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 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
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 NRStea,,SL1!t]ll?.,,.K.!ng:s. English. 
 
 3 1924 026 632 004 
 
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THE SPELLING OF THE KING'S 
 ENGLISH 
 
Tantae molis erit linguam renovare vetustam. 
 —After Vergil. 
 
 Where I may sit and rightly spell. 
 
 — Milton (adapted). 
 
THE SPELLING OF 
 THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 JOHN CLARKE 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 "^"^ (.OUNIM:!-. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The author of a work of this kind may expect, 
 and ought to welcome, criticism. In return he 
 may claim that his proposals be mastered before 
 being judged, and that, in any exception taken ' 
 to them, the appeal shall be to reason and not 
 to prejudice. An adequate solution of the class- 
 room problem of reading is still wanting. The 
 matter is confessedly urgent, and the key to 
 the learner's difficulties, if not found in one 
 direction, must be sought in another. This 
 little book is primarily a response to the call 
 of the school ; for the justification of a fresh 
 attempt at reform, on lines more or less new, 
 is to be found in the claims of education. At 
 the same time, there seems, ground of hope, 
 that what is an aid to learners at home may be 
 no less helpful to learners abroad. If made the 
 basis of a wider reform of English spelling, pro- 
 posals of the kind would have to be submitted 
 to a Commission representative of the English- 
 speaking peoples, for which, on other grounds, 
 the time is now ripe. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 An outstanding feature of the present scheme 
 is the retention of the existing alphabet. No 
 change whatever of symbol is proposed, unless 
 the mark \ be so considered. Historical con- 
 tinuity is maintained, and the esthetic features 
 of the language are carefully i preserved. Very 
 substantial gains are thus secured at but slight 
 sacrifice. The suggested changes stand on 
 their individual merits, the adoption of one 
 does not involve the others. 
 
 The proofs have been submitted to the Re- 
 search Committee of the Educational- Institute 
 of Scotland, which unanimously approved the 
 soundness of the lines, and recorded that the 
 author "had produced an admirable scheme, 
 which, with necessary modifications, might be 
 made the basis for a movement in the direction 
 of reform in which the teachers of Scotland 
 might join ". Grateful thanks are, in this aird 
 other connections, due to friends whose criti- 
 cism has been of assistance, and whose favour- 
 able opinion has encouraged publication ; in 
 particular, to Dr. Wilham Boyd, Dr. F. E. A. 
 Campbell, Professor Jules Desseignet, Mr. 
 Duncan MacGillivray, Dr. Alexander Morgan, 
 Mr. Neil S. Snodgrass, and my daughter 
 (Mary), of the Edinburgh Ladies' College. 
 
 JOHN CLARKE. 
 
 Christmas, 1920. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Introductory 
 
 Origins .... 
 Development of Word Forms 
 Urgency of Reform . 
 
 A. Educational Argument 
 
 B. The Foreign Pupil 
 
 C. Immediate Action Imperative 
 The Practical Problem 
 The Phonetic Principle 
 The Alternative 
 Principles to be Observed 
 Scheme of Proposed Changes 
 
 A. Essential Changes 
 
 B. Desirable Changes 
 
 C. Exceptions 
 Illustrative Extracts (1), (2), (3), (4) 
 Merits of the Scheme 
 The Principle of Uniformity . 
 The "Blank Cheque'' 
 The Alphabet Unchanged 
 Restoration of Function . 
 Details of Suggested Changes 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 4 
 5 
 6 
 9 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 17 
 18 
 18 
 18 
 21 
 22 
 23 
 25 
 25 
 26 
 
viii 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION 
 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Vowels • . . . 
 
 
 (a) Final £ Mute 
 
 
 (6) The Essential Change — a, 
 
 
 (c) A A LONG 
 
 
 (d) AL, AU, AW 
 
 
 
 (e) AI, AY 
 
 
 
 (/)E . . 
 
 
 
 fe) I ■ • 
 
 
 
 (h)0 . . 
 
 
 
 (i) u . . 
 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The Effect of Stress (Accent] 
 
 XX. 
 
 Some Doubtful Terminations 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The Consonants 
 
 
 (a) J, QU, X . 
 
 
 (b) c,o . . . . 
 
 
 (C) NG 
 
 
 (d) s 
 
 
 {e) Superfluous Letters — 
 
 
 (1) t, d, etc. 
 
 
 (2) Doublets . 
 
 
 (3) Silent Letters . 
 
 
 (/)-LE .... 
 
 XXII. 
 
 H FORMS .... 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 -SIGN, -TION, ETC. . 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Some General Considerations 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Reservations 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Methods of Teaching 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The Alphabet 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 A Test Letter . 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Two Crucial Examples 
 
 XXX 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 
 o. 
 
I. INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The imperfection of English orthography has 
 long been admitted ; only' the possibility of re- 
 form has been doubted. As early as the reign 
 of Queen Elizabeth, her secretary of State, Sir 
 Thomas Smith, proposed a scheme of regular 
 orthography. He is alleged by Johnson to have 
 been " a man of real learning, and much prac- 
 tised in grammatical disquisitions". But his 
 scheme failed, as likewise did several similar 
 attempts, for "who can hope to prevail upon 
 nations to change their practice, and make all 
 their old books useless ? or what advantage 
 would a new orthography procure equivalent to 
 the confusion and perplexity of such an altera- 
 tion ? ' ' The strictures here pronounced are 
 sane and reasonable. If all old books were to 
 be rendered useless, or if confusion and per- 
 plexity were the certain prospect, a fresh 
 attempt at reform would be foredoomed to 
 failure. But surely a via media is at least con- 
 ceivable between the Scylla of catastrophic 
 change, reckless of tradition and sentiment, and 
 the Charybdis of indefensible current usage. If 
 such a path can be found or constructed, the 
 
2 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 conflicting interests may possibly be recon- 
 ciled. 
 
 At the present moment, there are believed to 
 be thousands of intelligent men and women 
 ready to welcome reform, provided only it 
 satisfy certain elementary conditions.* Among 
 their number are in chief those on whom is laid 
 the burden of early education. No teacher of 
 the young can fail to be painfully familiar with 
 the anomalies of spelling which render his (and 
 her) task so unnecessarily tedious, difficult, and 
 uninspiring. Indeed the nation at large has a 
 latent consciousness that its methods of spelling 
 are unsatisfactory to the verge of absurdity, 
 and that a good deal of effort in mastery is 
 rewarded with but meagre gain. If there be 
 those who regard spelling as a touchstone of 
 scholarship or social standing, and who cherish 
 its defects as a peculiar treasure, they may 
 be asked to reflect on the degree to which they 
 have thems'elves really acquired the art, and the 
 extent to which their own accuracy is dependent 
 upon a dictionary always at hand. 
 
 II. ORIGINS. 
 
 Our orthography was originally settled on no 
 fixed principles,' " being formed by chance, or 
 according to the fancy of the earliest writers 
 in rude ages ". It was from early times very 
 varied and uncertain, and, as Johnson admits, 
 "is yet sufficiently irregular". But the rude 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 3 
 
 ages are not wholly responsible. To the writers 
 have been added the printers, and to the printers 
 the lexicographers. The established method, 
 being based on no reasoned principles, rests on 
 no real authority. The early printers repro- 
 duced current usage by spelling thesame word 
 in different ways ; e.g., thair, thaire, thayre, ther, 
 etc., are all variants used indifferently for their 
 and there. Indeed it would seem to have been 
 a matter of honour with them to employ as great 
 a variety of spelling as possible, just as in our 
 day a writer seeks to prevent the recurrence 
 of identical forms of expression by the use of 
 synonyms. Usage of this kind, varying at the 
 fancy of the individual, was bound in no long 
 time to prove incon\'enient ; but when diction- 
 aries began to be compiled, the tendency to 
 uniformity became more pronounced. It was 
 unfortunate that the tyranny of standardisa- 
 tion was imposed at a period when historical 
 grammar and philology were still in their 
 infancy, if indeed they had yet seen the light. 
 The vicious principle of variety persisted if not 
 overtly, yet in an insidious form. The same 
 sound was variously expressed in different 
 words. So we now find that, while week has ee, 
 grief has ie for the same sound, and if ea is some- 
 what affected by the r in tear, it is not so in 
 meat; weird and a few similar forms have ei. 
 Thus ea, ee, ei, ie all represent the same sound. 
 Of course, some of them also stand for other 
 
4 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 sounds. Even the publication of Johnson's 
 great work (1755) did not apparently put an 
 end to the variants. 
 
 Here seems to lie the fons et origo of exist- 
 ing spelling anomalies and difficulties ; for the 
 sake of variety, consciously or unconsciously, 
 sound and origin, one or both, were not seldom 
 sacrificed. A scheme — system it is not — 
 largely arbitrary, often inconsistent, at times 
 absolutely wrong, was imposed upon the nation 
 by printers and lexicographers in an age not well 
 provided with historical aids to study, and the 
 absurd convention still holds us in its grip. It 
 was the times more than the men that were to 
 blame, and the measure of Johnson's services 
 is not to be estimated by what he failed to do. 
 The lexicographers have laid us under great 
 obligations, and it was perhaps no business of 
 theirs to do more than record the forms which 
 they found in use. 
 
 III. DEVELOPMENT OF WORD FORMS. 
 
 In the course of centuries both spelling and 
 pronunciation have undergone material change. 
 During the same period the English-speaking 
 world has expanded and developed past all 
 recognition. Even in the homeland the millions 
 who speak the language pronounce in scores of 
 different ways. 
 
 Their modes of spelling are hardly less varied. 
 In one respect, of course, deviation frofn normal 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 5 
 
 orthography is merely the mark of illiteracy. 
 But that is not a full account of the matter. 
 In every sphere and every corner of life 
 evolutionary process is actively working itself 
 out. Only within the past few decades has its 
 existence been realised ; its full significance has 
 not yet been grasped. Speech has, in its place 
 and degree, come under its sway, while no pro- 
 vision exists for an orthographical contingency 
 that had not been foreseen. Nothing has been 
 done in spelling to keep pace with changing 
 custom ; pronunciation develops, orthography 
 remains static. A method originally imperfect 
 has gone from bad to worse. Things may be 
 expected to drift still further until the limit has 
 been reached when remedy can no longer be 
 postponed. 
 
 The infelix divortium of the spoken from the 
 written language has grown ever more aggra- 
 vated, and the task is laid upon the present 
 generation of effecting their happy reunion. 
 Delay is fraught with danger. 
 
