, however, words subject to influences of this sort are not likely to be those commonly heard in conversation. They belong to the class which are more usually met in books. There he who sees them for the first time is disposed to make the pronunciation accord as near as possible to the spelling. To this rule there are occasional notable exceptions. I have heard even educated men—at least, men who were generally so regarded—pronounce the wordsEnglishandEnglandjust as they are spelled—that is, the initial syllable was sounded asĕngand not asĭng. No such pronunciation is ever likely to become common enough to bring itself into notice; but that it should exist at all is proof of how wide-reaching is the tendency just mentioned.
These words themselves, it may be added, are interesting illustrations of one of the various agencies which have done so much with us to bring about divergence between orthography and orthoepy. In our earlier speech there were two ways of denoting this initial syllable, corresponding,without doubt, to the two ways in which it was pronounced. In one case it was spelledeng, as it is now, in close accordance with its derivation. In the other case it was spelleding, giving us, with the usual orthographic variations, the formsInglandandInglish. Here a genuine difference in sound conveyed to the ear was represented to the eye by a difference of orthography. The modern speech has made one of its usual compromises. It has retained the spelling of the one form and the pronunciation of the other. A similar story can be told ofcolonel, which had once as an allied formcoronel. It is likewise true oflieutenant. In the case of this word, what is regular in the United States is exceptional in England, and vice versa. With us the pronunciation of the first syllable is almost universally in accordance with that of the simple wordlieu, which is its original. In England it is not allowed to be contaminated by any sound which might indicate its derivation. From a by-gone spelling,lef, comes the pronunciation there prevalent. This has survived the form that created it.
But the most striking illustration of a change, mainly effected by the agency of the written word, is seen in the past participlebeen. There is little question—there is, indeed, no question—thatat the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even much later, the digrapheein this word had in cultivated speech the sound of shorti. It is not meant that the other pronunciation which rymed it withseenwas not sometimes heard; but merely that it was then so limited in use that orthoepists hardly thought it worth while to recognize its existence. Walker admitted no pronunciation ofbeensave that which made it ryme withsin. He had heard of the other, but he had only heard of it. So said Sheridan, his contemporary and rival. So said Smart, his reviser and successor, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century.[35]Yet, with no support from the most prominent lexical authorities, the pronunciation ofbeento ryme withseeninstead ofsin, steadily gained ground in England during the last century. There it seems to have become finally the prevalent one. To it the New Historical English Dictionary, while sanctioning both ways of pronouncing the word, gives the preference—at least, the apparent preference.
The growth of this practice has, without question, been largely and perhaps mainly due to the fact that the digrapheehas been practicallyconfined to the representation of a single sound. It has become to us a phonetic symbol, denoting almost invariably the so-called “longe.” Having this sound in nearly every case, there is unconsciously developed the feeling that it ought to have it always. For the sake of conforming to it,beenhas in consequence steadily tended to abandon its once more common pronunciation. This single example is of special interest, because of the proof it furnishes of the unifying tendency that would be exerted over language were phonetic symbols with fixed values employed to represent one sound and but one sound. It does more than that. It indicates the only way in which permanence can be given to pronunciation.
Even now, so marked is the influence of the training of the eye as compared with that of the ear, that efforts consciously or unconsciously go on to modify the sound of the word as we have been accustomed to hear it to the form of it which we are accustomed to see. It is no unusual thing to hear persons painfully striving to pronounce the finalnofcondemn,contemn, and similar verbs, making themselves very miserable when they fail, and others very miserable when they succeed. But, after all, efforts to bring about in this way accord between form andsound can affect only a very limited class of words. The gap between orthography and orthoepy is, with us, too wide and impassable for the latter ever to close up. The most we can do is in process of time to revive the pronunciation of a few letters that are now silent, or to substitute a few forms etymologically correct for the corruptions by which they have been supplanted. When either of these courses shows signs of immediate or even of ultimate adoption, it is not worth while to disturb the coming of that result by present attempts at alteration. But in its best estate the changes of pronunciation to accord with the spelling cannot, as regards influence, be compared with the much more ancient device now to be considered. This consists in appending an unpronouncedeto the final syllable to indicate that the preceding vowel is long. This method early evolved itself out of the confusion in which our orthography was involved as a sort of help to denote the pronunciation by the spelling.
There seems to be something peculiarly attractive to our race in the lettere. Especially is this so when it serves no useful purpose. Adding it at random to syllables, and especially to final syllables, is supposed to give a peculiar old-time flavor to the spelling. For this belief thereis, to some extent, historic justification. The letter still remains appended to scores of words in which it has lost the pronunciation once belonging to it. Again, it has been added to scores of others apparently to amplify their proportions. We have in our speech a large number of monosyllables. As a sort of consolation to their shrunken condition anehas been appended to them, apparently to make them present a more portly appearance. The fancy we all have for this vowel not only recalls the wit but suggests the wisdom of Charles Lamb’s exquisite pun upon Pope’s line that our race is largely made up of “the mob of gentlemen who write with ease.” The belief, in truth, seems to prevail that the finaleis somehow indicative of aristocracy. In proper names, particularly, it is felt to impart a certain distinction to the appellation, lifting it far above the grade of low associations. It has the crowning merit of uselessness; and in the eyes of many uselessness seems to be regarded as the distinguishing mark of any noble class, either of things or persons. Still, I have so much respect for the rights of property that it seems to me every man ought to have the privilege of spelling and pronouncing his own name in any way he pleases.
The prevalence of this letter at the end ofwords was largely due to the fact that the vowelsa,o, anduof the original endings were all weakened to it in the break-up of the language which followed the Norman conquest. Hence, it became the common ending of the noun. The further disappearance of the consonantnfrom the original termination of the infinitive extended this usage to the verb. The Anglo-Saxontellanandhelpan, for instance, after being weakened totellenandhelpen, becametelleandhelpe. Words not of native origin fell under the influence of this general tendency and adopted aneto which they were in nowise entitled. Even Anglo-Saxon nouns which ended in a consonant—such, for instance, ashorsandmúsandstán—are now represented byhorseandmouseandstone. The truth is, that when the memory of the earlier form of the word had passed away anewas liable to be appended, on any pretext, to the end of it. The feeling still continues to affect us all. Our eyes have become so accustomed to seeing a finalewhich no one thinks of pronouncing, that the word is felt by some to have a certain sort of incompleteness if it be not found there. In no other way can I account for Lord Macaulay’s spelling the comparatively modern verbeditasedite. This seems to be a distinction peculiar to himself.
How widely prevalent at one period became the use of this finalecan be brought out sharply by an examination of a few pages of a single work. Take, for example,The Schoolmasterof Roger Ascham. This was published in 1570. In the admirable reprint of it, executed by Professor Arber, the preface occupies eight pages. In this limited space we find aneappended to no small number of words from which it is now dropped. It appears in the nounsbargaine,beginninge,booke,daye,deale,deede,eare,feare,fructe(fruit),gowne,greife(sic),hinte,kinde,learninge,logike,minde,realme,rhetorike,silke,sonne,spirite,sworde,stuffe,taulke,wisdome,wonte, andworke; in the verbsbeare,gatte(preterite),looke,passe,seeme,teache,thanke,thinke,tooke(preterite), andwaulke; in the adjectivescertaine,fewe,fitte,fonde,lewdeorleude,lothe,meane,olde,poore,shrewde, andsweete; and in the adverbsagaine,agoe,cheife(sic), anddoune. On the other hand, this finaleis absent from some words where it is now regularly found.Comeandbecome, for example, appear ascumandbecum, andtongueastong.
In the chaos which came over the spelling in consequence of the uncertainty attached to the sound of the vowels, the finalewas seizedupon as a sort of help to indicate the pronunciation. Its office in this respect was announced as early as the end of the sixteenth century; at least, then it was announced that an unsoundedeat the end of a word indicated that the preceding vowel was long. This, it hardly need be said, is a crude and unscientific method of denoting pronunciation. It is a process purely empirical. It is far removed from the ideal that no letter should exist in a word which is not sounded. Yet, to some extent, this artificial makeshift has been and still is a working principle. Were it carried out consistently it might be regarded as, on the whole, serving a useful purpose. But here, as well as elsewhere, the trail of the orthographic serpent is discoverable. Here, as elsewhere, it renders impossible the full enjoyment of even this slight section of an orthographic paradise. Here, as elsewhere, manifests itself the besetting sin of our spelling, that there is no consistency in the application of any principle. Some of our most common verbs violate the rule (if rule it can be called), such ashave,give,love,are,done. In these the preceding vowel is not long but short. There are further large classes of words ending inile,ine,ite,ive, where this finalewould serve to mislead the inquirer as to the pronunciationhad he no other source of information than the spelling.