 IV. UIIGENCY OF REFORM. 
 
 Those who have become confirmed in the 
 spelling habit may be disposed to ask, why not 
 go on as we have been doing, why pester our 
 reposeful age with a new-fangled scheme for 
 which we must go to school again. Admitted 
 that our spelling is not perfect : no human 
 institution is perfect, and what has served for 
 
6 Spelling of the king's English 
 
 two or three centuries may well serve for as 
 many more. Let us be left in peace to spell 
 as our fathers did. To such supposed reasoning 
 the reply would be : first, that judgment be 
 suspended as to the difficulty of the contem- 
 plated changes and the risk of having to go to 
 school again, until the proposals have been 
 submitted and examined. But second, necessity 
 is laid upon us, the problem will not leave us 
 alone, it clamours for solution. Reform is not 
 of choice, it is demanded by a new situation 
 and new conditions. Times have changed not 
 merely within the century but within the decade, 
 and there are at least three reasons, any one of 
 them sufficient in itself, why the question will 
 not brook further delay ; it must be faced, and 
 faced now. 
 
 V. A. Educational Argument. 
 
 First in order and importance is the claim 
 of education. Reading, of which language is 
 the medium and spelling the instrument, is the 
 child's first step in the path of formal learning. 
 To be sure, it only puts the learner in posses- 
 sion of the key to knowledge, but it is none the 
 less essential. Knowledge is not acquired by 
 hereditary transmission, and each newcomer 
 has to possess himself of his own key as best he 
 may. Reading ought to be a simple, almost me- 
 chanical attainment, mastered in a few weeks. 
 With an alphabet in which symbol and sound 
 
SPE1:.LING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 7 
 
 were in exact correspondence, it would be so. 
 As it is, it is a difficult, tedious, and mysterious 
 process. The bj-product, spelling, is, of course, 
 by the great majority of the nation never 
 mastered at all. Years are literally wasted 
 in learning to read, the teacher's burden is 
 immensely increased, and progress in actual 
 acquisition of knowledge is indefinitely retarded. 
 The position has been seriously aggravated in 
 recent years, first, by universal education, and, 
 second, by the growth of knowledge. While 
 only a chosen few were educated, the standard 
 of ability was high, and the initial difficulties 
 of reading and spelling were by no means so 
 serious an obstacle. Now that the unfit no 
 less than the fit, the careless, the feeble, the 
 defecti\e have all to receive a modicum of in- 
 struction, the case is entirely altered. Reading 
 has become a real obstacle, slowly and painfully 
 surmounted. Even, however, were the stand- 
 ard of ability as high as it was prior to 1870, 
 the subjects of instruction have so multiplied, 
 and their range has so extended, that a fresh 
 necessity arises for reducing to the narrowest 
 compass the demands of a mechanical ac- 
 complishment like reading. Pressure from 
 pupils and subjects alike thus imposes claims 
 unknown to former days. 
 
 Nor is waste of precious time the most serious 
 of the charges to be laid against English ortho- 
 graphy. The mastery of such an irrational 
 
8 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 system, it is alleged, is nothing short of a train- 
 ing in unreason. A child learns h-a-t hat, p-e-t 
 pet, and when he comes to h-a-t-e, naturally in- 
 fers that it spells hat-e or " hatie ". He is told of 
 the influence of the final e, that in fact h-a-t-e is 
 just haet. It is a little bit hard on him to have 
 to swallow the paradox that e after a consonant 
 must be sounded as if it were before it. But, in 
 the end, he sees that it works in gate, lame, lane, 
 etc., and he accepts it. He then comes to h-a-v-e 
 and of course calls it haev, but has to learn that 
 this time it is only hav, the e doesn't count. 
 By and by he encounters b-e-h-a-v-e and calls it 
 behav. Again he is caught out, and so the game 
 of hide-and-seek goes on merrily. Not, note, 
 love, gone furnish the same round of puzzles. 
 Another early series is h-e-a-r hear, h-e-a-r-d 
 heard, h-e-a-r-t heart ; so come hom.e, broad road 
 and all the rest. They are all common words 
 and cannot long be kept from him. What is he 
 to make of it ? If he thinks at all, he must con- 
 clude that the game is from Wonderland, it has 
 no rules. The vowels at least are not of much 
 account : any of them may signify anything, 
 there is no such relation as cause and effect. 
 His conclusions probably do not assume so arti- 
 culate a form, but in the end amount to much 
 the same thing. In the vicious system. of spell- 
 ing he imbibes a virus which taints his whole 
 mental constitution. , He is schooled to be un- 
 reasonable, and his subsequent attitude through 
 
SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 9 
 
 life too often but serves as proof of the efficacy 
 of this early training. Children have to make 
 large sacrifices to acquire, what is, after all, in 
 great measure a bag of tricks. In the process 
 they contract an intellectual bias from which 
 it is doubtful whether they ever escape. Thus 
 economy of time and inculcation of scientific 
 habits of thought alike demand orthographic 
 reform. If the democratic system of national 
 education, now at length becoming a reality, is 
 to attain its objects, it is quite essential that no 
 avoidable obstacle shall be suffered to remain in 
 the path of the learner. Not only so, but it is 
 more than ever necessary for the stability and 
 well-being of the State that its future citizens 
 should be trained up to accurate logical modes 
 of thought, and should be taught from the infant 
 room upward that, as men and nations sow, so 
 also do they reap. Our present method of spell- 
 ing teaches just the very reverse. 
 
 B. The Foreign Pupil. 
 
 The second, argument concerns the acquisition 
 of English by foreigners. Here a new situation 
 has been created by the War. Our world 
 empire daily imposes fresh responsibilities. 
 The United Statfes have combined with ourselves 
 to carry the common language to the ends of 
 the earth. Anglo-Saxon civilisation is playing, 
 and seems destined to play, the greatest of all 
 parts on the world stage. So it becomes alike 
 
10 SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 a duty and a privilege to render as easy of 
 access as possible the study of the language 
 which forms the passport to our history, litera- 
 ture, and political system. Students of all lands 
 make resort to our universities and other higher 
 institutions. To them also English is a prime 
 necessity. English is admittedly an easy 
 language to learn, save in one respect. 
 Grammar presents no difficulties, in fact, hardly 
 exists, forms of expression are simple and direct, 
 even idiom yields readily to practice. But — an 
 emphatic "but" — pronunciation is the stumb- 
 ling block. The medium of an irrational spelling, 
 with the vagaries of English orthography, may 
 well drive the foreigner to despair. The diffi- 
 culty, known and confessed universally, is the 
 more regrettable as it lies at the very threshold 
 and prevents so much as a start being made. 
 The commonest words are those that have 
 suffered most from wear and tear, and have 
 become most arbitrary and erratic in their 
 sounds ; and it is just these that the beginner 
 finds most occasion to employ. 
 
 Incidentally it may be observed that or- 
 thography afFects in different ways the learner 
 of reading who is a native and the foreigner 
 who is mastering a language not his own. 
 The English child is already familiar by ear 
 with words like bread, seat, light, fought, 
 road, rough, and his problem is first to identify 
 them in his reading book and subsequently to 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 11 
 
 master their spelling. The French learner, on 
 the other hand, has no such clue to the pro- 
 nunciation. He flounders hopelessly and can- 
 never unaided attain so much as an approximate 
 knowledge of the sound of English. Reform 
 means, therefore, gains of different kinds to 
 these two classes of learners. Our own children 
 need it in order to economise time. Both read- 
 ing and spelling will be rendered comparatively 
 simple and easy of mastery, and at the same 
 time sequence of cause and effect will always 
 be suggested, often definitely inculcated. To 
 learners in foreign countries the gain will be 
 still greater. Spelling will be rendered less 
 formidable and forbidding ; but a far more 
 essential gain will be that pronunciation will 
 no longer be a bugbear. From the outset they 
 will possess the key to it. 
 
 The accessibility of English to the world at 
 large is not wholly disconnected with the possi- 
 bility of its adoption as the universal or world 
 language. A medium of international com- 
 munication daily becomes more and more neces- 
 sary, and it is evident that a living language 
 with a rich and varied literature is greatly to 
 be preferred to an artificial system of symbols, 
 however perfect. Other things being equal, 
 the former is bound to be preferred. But at 
 the present time, other things are by no means 
 equal. The scales are weighted against English 
 by its pronunciation, or, in other words, by its 
 
12 SPELLING OP THE- KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 orthography. As a matter of fact, it will be at 
 only one or two points that competition between 
 a living language and a mere convention can 
 arise, for more people now actually speak 
 English than will learn an artificial medium 
 within the next century. The argument then 
 runs — the spelling of English- must be so im- 
 proved as to remove its unnecessary difficulties 
 to the learner who is a foreigner as well as to 
 the learner who is a child. 
 
 C. Immediate Action Imperative. 
 
 The third argument is one rather of ex- 
 pediency than of principle. If the home country 
 refuse to take her place and assume her function 
 as leader, the initiative; will pass into more 
 competent hands. Our speech, it must not be 
 forgotten, is no longer an insular stronghold 
 or prerogative. It is shared by great inde- 
 pendent communities over seas. America has 
 already in a tentative way broken with the 
 spelling' tradition. Any morning may waken us 
 to see the breach widened. The movement 
 toward rational spelling will not, and cannot, 
 stop where it is. War has taught us many 
 lessons. Under stress of necessity the nation 
 has done many unwonted things — abandoned 
 cherished principles, pawned its liberties, sub- 
 mitted to dictatorship, in a score of ways 
 shown that " can " is but the future of " must ". 
 The atmosphere is thus congenial to change, 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 13 
 
 always provided adequate reasons exist for the 
 change. Spelling reform is calling to us to 
 make a move. Choice is scarce longer ours. 
 Advance or get out of the way, these are the 
 alternatives. Educated men and women are 
 trustees of the language, alike in its use and in 
 its form. If we fail to answer the call, and 
 allow our chance to slip, we shall write ourselves 
 down unworthy of our heritage, we shall offer 
 to others an invitation to assume the lead and 
 point the way. Education, patriotism, oppor- 
 tunity are three several voices summoning us 
 to action. < 
 
 VI. THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 The nature of the practical problem of reform, 
 which now comes into view, may be illustrated 
 by a few typical cases. Though the difficulties 
 and anomalies are all" too familiar to those who 
 have to teach the language, they may not be so 
 well known to others. The letter a has four 
 different sounds in all, allow, nation, want ; e is 
 different in leg and legal, i in fin, final, o in pot, 
 post, come, u in cuh, cubic, y in cyst, tyrant. The 
 combinations of vowels are still more perplexing : 
 ea has four distinct varieties in, clean, bread, 
 break, hearth ; ei of receive, in addition to being 
 a variety for ie of siege, has a different sound in 
 neigh, weight, and still a different one in height. 
 The o combinations give forms like blood, bloom, 
 cow, crow; shout, should^ shoulder; though, 
 
14 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 thought, through ; couple, court. Cough, enough, 
 plough, rough, form a class by themselves. 
 Final e is generally mute and is supposed to 
 affect the preceding vowel as in van, vane, rob, 
 robe, etc. But in charge (cf. change), serve, 
 sleeve, etc., it has no effect at all, while there is a 
 whole series — dove, love, some, etc. — in which the 
 vowel, instead of being lengthened, is shortened. 
 Tongue, vogue, etc., are still more recalcitrant. 
 The consonants give series like clutch, such, 
 touch, rich, stitch, cadge, cage, rake, rack, gas, 
 grass, fit, fitted, benefited, with hundreds of 
 others which have to be learned individually. 
 Our language forms, it is evident, afford little 
 or no guidance to pronunciation, and pronuncia- 
 tion even less aid to spelling. A new word 
 cannot be pronounced correctly until custom 
 has determined it, and custom is itself not 
 seldom uninformed and unenlightened. 
 
 What, then, can be done to straighten out the 
 tangle? Is it possible at this stage of the 
 nation's history to introduce any principles of 
 reform that will be of material assistance, 
 without so altering the character of the language 
 that the changes would entail more loss than 
 gain ? The answer is in the affirmative, else 
 these proposals would not now be submitted. 
 
 VII. THE PHONETIC PRINCIPLE. 
 The only plans of reform hitherto offered to 
 the nation have been based on more or less 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 15 
 
 complete phonetic adaptation. Phonetic prin- 
 ciple, in other words, the exact correspond- 
 ence of symbol to sound, lies, of course, in one 
 sense, at the root of any and every reform. 
 But its application is matter of degree. If 
 thoroughgoing, it involves a systematic over- 
 haul of the whole gamut of English sounds, an 
 increase in the number of letters, and an 
 apparatus phoneticus resembling the scheme of 
 symbols employed in the great Oxford English 
 Dictionary. It is not reform but revolution. 
 The idea is sound, the foundation strictly 
 scientific, but with our language, literature, 
 books, and libraries such as they are, it is no 
 longer practicable. The breach with the past 
 is too serious, the disregard of origins and 
 history too sweeping, and, last but by no means 
 least, national sentiment rejects it. ' The sacri- 
 fice, "confusion and perplexity" would not be 
 justified by any imaginable gain. 
 
 VIII. THE ALTERNATIVE. 
 
 What, then, is at the moment feasible ? Is 
 it worth while attempting, a reform that is con- 
 fessedly incomplete ? Yes, distinctly ; ofttimes 
 the half is better, if not greater, than the whole. 
 The Sibylline books became of enhanced value 
 as their number was reduced, and there are 
 authors not a few who would have been fortu- 
 nate to have had their works so dealt with. The 
 immediate object of reform must be to get a 
 
16 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 start made, to introduce change sparingly so 
 that experience of its benefits may gradually 
 win support and conciliate opposition. If spell- 
 ing could only be made to appear the simple 
 thing it is, or ought to be, the case for reform 
 would need no further proof. We shall be 
 moderate in our initial demands, and, if the in- 
 veterate bonds of custom can once be broken, 
 everything else will follow. Moderation, too, if 
 a concession to prejudice, is also a safeguard. 
 We cannot lightly tamper with the garnered 
 treasures of our libraries. They must be care- 
 fully preserved for future, as they have been for 
 past, use, and any proposal that ignores this 
 requirement stands self-condemned. 
 
 IX. PRINCIPLES TO BE OBSERVED. 
 
 The conditions to which our scheme will con- 
 form may be shortly exhibited : — ' 
 
 1. The firsft aim will be Uniformity. That is 
 to say, each letter or combination of letters shall 
 have one and, if possible, only one sound. The 
 converse is not meantime practicable. 
 
 2. Within certain limits, the letters, especially 
 the vowels, must be regarded in the light of a 
 series of blank cheques, the amount being filled 
 in by the speaker. 
 
 3. The existing alphabet will remain un- 
 altered. 
 
 4. Historical continuity will be maintained, 
 
SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 17 
 
 and the aesthetic aspect of letters and words 
 will also be preserved. 
 
 5. The general aim will be closer phonetic 
 correspondence of sound and symbol. 
 
 6. Complete reform i§ no longer possible. 
 The best that can be attained is a high degree 
 of approximation. 
 
 N.B. Each of the suggested changes stands on 
 its merits, and may be accepted or rejected inde- 
 pendently of the others. 
 
 X. SCHEME OF PROPOSED CHANGES. 
 
 Before proceeding to the discussion of indi- 
 vidual letters, the changes in contemplation 
 may be exhibited in summarised form as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 A. Essential changes — 
 
 (1) a, e, I, b, u, y for vowels as in gate, scene, 
 line, note, tube, tyre. 
 
 Final e mute dropped except in -ce -ge. 
 
 (2) The standard forms of vowel sounds — 
 ai, ay (chiefly final) as in gait, gay. 
 
 au, aw ,, ,, laud, law. 
 
 ee, ea ,, meet, meat, 
 
 ei, ie as = ee dropped. 
 
 oi, oy (chiefly final) as in coil, coy. 
 
 00 ,, cool, 
 
 ou, ow ,, ,, round, cow. 
 
 eu, ew ,, ,, feud, few. 
 
 (3) g of -gh, -ght final dropped. 
 
18 SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 (4) Inflection follows the original form ; modi' 
 fication (chiefly y) or duplication of letters (6, d, 
 etc.), being dropped, as ladys, sobing, sader, etc. 
 
 B. Desirable changes — 
 
 (1) Omission of superfluous letters — 
 (a) c before k as in kick. 
 
 d ,, ge ,, ledge (ct. allege). 
 
 t ,, ch ,, crutch (cf. such). 
 
 (6) /, s in II, ss final as in spell, mass. 
 
 (2) au for al as in fall (cf . fault) . 
 
 (3) ah, ih, oh or oe for long a, i, o, in certain 
 words. 
 
 (4) Similarity of form in precede, proceed ; pro- 
 gramme, epigram., and the like. 
 
 (5) Regularisation of ble (adjectival), and if 
 possible, of all le terminations. 
 
 C. Exceptions — 
 
 Proper names, titles, geographical terms, 
 words associated with divine service, and a few 
 common words, including the numerals remain 
 unchanged. Foreign words retain the foreign 
 form and pronunciation as rouge, route. 
 
 XI. ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS. 
 
 The general effect may be judged from a few 
 examples from sacred and secular literature : — 
 
 (1) Ther is a happy land, 
 Far, far away, 
 Wher saints in gl6ry stand, 
 Briht, briht as day. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 19 
 
 O how thay sweetly sing, 
 " Wurthy is our Saviour King ! " 
 Loud let his praises ring, 
 Prais, prais for ay. 
 
 Cum to this happy land, 
 
 Cum, cum away ; 
 Why wil ye douting stand ? 
 
 Why stil delay ? 
 O we shal happy be 
 When from sin and sorroe free, 
 Lord we shal liv with thee, 
 Blest, blest for ay. 
 
 Briht in that happy land 
 
 Beams every y ; 
 Kept by a Father's hand, 
 
 Luv cannot dy : 
 On then to glory run ; 
 Be a crown and kingdom wun ; 
 And, briht abuvthe sun, 
 Rayn, rayn for ay. 
 
 (2) Hav ye not knoen ? hav ye not herd ? 
 hath it not been told you from the [beguining] ? 
 hav ye not understood from the foundation of 
 the erth ? 
 
 It is he that siteth upon the circul of the 
 erth, and the inhabitants therof ar as gras- 
 hopers ; that strecheth out the hevens as a 
 curtan, and spredeth them out as a tent to dwel 
 in : 
 
 That bringeth the princes to nuthing ; he 
 maketh the juges of the erth as vanity. Yay, 
 thay shal not be planted ; yay, thay shal not be 
 soen : yay, ther stok shal not tak root in the 
 
20 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 erth ; and he shal aiilso bloe upon them, and 
 thay shal wither, and the whirlwind shal t^k 
 them away as stubbel. 
 
 To whom then wil ye liken me or shal I be 
 6qual ? saith the H6ly one. 
 
 (3) No man can serv two masters : for ither 
 
 (eether) he will hat the one, and luv the uther ; 
 
 or els he wil h6ld to the one, and despis the 
 
 . uther. Ye cannot serv God and mammon. 
 
 Therfor I say unto you, Tak no thauht for 
 your lif, what ye shal eat, or what ye shal 
 drink ; nor yet for your body what ye shal piit 
 on. Is not the lif m6r than meat, and the body 
 than raiment ? 
 
 Behold the fowls of the air : for they soe not 
 nither (neether) doo thay reap, nor gather into 
 barns; yet your hevenly Father feedeth them. 
 Ar ye not much better than thay ? 
 
 But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his 
 rihtiusnes ; and aul thes things shal be aded 
 unto you. 
 
 Tak therfor no thauht for the morroe' : for the 
 morroe shall tak thauht for the things of itself. 
 Sufficient unto the day is the evil therof. 
 
 (4) Ye mariners of England 
 That gard our nativ seas ! 
 Whos flag has brAved, a thousand years, 
 The battel and the breez ! 
 Your glorius standard launch again 
 To mach anuther foe : 
 And sweep throoh the deep, 
 Whil the stormy winds do bloe 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 21 
 
 Whil the battel rages loud and long 
 And the stormy winds do bloe. 
 
 The mfeteor flag of England 
 
 Shal yet terrific burn ; 
 
 Til danger's trubeled niht depart 
 
 And the star of peace return. 
 
 Then, then, ye ocean warriors ! 
 
 Our song and feast shal floe 
 
 To the fam of your nam, 
 
 When the stoFm has ceased to bloe ; 
 
 When the flry flht is herd no mor, 
 
 And the storm has ceased to bloe. 
 
 Xll. MERITS OF THE SCHEME. 
 
 A scheme of renovated spelling on the lines 
 here illustrated may claim to have avoided the 
 defects which to Johnson's mind were fatal. 
 
 (a) It makes no radical, or indeed material, 
 alteration in the character of the language and 
 gives rise to no confusion or perplexity. 
 