Still, in the case of some of these words the operation of this principle has had, and is doubtless continuing to have, a certain influence. Take, for instance, the wordhostile. In the early nineteenth century, if we can trust the most authoritative dictionaries, this word was regularly pronounced in England as if spelledhos’-tĭl. So it is to-day in America. But the influence of the finalehas tended to prolong, in the former country, the sound of the precedingi. Consequently, a usual, and probably the usual, pronunciation there ishos-tīle. We can see a similar tendency manifested in the case of several other adjectives. A disposition to give many of them the long diphthongal sound of theiis frequently displayed in the pronunciation of such words asagile,docile,ductile,futile,infantile. Save in the case of the last one of this list, the dictionaries once gave theilenothing but the sound ofil; now they usually authorize both ways.
Were the principle here indicated fully carried out, pronunciations now condemned as vulgarisms would displace those now considered correct. In accordance with it, for instance,engine, as it is spelled, should strictly havetheilong. One of the devices employed by Dickens inMartin Chuzzlewitto ridicule what he pretended was the American speech was to have the characters pronouncegenuineasgen-u-īne,prejudiceasprej-u-dīce,activeandnativeasac-tȳveandna-tīve. Doubtless he heard such pronunciations from some men. Yet, in these instances, the speaker was carried along by the same tendency which in cultivated English has succeeded in turning the pronunciationhos-tĭlintohos-tīle. Were there any binding force in the application of the rule which imparts to the terminationethe power of lengthening the preceding vowel, no one would have any business to give to it in the final syllable of the words just specified any other sound than that of “longi.” The pronunciations ridiculed by Dickens would be the only pronunciations allowable. Accordingly, the way to make the rule universally effective is to drop this finalewhen it does not produce such an effect. Ifgenuineis to be pronouncedgen-u-ĭn, so it ought to be spelled.
For a long period, indeed, in the early history of our speech, whenever pronunciation changed, spelling was changed for the sake of denoting it properly. If a letter then became silent, it had no rights which any one felt bound to respect.It was incontinently dropped. No one needs to be told that this has all been changed in modern times. With us it has become both the belief and the practice that if a letter has once got into the spelling of a word, no matter how unlawfully, it has acquired the right of remaining there forever. In consequence, our language is encumbered with a lot of alphabetic squatters which have settled down upon the orthography without any regard to the opposing claims of either derivation or pronunciation. The mental attitude which at first tolerated and at last has learned to love these nuisances sprang up after the invention of printing. The influence of this art upon the spelling is something that cannot well be overestimated. Any confusion which might before have existed in it became from this time worse confounded. Upon the introduction of printing, indeed, English orthography entered into the realm of chaos and old night, in which it has ever since been floundering. Then it began to put on the shape it at present bears, “if shape it may be called which shape has none.”
The evil effects wrought on the orthography by printing, as contrasted with the previous method of manuscript reproduction, were largely due to the difference of conditions underwhich the two arts were carried on. The early type-setters, indeed, had to encounter the same difficulties which beset the copyists of manuscripts. There were among educated men the widest diversities of pronunciation. No established literary, still less established orthoepic standard, to which all felt obliged to conform, could possibly grow up during the long civil strife of the fifteenth century. Disorder and confusion, which in many cases had their origin as far back as the coming together in one tongue of two conflicting phonetic systems, continued to prevail to a great extent. But the copyists of manuscripts, compared with the type-setters who succeeded them, were men of education. Some degree of cultivation was essential to a profession which demanded as the first condition of success the ability to gain a clear conception of an author’s meaning. In accordance with the practice then universally prevailing, they would give to the word the spelling which to them represented the pronunciation. As educated men, this would be done in the majority of cases with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Still, that the copyists of manuscripts were a long way from reaching the highest ideal of excellence we know from incontestable authority. The corruption of the text caused by theirwilfulness or carelessness was one of the few things that seem to have vexed the genial soul of the first great singer of our literature. Chaucer in his address to Adam, the scrivener, complains of the great trouble to which he is put in revising his works by the latter’s negligence. A fervent prayer is made that he may have a scalled head if he does not hereafter adhere to the original writing more closely. Toward the end ofTroilus and Cryseydethere is, as Mr. Ellis remarked, something almost pathetic in his address to his “litel boke”
And for ther is so greet dyversiteeIn Englissh and in writynge of our tonge,So preye I God, that non myswrite thee,Ne the mys-metere for defaut of tonge.
It is not likely that either imprecation or imploration had much effect upon the scribes of that day, who were probably as perverse a generation as the scribes of old. But one thing is to be said in their behalf. The cardinal principle that the proper office of orthography is to represent orthoepy they never lost sight of, however wofully they may have failed in carrying it into effect. Had this been consistently kept in view, the attainment of a reasonably complete correspondence between spelling andpronunciation, while it might have been long delayed, would have been sure to follow at last.