 (6) Its mastery is a matter of a few minutes, 
 and its use can cause little inconvenience to 
 those accustomed to use the current spelling. 
 
 (c) It preserves the main aesthetic features 
 of words individually and collectively. The 
 etymology is, to a large extent, preserved, some- 
 times restored. 
 
 (d) It is logical, consistent, and uniform. 
 
 (e) It involves a comparatively small propor- 
 tion of the English vocabulary and the individual 
 changes are, with few exceptions, exceedingly 
 slight. 
 
22 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 At the same time it does not claim to have 
 
 ... 
 
 removed all difficulties— hardly a possibility 
 under present conditions. Some of the points 
 are open to discussion and perhaps amendment. 
 Even when this has taken place, a few of the 
 orthographical freaks may have to remain 
 permanently. But its adoption, with whatever 
 modifications may be deemed advisable, would, 
 it is believed, mark an enormous advance and 
 constitute an incalculable boon to learners both 
 at home and abroad and to their instructors. 
 The more detailed consideration of the several 
 suggestions will serve to throw light upon the 
 issues and to suggest fresh lines of effort. 
 
 The order of the summary cannot be strictly 
 observed, for it will be more convenient to 
 discuss in combination items which appear in 
 it under different headings, for instance, those of 
 essential and of desirable changes respectively. 
 
 XIII. THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIFORMITY. 
 
 Of guiding principles, that of uniformity is 
 the chief. It must be so, inasmuch as the 
 main desideratum is an antidote to arbitrary 
 and unmeaning variations. Unhappily there 
 are limits even to uniformity, for it can be ap- 
 plied only in one direction. While each symbol 
 shall have a uniform sound, it is no longer pos- 
 sible to confine each sound to a single symboL 
 In other words, the problem of pronunciation 
 may be solved while that of spelling can only 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 23 
 
 partially be so. For example, ea shall always 
 sound as in meat ; but ee may represent the 
 same sound, as in meet, and e, as in mer. The 
 same applies to other sounds and their symbols. 
 
 XIV. THE "BLANK CHEQUE". 
 
 But uniformity, even so restricted, has 
 further limitations. In legislating for the Eng- 
 lish language we must not forget the character 
 and extent of the English-speaking world. A 
 city-state in ancient times, e.g. in Greece, was 
 a small selfcontained community whose inhabi- 
 tants were in daily communication with one 
 another. In population, Athens was about the 
 size of Aberdeen, and is hardly comparable even 
 to Glasgow or Manchester, not to say London 
 or New York. The Attic dialect represents the 
 pronunciation of only a fraction of a total popu- 
 lation of some half million within a small 
 area, where anything but uniformity would have 
 been difficult and unnatural. -The British 
 Empire is another affair ; and to that again the 
 United States must be added. Thus English 
 can scarcely now be said to possess a dialect 
 with unquestionable authority as the standard. 
 Educated people pronounce differently in differ- 
 ent parts of the British Isles, and the Oxford 
 Dictionary practically admits that equally com- 
 petent speakers vary in their usage in the pro- 
 nunciation of many of the vowels. 
 
 But iet us assume that the Universities, 
 
24 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 Parliament, the Bar, the Church, and the 
 Stage do form a sort of standard ; they are 
 still an infinitesimal fraction of those who speak 
 the language. Each country, each province, 
 each city, each village has its own sounds and 
 intonations. No principle of uniformity will 
 ever unify the sound of i in fine even throughout 
 the British Isles. We shall have faine, fyin, 
 foine, with perhaps other varieties and nuances, 
 at home and all over the world wherever Eng- 
 lish is spoken. Even the accepted pronuncia- 
 tion treats a differently in man, father, chary, 
 watch. The vowel sounds of standard English, 
 including diphthongs, would appear from the 
 list in the Oxford Dictionary to number not far 
 from sixty ; the symbols are not a third of that 
 number. Add the dialectal variations, and it 
 becomes still more plain that each symbol must 
 stand for a whole group of cognate sounds 
 rather than for a single unvarying sound. No 
 method of symbolic representation can descend 
 to all, or nearly all, the details. When the 
 sound of a (as in cat) has been learned, the 
 pupil has got a kind of formula, but hardly 
 more. His symbol cannot distinguish the 
 varieties of length and quality. In fact, each 
 vowel or diphthong must be regarded much in 
 the light of a blank cheque, into which experi- 
 ence and practice must teach the beginner to fill 
 the amount as exactly as possible. It is an ideal 
 kind of cheque inasrnuch as, in case of error. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 25 
 
 the sufferer is he who fails to enter the correct 
 amount. Symbols are designed to aid him in 
 his efforts, and it is here that reform attempts 
 to assist him. In some directions, improvement 
 seems possible, in others, the prospect is not 
 so hopeful. Whatever common ground may be 
 found for all who speak English, there will still 
 remain the subtle tang which imparts colour 
 and charm to local speech and reveals the 
 region of origin. Nor should we wish it other- 
 wise. 
 
 XV. THE ALPHABET UNCHANGED. 
 
 A method of conciliating opposition and com- 
 mending change is the adoption of the alphabet 
 as it?stands. Foreign symbols create prejudice. 
 The addition of even a small number of letters 
 would alter the visible aspect of the language. 
 It would also create a new difficulty ; for the 
 confusion of multiplicity would replace the per- 
 plexity of ambiguity. If, however, we adhere 
 to the alphabet as it is, some alternative method 
 of differentiation must be devised. In particular, 
 some simple means must be found of marking 
 vowel quality, if new symbols are not to be 
 imported. 
 
 XVI. RESTORATION OF FUNCTION. 
 
 Reform will throughout regard as a main 
 object the elimination of superfluous and use- 
 less, so-called "silent," letters, than which 
 
26 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 there is no more fruitful source of confusion. 
 To speak in the language of biology, we shall 
 endeavour to restore function to each element, 
 whether single letters or combinations of them. 
 Organs possessing no function are mere ob- 
 structions ahd may become sources of positive 
 danger. Their removal is not only justifiable 
 but imperative, always provided they do not 
 involve vital functions to which they may be 
 attached. This is true of speech', as of other 
 organisms. 
 
 XVII. DETAILS OF SUGGESTED CHANGES. 
 
 This brings us face to face with the actual 
 problems of emehdation. Of the two elements 
 that make up human speech, vowels demand 
 prior consideration ; they present the larger 
 and more intricate question. They are less 
 stable than consonants, more liable to disin- 
 tegration and decay, less individual and dis- 
 tinguishable each from each. As the vowel 
 symbols are fewer in number, they are more 
 frequently employed, and have suffered more in 
 common use. While, in ordinary speech, con- 
 sonants may remain intact, vowels are fre- 
 quently mutilated and positively "murdered". 
 With them, therefore, we will begin. 
 
 XVIII. THE VOWELS. 
 
 The basic fact is that English has, apart from 
 dialectal forms and sounds, some fifty to sixty 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 27 
 
 recognisable vowel sounds with only a fraction 
 of symbols wherewith to represent them. Not 
 only must one symbol stand for several sounds 
 — a defect which under certain circumstances 
 might perhaps be surmounted ; but the really 
 vicious feature is the inconsistency in the force 
 of the symbols. The same vowel or combination 
 of vowels has, now this sound, now that. For 
 example, the learner possesses no means of 
 distinguishing the a of hat from the a of nature 
 or df all, the e of pet from the e of equal; and 
 it is the same or worse with the other vowels. 
 When he comes to series like those mentioned 
 above — hear, heard, heart, or come, home, or 
 broad, road, Ctr found, fought, or though, through, 
 trouble, his bewilderment may well be complete. 
 Everything has to be learned as a separate fact, 
 an unaccountable phenomenon, a trick. There 
 is no reign of law, no principle deducible from 
 the forms learned, and applicable to similar in- 
 stances. He loses self confidence and refuses 
 to advance until he knows whether or not some 
 pitfall has been prepared for him. If in the 
 long run, the very long run as it often is, he 
 learns to read, it is by dint of repeated, often 
 painful, effort and an expenditure of time and 
 energy on the part both of himself and of his 
 teacher quite incommensurate with the moder- 
 ate attainment. And when all is done, only the 
 familiar words are actitally mastered. A new 
 word is still a fresh puzzle ; indeed it is more 
 
28 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 or less a puzzle to seniors as well as to juniors. 
 A well-known Scottish historian, a student 
 rather than man of affairs, used habitually to 
 pronounce vague in "two syllables, va-gue. He 
 was but a type of what most of us do in greater 
 or less degree. 
 
 {a) Final e mute. 
 
 The final e of words like bate, mere, line, vote, 
 cube is supposed to function in lengthening or 
 modifying the preceding vowel. The e is no 
 doubt an historical survival, in part due to the 
 influence of French. Reference has already 
 been made to the experience of the beginner in 
 tackling a word like hate ; to which may now 
 be added mere, line, vote, cube. Further 
 anomalies meet him in charge, curve, serve, 
 etc., where the final e has no influence on the 
 preceding vowel. A possible solution might 
 appear to be to write meer, lien, voet, cueb, 
 placing the e where it is sounded. That would 
 be logical, and would indeed have everything to 
 say for itself, if our language had not a past. 
 Vote is derived from votum, cube from cubus 
 {kv^o?), and the same is the case with hundreds 
 of other words, where alteration of the. vowel 
 would destroy the link with the past. In mono- 
 syllables, the objection is not perhaps fatal, but 
 in longer words, the variety would be highly 
 objectionable. Fraegrant, froeward, meeter, 
 oepen, roetaet, can hardly be accepted as im- 
 provements. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 29 
 
 (b) The Essential Change — a, h, i, 6, it. 
 
 Some simple method is required of distin- 
 guishing the differences betweien the two sets of 
 the vowels, which will not interfere with their 
 substantive nature or their history. As a pro- 
 visional measure, until a better means can be 
 devised, it is suggested that the simplest plan 
 would be the adoption of some uniform mark or 
 accent. The so-called " grave accent " is not ap- 
 propriated in EngHsh, it is unambiguous, and it 
 is not unpleasing to the eye. It is more easily 
 and quickly written than ^ - a -, possible alter- 
 natives, and is aesthetically preferable to any of 
 them. Bat, mer, lin, vot, cub, would not be much 
 of a departure, while equal, equitable, secret, 
 secretary, react, real, deity, post, etc., would 
 be a great gain, without appreciable loss. 
 Similarly crehtion and creator would come into 
 line. The case of y would fall under the same 
 principle. The proposal to keep y for the long 
 sound, while i would be the short, is attractive 
 in monosyllables, where _^», mynd, etc., would 
 be excellent. But, when applied to a final vowel, 
 it would work havoc with etymology, and aesthe- 
 tically it is also very objectionable. It is difficult 
 to say whether miseri or sistem is the less attrac- 
 tive, while simpathi exceeds the limit of toleration . 
 Tyrant, tyranny, and the like are corroborative 
 of the value of the suggested y like a, etc. 
 Without violent change, phonetic differentiation 
 is secured. In monosyllables y final might 
 
30 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 always be presumed long, and, in that case, 
 sly, why, etc., would be sufficient. Cyst and 
 tryst •would, however, require to be distinguished. 
 When pupils had advanced so far as to be able 
 to write, it might become unnecessary to use 
 the special mark at all. The context would 
 show whether it was rats or rats, cuhs or cubs 
 with which they were dealing. At present, a 
 backer who has "bet on the bay" is in no 
 danger of having the object of his hopes mis- 
 taken for either window or water. Perhaps 
 eventually printed books themselves might be 
 able to drop the accent mark. Such questions 
 may be left for the future to decide. At any rate 
 the immediate gain is unmistakable in getting rid 
 of the functionless and bewildering final e mute 
 by providing fpr it a consistent and uniform 
 substitute. A collateral argument of some 
 weight is derived from dissyllabic forms like 
 falsehood, safety, surety, as compared with the 
 trisyllabic average, rarefy. The correct form, 
 e.g. sAfty, would at once show the number of 
 syllables. 
 
 (c) A — a long. 
 
 For a, and other vowels, when merely long, 
 ah, ih, oh (or oe), would be useful symbols. In 
 words such as calm, palm, a small class, where I 
 must disappear, cahm, pahm would at once be 
 satisfying to the eye and phonetically accurate. 
 In other cases when I must be excised, as should, 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 31 
 
 would, h would be an aesthetic gain, against 
 which has to be set its lack of any distinct 
 function. The local varieties of a exemplify 
 what was said above regarding the elastic 
 nature of pronunciation in a community so 
 widely scattered, with such different traditions, 
 and living under such different conditions, as 
 that which composes the English-speaking 
 world. Man in one mouth sounds not appreci- 
 ably different from men, in another it becomes 
 maan, and in a third is transformed into mon or 
 maun, the latter noted by Johnson " as yet re- 
 tained in the northern dialects, and in the rustick 
 pronunciation ". 
 
 (d) Al, au, aw. 
 
 The a of all requires more radical reform ; 
 and this raises the question of the sound heard 
 in fraud. Many short words like claw, law, 
 paw, saw have aw which also appears in crawl, 
 shawl, spawn, and others. In this connection 
 it will be well to bear in mind the relation of 
 the letters u and w. The latter is, as the name 
 implies, simply "double «," though the method 
 of printing it as double v obscures the fact. 
 The truth, of course, is that u and v were 
 originally the same letter, and old dictionaries 
 as well as modern Latin texts so treat them. 
 Aw is, therefore, merely an intensive form of 
 au, and it is hardly worth while reducing them 
 to a common symbol. Unification would be a 
 
32 SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 simple matter, in which case au would probably 
 be preferable to aw ; but the point involves no 
 principle and is not very material. As for the 
 all, call, hall series, there seems only one 
 method of treatment. U f-a-u-l-t spells fault, 
 it is difficult to resist the inference that /-«-«-/ 
 should spell what we now write as fall. So 
 maul, mault, and the analogy must be extended all 
 over. We already have awl ; aul {all) will be un- 
 impeachable. Aulter, aultar will cease to sur- 
 prise those at any rate who can recall French 
 autrui, autel. Haul, hault, haulier will be an- 
 other characteristic group. It must be remem- 
 bered that al is not uniformly equal to au. If it 
 were, it might plead for retention. But along- 
 side all we have allow, and so call, callous, 
 callow ; fall, fallible, fallow, besides balance, 
 value and many others. As the knot cannot be 
 untied, it must be cut. 
 
 (e) Ai, ay. 
 
 The other a combination is ai, ay of retain, 
 betray. If i and 3; are treated as variants, the 
 rule may be extended to combinations contain- 
 ing them. The frequency of ay in words of the 
 hay, lay, say class and the character of ay final 
 in longer words — satisfying to the eye and pos- 
 sessed of prescriptive rights — may be accepted 
 as sufficient warrant for the retention of the 
 variants. 
 
 The letter r has a peculiar effect upon a pre- 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 33 
 
 ceding a (and o), and it would be a gain if the 
 ai of air, pair, could be extended to rare (rair), 
 snare (snair), etc. But vairious is objectionable 
 on etymological grounds, while there are marine, 
 maritime, etc., where the a is not affected at all 
 by the following r (cf. mare). It must be left 
 an open question, therefore, whether rair, snair 
 should be adopted, or merely rar, snhr, with the 
 application of the " blank cheque " principle for 
 the <J ; the English and Scottish amounts would 
 certainly be different here. It may be added 
 that if we consider the sound elements rather 
 than the convention that hold the fields, we 
 shall find that e and i, as in met and it respec- 
 tively, are the nearest componeats of the vowel 
 sound heard in air, in other words, that heir is 
 the truest type. If ei, now discarded as = ee, 
 could be utilised in fair, mare, etc. {feir, meir), 
 it would be an excellent economy of resources. 
 But the initial transference of the ei associations 
 would involve some effort, perhaps some con- 
 fusion. 
 
 The question is further complicated by the 
 number of ai forms — aim, claim, detain, praise, 
 raise, etc.— where change of the ai is not speci- 
 ally called for. If rair were the standard, then 
 am, etc., would have to be adopted. 
 
 The sound of ai, ay is also attached to ei in 
 wci^h, weight, convey, whey, and a number of 
 similar words. These must fall into line. The 
 g of weigh would be suggested to the eye if 
 
34 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 wayt or wayht were written : convey, whey, etc., 
 present no difficulty, being convay, whay, etc. 
 In alley and hey the ey has two additional values. 
 Ally would be the former, for allay is a different 
 word ; the present ally might be written, if 
 necessary, ally ; kee would replace key. Honey, 
 money are doubly defective. Height is phone- 
 tically an outrageous form. Milton spells it 
 highth; the natural correction is hiht. 
 
 The Scheme for a Sounds will thus run : — 
 a as in fat- cc as in fate [fat), 
 al as au when so sounded faul (fall), cf. fault, 
 au I as in laud, 
 awl as in law. 
 at, ^73;' variants for cc, gainsay. 
 
 The vowel in air, care, remains an open ques- 
 tion. 
 
 N.B. — Brought, fought, etc., follow the ana- 
 logy of caught, taught; convey,- etc., that of 
 allay.. Ah as = a long in laugh {lahfj, etc., is a 
 possibility. 
 
 if) E. 
 The ee of deep, sweet is the natural standard 
 for this very frequent sound. It is a pity that 
 it cannot outright be adopted universally. But 
 though meer, sceen would suit quite well, forms 
 like seecret, reeal would not do. Besides ea has 
 prescriptive rights in so many familiar words, 
 eat, meat, seat, etc., that it, too, makes a strong 
 claim for retention. Thus we shall have h, ee. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 35 
 
 ea, as alternative forms, leaving a slight spelling 
 difficulty though none in pronunciation. But 
 the line must be drawn here, so the exclusion 
 of the maddening ei, ie, which few ever com- 
 pletely master. Receive, seize, weird, and their 
 kind, on the one hand, and siege, mien, yield, and 
 their kin, on the other, will alike substitute ee, 
 the most desirable of the alternatives as involv- 
 ing least change. Peeld to the child will be a 
 natural parallel to feel. The dear old ladies 
 who have neeces need no\v be in no perturbation. 
 So receev, repreev and the rest will help to remove 
 spelling from the occult sciences and cherished 
 accomplishments, and to reduce it to the simple 
 mechanical art that it ought to be. 
 
 Incidentally concede, precede, etc., will fall into 
 line with exceed, proceed; and, of course, pro- 
 cedure will also follow. So, too, heard, read 
 (past), etc., will become herd, red, etc., like fed,, 
 led, etc. Frend and feend will be other by-pro- 
 ducts. The French analogy suggests recev 
 as a possible alternative to receev- 
 
 The Scheme of e Sounds will be — 
 
 e as in met- e as in mete {met)- 
 ee, ea as in m-eet, m,eat- 
 ei to disappear as a single sound, 
 e;g. weird (weerd) ; but deify - 
 [Heir, feir, etc., as = hair, fair, etc. ?] 
 
 For eU) ew see under vowel u. 
 
 3* 
 
36 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 The only additional case under i is that of 
 bright, light, etc., a numerous class which, in 
 addition to the vowel, involves the guttural gh. 
 As g has, according to standard pronunciation, 
 ceased to function here, its retention cannot be 
 justified. To prevent violent alteration of the 
 form, the h — itself once guttural — may be re- 
 tained as a hostage for the lost guttural of 
 which it is a part, and the ih will be construed 
 together as equal to i. Briht, liht, niht, etc., 
 have a pleasant air of antiquity, and hih, nih 
 are also very appropriate. The same principle 
 will apply where gh, ght occur with other vowels, 
 e.g. cauht, tauht- 
 
 The Scheme for i Sounds is — 
 
 i as in pin- t as in pine (pm) . 
 ih = i in words with -igh -ight, 
 e.g. high {hih), bright {briht)- 
 ie to disappear as a single sound, 
 Q-g- field {feeld), hut piety, sobriety. 
 
 {h)0- 
 
 No letter in the alphabet has more anomalies 
 than 0, singly or in combination. Illustrations 
 are broad, road; roam, roar (cf. glory) ; count, 
 double, though, thought, through; shout, should, 
 shoulder ; allow, sorrow- Oi, oy (chiefly final) do 
 not involve many inconsistencies, and may quite 
 well stand as they are in boil, boy. So may the oo 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 37 
 
 of food. If oa is allowed a place at all, it must be 
 in words like roam, and particularly before r as 
 in roar. Rod and rbitt would adequately repre- 
 sent road and roam, but broad is more than hrod 
 and is indistinguishable from braud. Coal, coali- 
 tion are a strange suggestive, and almost unique,* 
 pair ; the latter would be coalition. Fresh 
 difficulties crop up in more and glory. Pro- 
 vincially mor, glory, ror would all be correct, 
 very much the same as col, fom. But standard 
 pronunciation makes a difference between the 
 oa of roam and roar, whether it can be repro- 
 duced in form or not. If oa were standardised 
 for roar, soar, etc., then why not moar .^ But 
 in that case, divorce from its superlative most 
 would be a very undesirable result. Consist- 
 ency seems wellnigh impossible, and we may 
 have to be content with mbr, ror, or even mor, 
 ror, and fall back on the " blank cheque". 
 