All this was checked and finally reversed by the introduction of printing. Far higher requirements, as has been intimated, were needed in the work of the copyist than in the mere mechanical labor of the type-setter. The former had to understand his author to represent correctly what he said. But there is no such necessity in the case of the compositor. Whatever intellect he may have, he will not be called upon to use it to any great extent in his special line of activity. His duty is done if he faithfully follows copy, and he can perform his work well in a language of which he does not comprehend a word. His labor is and must always be mostly mechanical. The very fact that he is not responsible for results will inevitably have a tendency to make him careless in details. The blunders in spelling, and in greater matters still, shown in modern printing-offices where the most scrupulous care is exerted to attain correctness are familiar to all. These evils would be immensely increased at a period when no such extensive precautions against error were taken in any case, and when in some cases it would seem as if no precautions were taken at all. The effects of the carelessness and indifferencethat frequently prevailed would not be and were not confined to the work in which they were directly manifested. The orthography of printed matter necessarily reacts upon the orthography of the men who are familiar with it. These, when they come to write, will be apt to repeat the errors they have learned from the books they read. With that peculiar ability in blundering shown by all careless spellers, they will further contribute numberless variations of their own. These in turn will be followed more or less by the type-setter. Thus, new forms will be constantly added to the prevailing disorder. In this manner a complete circle is formed in which author and printer corrupt each other, and both together corrupt the public.
Such was, in great measure, the situation of things in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Differences of spelling in the same book and on the same page were found constantly. But necessarily it was a situation which could not continue. To a printing-office, uniformity of orthography, if not absolutely essential, is, to say the least, highly desirable. Toward uniformity, therefore, the printing-offices steadily bent their aim, since nobody and nothing else would. The movement in thatdirection was powerfully helped forward by the feeling, which had been steadily gaining strength after the revival of classical learning, that the office, or at least one great office, of orthography is to indicate derivation. Belief in this involved in its very nature the notion of fixedness of spelling. It therefore gave the sanction of a quasi-scholarship to the demand for an unvarying standard which came from a mechanic art. Under the pressing needs of the printing-office, the movement toward uniformity made steady progress during the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. Wide variations continued to be found in works bearing the imprint of different establishments. We must remember that there were then no dictionaries that men were disposed to consider authoritative. It was not until the eighteenth century that these began to exist on any scale worth mentioning, or that much respect was paid to the spellings they sanctioned. Each printing-office was largely a law unto itself.
But the desire for uniformity became more insistent as time went on. At last it succeeded in reaching the end it had in view. But unfortunately for us, the establishment of the orthography was in no way the work of scholars, though this was largely a result of their ownindolence and indifference. It came into the hands of men who knew nothing about it and cared still less. In consequence, it was a haphazard orthography that was fixed upon us. In the selections made by compositors and proofreaders from the variations of spelling which then prevailed, it was the merest accident or the blindest caprice that dictated the choice of the form to be permanently adopted. Authors themselves seem rarely to have taken any interest in the matter. The uniformity, or the approach to uniformity, we have now was accordingly the work of printers and not of scholars. As might be expected, the result of it is a mere conventional uniformity. In no sense of the word is it a scientific one. In effecting it, propriety was disregarded, etymology was perverted, and every principle of orthoepy defied. Men of culture blindly followed in the wake of a movement which they had not the power and probably not the knowledge to direct. Certainly they lacked the disposition. To the orthography thus manufactured Johnson’s Dictionary, which came out in 1755, gave authority, gave currency—gave, in fact, universality. But it could not give consistency nor reason, for in it they were not to be found.
As a consequence of the wide acceptance ofthis orthography, the petrifaction of the written speech which had been steadily going on for at least two centuries was now practically made complete. So far as the forms of the words were concerned, it assumed more and more the character of a dead language. But in the meanwhile the spoken tongue remained full of vigor and life. As a necessary consequence, it was constantly undergoing modification. While the spelling stood still, changes in pronunciation were numerous and rapid. Whether they were for the better or for the worse is not pertinent to this inquiry. But the inevitable result was to widen steadily the gulf that had long before begun to disclose itself as existing between the written and the spoken word. That result is before us. No particular value having been attached to any vowel or combination of vowels, there is nothing to determine the exact value they should have when they appear in a particular syllable. For the pronunciation we go not necessarily to the word itself but to somewhere else. Every member of the English race has to learn two languages, every member of the English race uses two languages. The one he reads and writes; the other he speaks.