 The fivefold o« demands drastic treatment. 
 The standard will be the ott of count, with the 
 variant ow, as in the case of au, aw, particularly 
 at the end of a word like cow, plow. 
 
 The other examples would run — 
 
 double = dubel (duble). 
 dough = doh. 
 thought = thauht. 
 through = throoh. 
 
 So shouts shoohd {h representing the excluded 
 /), sholder. 
 
38 SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 If allow is right, sorrow cannot be. Sorro has 
 a strange foreign look, and so with hallo, narrh. 
 Perhaps the best substitutes would be sorroe, 
 halloe, narroe, the e being a sort of compensa- 
 tion for the lost letter (w). An analogy exists 
 in doe, foe, roe, etc. They may stand till a better 
 is found. Oh might do, but is less suggestive 
 of the existing form ; arroh, sorroh, etc., are 
 not wholly without merit. Shoe should be 
 shoo- Sew, shew, and the like will, of course, 
 disappear. The latter is rhymed by Milton 
 with dew, being apparently pronounced in his 
 day as spelled. 
 
 The vowel o has itself become u in numerous 
 instances — comfort, company, constable, honey, 
 wonder, etc. — and even when analogy would 
 lead one to expect o — come, done, dove, love, 
 etc. The correction must be u. The endings 
 -our and -ous of substantives and adjectives 
 where the u is no doubt a remnant of Gallic 
 influences must drop u and o respectively. This 
 will bring them back to the Latin originals -or, 
 -tts. If author (for auctor), error, pallor, etc., 
 why not candor, favor, honor, etc. ? So curium, 
 famus, furius, and the rest. It might seem 
 that glory should give gloryus, but with an in- 
 flection like — ious which attaches to words of 
 all kinds of termination — censorious, curious, 
 religious, etc. — it is evident that the principle 
 of uniformity must override that of inflectional 
 continuity. Dubius is exactly Latin dubius. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 39 
 
 Cum is in Latin the separate form of the pre- 
 position which forms the first element in com- 
 pany, etc., and therefore needs no apology in 
 words of that class. The English unto already 
 illustrates u for o (= on-to). 
 
 The Scheme of o Sounds will be — 
 
 as in top. b as in rope irop). 
 
 oi, oy as in boil, boy^ 
 
 00 ,, cool. 
 
 ou ,, count. 
 
 oh = o, especially where g is extruded, e.g. 
 though (thoh). 
 
 oe for ow in sorrow (sorroe) and similar words. 
 
 oa = b meantime, but its final treatment re- 
 mains an open question. 
 
 N.B. — = « in come (cum), dove (duv), etc. 
 double becomes duble or dubel, etc., 
 as above. 
 
 (i)U. 
 
 Among the u sounds feud, few (cf. shrewd), 
 etc., raise fresh points. Eu (e-u) is the reversal 
 of u-e, supposed to constitute the vowel sound 
 of cube, tune, etc. The words having eu are not 
 numerous, and no great difficulty would be 
 caused in pronunciation by its retention ; in 
 which case ew would also remain. But it would 
 no doubt, as in similar instances, leave a slight 
 spelling ambiguity. Beauty and its congeners 
 are rather exceptional on account of their 
 
40 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 origin. Buty would be somewhat analogous to 
 duty, with greater length of the vowel, but 
 hardly so great a difference as in man, far; beuty 
 would be a less violent change. The word has 
 parted company with beau, which has retained 
 its French pronunciation and taken on a very 
 distinctive meaning. 
 
 The u of bull, full, especially when not under 
 stress, as in plentiful, etc., is difficult. \^ ful is 
 too little, fool is too much, though in the com- 
 pound the former is right enough. No definite 
 solution presents itself. If w, with its usual 
 sound 00, could be employed as a full-blown 
 vowel, it might supply a happy solution, fwl, or 
 fuul. The language has, however, no associa- 
 tion of the kind, though good in one Scottish 
 dialect appears as gweed. But even here it is 
 the ee rather than the w that stands for the oo. 
 Failing this, another suggestion is to adopt 
 ue as in tni^e, sue- The last resort is to leave 
 the words unchanged for the present. An- 
 other elusive combination is the ui of suit, 
 puiTsuit- Circu-it belongs here, too, where the 
 derivative circuitous (circuitus) suggests reten- 
 tion of the existing form. Fuel, suet, are further 
 illustrations of the vagaries of u : perhaps fuel, 
 shet, would be the best representatives. Sure 
 may give rise to differences of opinion : sur and 
 shoor will each have its advocates, but origin 
 and use plead strongly for the former. 
 
 The Scheme of u Sounds is — 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 41 
 
 u as in tub. u as in tube (tub), 
 eu, ew as in feud, few- 
 
 ui and the vowel of btill, ftdl, etc., remain, 
 pending further investigation. 
 
 XIX. THE EFFECT OF STRESS (ACCENT). 
 
 The effect of stress on a particular syllable is 
 seen in various ways, negative and positive. 
 The unstressed vowels tend to become neutral 
 or obscure in quality. For example, compiny, 
 hesetate, retenue, etc., would represent the un- 
 accented vowels just as well as the existing 
 forms. Summary, summ.ery, summ^iry, summary, 
 summ,ury would, in ordinary pronunciation, all 
 sound pretty much the same, and can be differ- 
 entiated only by an efFort that few will take the 
 trouble to make. No practicable means exists 
 for dealing with the obscure vowel, nor phoneti- 
 cally does it greatly matter which it is. Its 
 exact identity will usually have been determined 
 by its origin and history. The existing form will 
 remain because it is in possession. Nor can 
 anything but practice enable the learner to lay 
 the stress correctly on abbot, abet, (to) rebel and 
 (to) revel. Apply and happy may be distin- 
 guished by the use of the standard mark in the 
 former. As for the rest, we are beyond the 
 limits of reform. But let it not be supposed 
 that this is a justification of slovenly or in- 
 distinct utterance. The hope may in fact be 
 indulged that more adequate symbolism will 
 
42 SPELLING OP THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 reflect itself in clearer and more accurate pro- 
 nunciation. 
 
 \ 
 
 XX. SOME DOUBTFUL TERMINATIONS. 
 
 The troublesome -ant, -ent terminations (a de- 
 pendant, but dependent), 'Vflth. -ance, -ancy,-ence, 
 -ency, at first sight appear a fit case for amend- 
 ment. But there are practical difficulties when c 
 or g precedes. Signific -ant, -ance and indig -ent, 
 -ence are alike refractory. Obstacles, in part 
 analogous, confront attempts to unify -ar, -er, 
 -or, -ary, -ery, -ory, -al, el ; examples of which are 
 beggar, lover, sailor, secretary, mystery, territory, 
 trial, duel. Beger, for example, would leave the 
 g soft. Sailer runs counter to sentiment, and 
 indeed may have a separate meaning of its own. 
 Censorious shows the necessity of censor, and 
 here again censer is a different word. In 
 secretarial, mysterious, territorial, the vowel that 
 was obscure comes under stress and reveals its 
 true and unalterable character. 
 
 The e of duel rests on etymological reasons. 
 No difficulty in pronunciation arises from the 
 present forms, and indeed those in -ary, -ery, 
 -ory hardly occur in the early stages of learning. 
 On the whole, the gain of change seems very 
 problematical. 
 
 XXI. THE CONSONANTS. 
 From their greater stability and uniformity, 
 the consonants off^er a less formidable problem. 
 If only c and g could be reduced to order, 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 43 
 
 nearly all would be well. As our principle is to 
 be satisfied with the minimum of change, con- 
 sistent with clarity, no attempt will be made to 
 remodel the scheme of existing consonants, 
 imperfect though it may be. 
 
 (a) j, qii, X. 
 
 The tempting proposal to use / for the soft 
 sound of g, e.g. jem,jeneral, restricting g to the 
 hard sound, must be rejected alike on etymolo- 
 gical and on aesthetic grounds. Qu may be 
 redundant = kw or cw, but here, too, its retention 
 is imperative in view of the large number of 
 Latin derivatives that begin with it, e.g. quad-, 
 qual-, quant-, quer-, qttes-, quin-. Those in 
 which it stands for a native cw or kw are com- 
 paratively few, queen, quel}, quick being leading 
 examples. The picturesque variety afforded by 
 both forms of the letter ((Q, q) is an added 
 reason for retention. 
 
 X is no doubt = ks, and in pox it includes a c 
 also (pocks). The variation is not dearly pur- 
 chased, and it is valuable in words like exodus 
 and exile to recall their origin. The verdict on 
 each is therefore " stet "■ In certain cases, with 
 a vowel following, x = gs as in example, exag- 
 gerate, etc. 
 
 ib) c, g. 
 
 The learner must master the general principle 
 that c, g are soft before e, i (y), and hard in all 
 other cases. To c the exceptions are few, if 
 any. We are no more disposed to accept sity 
 
44 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 for city than jem for gem. To g there are 
 several exceptions among very common words, 
 geese, get, gig, girl, give, etc. The alternatives 
 seem to be either frankly to treat the woi'ds as 
 exceptions and to supply a full list of them, 
 or to adopt some device such as that already 
 employed in words like guerdon, guide, etc., to 
 Wit gu. If guess, why not gueese, if guile, why 
 not guive, etc. ? Gin and beguin (begin) would 
 also be distinctive of the differing qualities of 
 their g. Other possible hard forms are gh, gg. 
 Final e is necessary to soften a c or ^ that 
 would otherwise be hard. In chance, change, as 
 compared with civic, clang, its function is clearly 
 marked. The character of the e is here essenti- 
 ally different from its purposeless attachment to 
 sleeve or cease. In Johnson's day no word was 
 allowed to end in c, which had always the pro- 
 tection of a k, logick, etc. Happily the impor- 
 tant series adage, cottage, damage, etc., is 
 covered by this functioning e, and calls for no 
 change. While aggregate gives no difficulty, 
 exaggerate, if pronounceable at all, has a super- 
 fluous g, and, despite its Latin original, must 
 spell exagerate. Suggest is defensible only by 
 the somewhat pedantic pronunciation sug-gest : 
 the omission of one of the g's would again be the 
 remedy. 
 
 (c) ng. 
 Ng is a single sound, a nasalised g, and might 
 be represented by a conjoint symbol — a device 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 45 
 
 which would aid the beginner in similar cases of 
 one sound expressed by two letters, as ch, ph, 
 th. In teaching they should be treated as single 
 sounds. The true spelling of ink, sink and 
 similar words is ingk, singk. A comparison of 
 singer with younger shows that the latter has a 
 hard g after the ng. 
 
 id) s. 
 
 The difficulty of s voiced and voiceless has 
 been greatly exaggerated. Final s, in plurals, 
 etc., is in great measure its own interpreter, 
 taking its character from the preceding letter. 
 In a few words like reason, season, the old form 
 of s might be restored, if thought necessary. 
 The " long s," as it was called, would also ap- 
 pear in trousers ; leisure, measure, pleasure, and 
 their fellows are cognate, but perhaps not quite 
 on all fours with it. Us and uz would be an- 
 other if not very attractive solution, on the 
 same analogy as grass, graze- 
 
 If it were thought necessary, there would be 
 no great difficulty in attaching to s a cedilla 
 or reversed cedilla which would distinguish the 
 z sound both medial and final. The French 
 method of doubling s for the sibilant sound 
 could scarcely be adopted in English. 
 
 (e) Superfluous Letters — (1) d, t, etc- 
 
 Superfluous letters are of various kinds, but 
 
 when consonantal do not, as a rule, cause much 
 
 difficulty in pronunciation. In spelling they are 
 
 more confusing, especially in inflections. On 
 
46 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 the principle that letters without function are a 
 mere incubus, and may be something worse, it 
 is desirable to extend the reign of law by getting 
 rid of them. If cage is compared with cadge, 
 or rage with ridge, or wage with wedge, the in- 
 consistency of the alternate presence and ab- 
 sence of the d becomes manifest. The same 
 holds of t in many words. Is the etymology of 
 words like each, etch, sufficient reason for retain- 
 ing the t of the latter ? so crouch, rich, such, 
 teach, as compared with crutch, retch, etc. Con- 
 sistency would demand either that d, t be excised 
 where they exist, or introduced where they do 
 not ; the former is by far the simpler alternative. 
 The b of lamb, limb, and the^ of cupboard might 
 be added. The second h of shepherd shares the 
 common fate of h ; for beginners the danger lies 
 in taking ph together as a single sound. 
 
 (2) Doublets. 
 
 The repetition of a letter without function is 
 common both in the body of a word and at the 
 end. Letters are also doubled for inflectional 
 purposes. Annul, commit, effect; brass, dull, 
 quaff are instances of the former : robbed (cf. 
 robin), sadder, reveller, fitted (but benefited), of 
 the latter. Etymology, history, and analogy 
 plead strongly for the retention of the medial 
 doublet — annul, etc. The sound may even 
 justify it, if not actually require it. Just as the 
 xc of excuse is something more than the x of 
 execute, and of excite than of exit; so suppose 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 47 
 
 may be differentiated from superior. Profer, 
 however, is etymologically the correct form, 
 not proffer- But the final doubling is fruitful 
 only of confusion. If skilful is correct and 
 phonetically adequate, it follows that skil, ful 
 also are. The analogy of gas gives mas ; graze 
 presupposes gras. In like manner, a clean 
 sweep should be made of the arbitrary inflec- 
 tional doubling of b, d, I, p, r, s, t- With the 
 restoration of vowel quantity, any fancied 
 phonetic service is at an end. Robing, sader, 
 traveler, hoping, prefering, masing, troting, are 
 simple, logical, and consistent. Robing, hop- 
 ing save the situation where ambiguity is 
 threatened. 
 
 Here belongs the ck of kick, sick, etc. Kik is 
 far more suggestive of the movement than the 
 existing form. To import c into black is also 
 surely carrying coals to Newcastle. If rake 
 without c, why rack with it ? so if shake, why 
 stack ? Scores of these words could be thus 
 simplified by correction. 
 
 (3) Silent Letters. 
 
 Letters that appear to have no function at 
 all, as distinguished 'from those under {a) and 
 (6), which strengthen what does not require 
 strengthening, fall into different categories — 
 the initial letter in hour, knee, psychic (as ordin- 
 arily pronounced), write, then the b of doubt, the 
 g of reign, and lastly the -me of programme. We 
 
48 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 should be disposed to deal with doubt, reign and 
 the like by simply cutting out the functionless 
 and misleading letter. To maintain the familiar 
 form, douht, rayn might be adopted as the cor- 
 rections. Program would in like manner be 
 assimilated to epigram, telegram, etc. One 
 questions whether the others can with advant- 
 age be altered. // is a delicate point with many 
 estimable people, and, whatever may be the 
 written form, will continue to play hide-and-seek 
 with orthography. " H eighty hodd " was the 
 verger's contemptuous allusion to a meagre 
 congregation at a Christmas service, while 
 " the 'ouse is complete " is an analogous remark 
 by the same worthy. The retention of h is 
 claimed on historical as well as aesthetic 
 grounds : ^our, 'onor are not attractive or even 
 very intelligible. Initial k a.ndp are picturesque, 
 and their occurrence is so infrequent that the 
 gain of their omission is problematical. Know 
 and its derivatives are the most important series 
 with k. With w the practical issue is larger, 
 for it stands in a number of common words like 
 wrath, wreck, wretch, wring, write, wrong. Per- 
 haps some general direction might meet the 
 case, as thus, " initial k and p are not sounded 
 before another consonant, nor w before r". 
 But the omission of w would be no great wrench. 
 Foreign and sovereign afford an admirable illus- 
 tration of restoration at once of etymology 
 and orthography. The Latin originals are 
 
SPELLING OF tHE KING'S ENGLISH 49 
 
 respectively foraneus and superanus. Foran is 
 doubly correct, and sovran (Milton's form) or 
 soveran is equally valid, if rather less obvious. 
 
 (/) -le. 
 
 Final -le in pronunciation transposes the let- 
 ters and sounds as -el or -il, almost = 1. A large 
 number of adjectives derived from Latin have 
 -hie, while considerable numbers of native words 
 have -ble, -gle, etc. — bubble, haggle, wriggle, etc. 
 A case seems to exist for change in adjectives in 
 -ble. Capable is just Latin capabilis, and capabil 
 is not only etymologically and phonetically cor- 
 rect, but also furnishes a logical basis for capabil 
 -ity. If the preceding vowel could be standard- 
 ised as i {-ibil), it would be a considerable gain. 
 But there are difficulties in the way. Capibilis 
 ought to have been the Latin adjective ; but 
 the a form has been followed, and in fact capi- 
 bility hardly corresponds to the pronunciation 
 of the derived noun. A form like implacable 
 iimplacabil) also requires a on account of pre- 
 ceding c. Bubbel, dubel, trubel have much to 
 commend them, but struggel introduces the g 
 difficulty again. It would at least require the 
 protection of a rule that " gg is always hard". 
 
 For circle the correct etymological and 
 phonetic representative would be circul, from 
 Latin circul-us. It is again the base of the 
 adjective {circular or circular). Many -cle 
 
50 SPELLING OF THE KING'S BXGLISH 
 
 iovms^-article, canticle, particle, etc., are de- 
 rived from Latin -cuius, -a, -utn, and the cor- 
 rect analogy for their spelling is found in 
 reticule. Articid (cf. articulate), canticul, parti- 
 cul (cf. particular) present no phonetic difficulty 
 from c. So angle should etymologically be 
 angul (Lat. angulus), the base of angular; cf. 
 angel (angel), angelic Forms could be devised 
 for all similar varieties, but it may remain an 
 open question whether it would be worth while. 
 Re is analogous to le, but much less frequent. 
 American usage has rendered center fairly 
 familiar. Meter should also be restored, cf. tri- 
 meter, etc. If eager, then why not meager, but 
 the g difficulty has not been met in either. 
 Acre, lucre could be systematised only by aker, 
 Inker ; cf . acorn, lukwartti : or, as others would 
 have it, looker, lookwarm. 
 
 XXII. h FORMS. 
 
 The combinations containing h remain ', they 
 are ch, gh, ph, th, wh. Of the first two some- 
 thing has incidentally been said. The uniform 
 ch of church should, as far as possible, be 
 adopted, a preceding /, as already seen, being 
 dispensed with. Architect should either be re- 
 stored in pronunciation to the type of arch or be 
 written arkitect- Ark is already familiar, but, 
 of course, its origin is different. AcJie would 
 become ak, which perhaps better suggests the 
 poignancy of the experience. In character, school 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 51 
 
 either h must disappear or k must, as in architect, 
 take the place of ch. Loch like sough is pro- 
 vincial. The method of dealing with final gh, 
 ght has already appeared. Laugh, also above 
 referred to, might appear as lahf. Initial gh 
 has a superfluous h in words like ghastly, ghost, 
 ghoul, but there is something to be said for its 
 retention as well as on the other side. The 
 vowel of ghoul is oo. 
 
 The merit of / for ph in philosopher, e'tc. 
 {filosofer), can at best be infinitesimal. Etymo- 
 logy seems, therefore, to turn the scale in favour 
 of the existing form. In a few words of Greek 
 origin rheum, rhetoric, etc., h is merely a survival 
 and EBSthetic variation. Its removal is hardly 
 called for : rhoom would be distinctive in form 
 as in meaning, as compared with room. 
 
 The practical difficulty of the two sounds of 
 ih seems, just as in the case of s, to have been 
 exaggerated. Nor is the error of substituting 
 one for the other fatal to comprehension. The 
 quality of the sotjnd comes to be learnt in course 
 of time from the contiguous letters. Anglo- 
 Saxon had, of jcourse, different symbols, but it 
 does not seem practicable, or indeed necessary, 
 to restore them. A " stroked th " might be de- 
 vised for beginners ; but practice would ere long 
 render it superfluous. 
 
 Much might be said in favour of reverting to 
 the older hw, the phonetic representative of 
 ■wh. The matte^ is, however, complicated by 
 
52 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 the dropping of h so freqaently even by educated 
 people in certain districts. The sound of hweat 
 {wheat) thus becomes weat, and what or hwat 
 is reduced to wot, rhymed with not. On the 
 whole, perhaps "well" — a very moderate de- 
 gree of wellness — " had better be left alone " ; 
 by meddling, bad might be made worse. In 
 short, according to present practice, the gain of 
 change is not markedly greater than the loss. 
 
 XXIII. -SIGN, -TION, ETC. 
 
 The terminations -sion, tion, which involve 
 consonant and vowel, are almost irremediable. 
 The fact has to be accepted that si and ti before 
 a vowel sound alike as sh. The knot might 
 be cut by writing shon, but the obliteration of 
 historical landmarks would be a heavy price to 
 pay. It would be preferable, at least in the 
 first instance, to have the forms mastered as 
 they stand. This could most readily be done 
 by treating si- ti- before a vowel as = sh : ci is 
 also = sh in 3. form like delicious, official. The 
 -te- of righteous, beauteous might be treated 
 in a similar way and written -ti-. A few 
 words like pronunciation do not quite conform 
 to this rule, but could be distinguished by the 
 standard mark, pronuncihtion. Negociation and 
 negotiation show the convertibility of ci and ti. 
 Other cases of an analogous nature are opinion, 
 onion, union, where -ion sounds as -yon. In 
 question the division is quest-ion ; the word does 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 53 
 
 not follow the -tion series. Incidentally forms 
 like tension, pretension, should be harmonised 
 with attention, contention, pretentious, etc. The 
 whole series of -ion, -ions forms is difficult and 
 at times perplexing. 
 
 The foregoing suggestions for consonant 
 reform would involve but slight change, yet the 
 , gain would be considerable. The letters chiefly 
 concerned are seen to be c, g, and combinations 
 of them; to some extent, ng, s, and th ; and 
 especially redundant letters, including the pairs 
 bb, dd, II, pp, rr, ss, it- The great desideratum 
 is a distinctive g, either soft or hard, the former 
 by preference. 
 
 XXIV. SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 One or two general considerations fall to be 
 added. It must not be forgotten that what has 
 been .said has I'eference to words that are not 
 strictly phonetic. But in estimating the degree 
 of alteration of the language in spelling and in 
 appearance, the probable proportion of words 
 that are already so must not be ignored. 
 They are very numerous, though it is hazard- 
 ous to venture on precise figures. A rough 
 examination of over 3000 common mono- 
 syllables goes to show that about 40 per cent, 
 would require no change whatever. In a large 
 number of others the alteration would be so 
 slight as to do very little violence to taste 
 or sentiment. Short words are particularly 
 
54 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 important bec§.use they constitute the learner's 
 first experience. Cumulatively the changes, 
 as detailed above, may seem considerable, but 
 their distribution would, as shown in the ex- 
 tracts cited, greatly reduce the apparent effect. 
 Nor must it be forgotten that the exact amount 
 of change may be little or much according to 
 choice. 
 
 It has once or twice been assumed, and may 
 be now stated explicitly, that inflectional and 
 derivative forms will follow their originals. 
 Just as day, days or tree, trees, so lady, ladys. 
 As betray, betrays, so deny, denys. As coy, 
 coyly, or boy, boyish, so day, dayly- Reference 
 has already been made to glorious and similar 
 forms. The regular past forms will be in -ed 
 as seem, seemed, turn, turned ; burnt and the like 
 will remain as alternatives to burned and other 
 regular forms. 
 
 XXV. RESERVATIONS. 
 
 The suggestions here put forward make 
 no claim either to exhaustiveness or to com- 
 plete solution of all difficulties. Perhaps 
 neither is now possible. But the problem of 
 reform has been fairly faced, and no aspect of 
 it has been consciously shirked. That, at this 
 stage in the development of our speech, excep- 
 tions should not remain, is more than could be 
 expected. For several reasons it may be ex- 
 pedient advisedly to exempt from change cases 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 55 
 
 in which sentiment would be so offended that 
 the opposition roused would more than counter- 
 balance any probable gain. 
 Among such may be placed — 
 
 1 . Words in very common use — the, to, I, you, 
 me, he, yes, no, who, mother, brother, son, 
 daughter, and the numerals, up to ten at any 
 rate. Dauhter might be adopted without offence, 
 and yoo, yoor are also very tempting. It, at, 
 father, are others of this class, which require 
 no favour of exemption. The inclusion of either, 
 neither would be a mode of avoiding the double 
 forms according to pronunciation eether, \ther, 
 etc. 
 
 2. Proper names and titles. 
 
 3. Geographical names, as far as possible. 
 
 4. Terms consecrated by religious usage — 
 Divine names and attributes, the language of 
 worship, etc., e.g. hymn, psalm, psalter, Bible, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 5. Foreign words, which by hypothesis are 
 not amenable to the usages of English spelling. 
 
 XXVI. METHODS OP TEACHING. 
 
 For purposes of teaching nothing could be 
 more unwise than to allow, not to say encour- 
 age, a child to learn the present alphabet. In- 
 deed no alphabet at all should be learned at first. 
 The forces of the letters are to be mastered, one 
 at a time, in the course of learning to read. If 
 names are given, they must correspond to thg 
 
56 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 sounds. The alphabet may then be left to take 
 care of itself. It will sho\y what the child has 
 mastered when, if ever, it comes to be memor- 
 ised. A satisfactory alphabet is necessary for 
 the teacher, and such a one can be worked out 
 only in process of time. If it is to be of any 
 real service to the educator, and through him 
 (or her) to the educated, the principle of naming 
 the letters must be very different from that 
 now current. The vowels are comparatively 
 easy. They would run a, a = the sounds in 
 hat, hate respectively, e, e (with ee and ea at a 
 later period), the sounds heard in met, mere, 
 and so on for the other vowels. The method 
 of naming the consonants must universally and 
 without exception be that applied at present, 
 though in a halting and clumsy fashion, to 
 I and r, as well as to /, m, n, s, x. That is 
 to say, a vocalic sound or suggestion of sound 
 should precede, not follow, the letter. In I 
 the vowel is e, in r it is a {el, ar). The norm 
 should not be either, but rather i, and that, of 
 the very slightest character, just sufficient to 
 enable the consonant to be sounded and no 
 more, {t)l, {l)r, almost 7, V. If the vowel of it 
 is removed, the consonant left is a mere contact 
 (with subsequent release) of vocal organs, in this 
 case, tip of tongue and base of upper teeth. In 
 t by itself, an articulate sound is scarcely heard, 
 but in I, m, n, r, the production of the sound is, 
 from the more " liquid " character of the letters, 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 57 
 
 considerably easier. If the letters are to be 
 named, then, it should be by terms like {i)b, {i)c, 
 {i)d, etc., instead of the bee, cee, dee, etc., which 
 so muddle and confuse the little brain and tongue. 
 The crucial problem in reading is to get the 
 pupil to join together, say in mad, not the letters 
 em, ae, dee, but the three sounds 'm, a, 'd, 
 with the vocalic simulacrum preceding, and sug- 
 gesting the force of, the two consonants. Re- 
 petition of the effort will speedily render 'm-a-'t, 
 mat, 'c-a-'t, cat, 'f-a-'t, fat, et,c., familiar. An- 
 other step, not necessarily the next in order of 
 time, will lead on to h sounds, e.g. 'm-h-d\ mad, 
 at present represented variously as made and 
 maid, 'l-a-'n, Ian, 'g-a-'t, gat, etc. The uniformi- 
 ties will conduct the beginner over one after 
 another of the initial problems with comparative 
 ease and in an indefinitely shorter time than at 
 present. The identification of groups of sounds 
 with terms already picked up by imitation even in 
 such simple cases as cat, cot, hen, pin, will also 
 act as an incentive to his studies. The common 
 words retained in their existing forms — ths, 
 to, etc. — had better be learned as wholes, by 
 the look-and-say method. They are at first to 
 be accepted, not analysed. Need it be added 
 that the learner will throughout become ac- 
 customed to associate cause with effect ? each 
 letter or group will have one and only one inter- 
 pretation. This will give encouragement and 
 confidence, and will promote rapidity of progress 
 
58 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 beyond any rate now known to the primary 
 teacher. Reading will in fact become an intel- 
 ligent process and positively easy ; spelling will 
 be greatly simplified. 
 
 XXVII. THE ALPHABET. 
 
 The alphabet can only provisionally be ex- 
 hibited. The existing portion of it with revised 
 names would run — 
 
 a 
 
 
 as m apt. 
 
 ib 
 
 
 >» 
 
 boot- 
 
 ic (is) 
 
 
 7 J 
 
 cat {cent)- 
 
 id 
 
 
 ) 1 
 
 den. 
 
 e 
 
 
 J} 
 
 elf. 
 
 if 
 
 
 )» 
 
 fat- 
 
 ig (ij) 
 
 
 )I 
 
 gun {gem). 
 
 h (a br 
 
 ■eath) 
 
 !) 
 
 hat. 
 
 i 
 
 
 )I 
 
 in- 
 
 ij 
 
 
 ) J 
 
 jet- 
 
 ik 
 
 
 >> 
 
 kith- 
 
 il 
 
 
 M 
 
 lot. 
 
 im 
 
 
 )> 
 
 mat. 
 
 in 
 
 
 M 
 
 net. 
 
 
 
 
 )I 
 
 oft- 
 
 ip 
 
 
 n 
 
 pot. 
 
 qu { = coo) 
 
 )) 
 
 queen. 
 
 ir 
 
 
 >> 
 
 rest. 
 
 is (iz) 
 
 
 i> 
 
 set {hands). 
 
 it 
 
 
 7 1 
 
 top. 
 
 W 
 
 
 !J 
 
 up. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 59 
 
 iv as in veer. 
 
 XV { = 00) ,, wag. 
 
 ix ,, fox. 
 
 y { = ee or /) ,, yes, forty, 
 iz ,, zest. 
 
 The additions and modifications would be — 
 
 h [ael, ai, ay (chiefly final) as '\n fate, aim, ray. 
 ah (rare) as in cahm. 
 
 au, aw, 
 
 , fault, crawl 
 
 e, ee, ea , 
 
 , meet. 
 
 I, ih (rare) , 
 
 , line. 
 
 h, oe, oh (rare) , 
 
 , rope. 
 
 oi, oy (final) , 
 
 , coil, coy. 
 
 00 , 
 
 , cool. 
 
 ou, ow (chiefly final) as in round, cow- 
 
 y „ dry. 
 
 ce (final = s) ,, nice, 
 
 ge (final = j) ,, cage. 
 
 ce, ci, si, ti (before a vowel in each case = 
 
 sh) as in nation. 
 
 ng „ sing. 
 
 ch ,, chat- 
 
 ph ,, phase. 
 
 \rKl ,, rhomb. 
 
 th ,, thin, thine. 
 
 u, eu, ew (chiefly final) as in tune, dew. 
 
 Nearly a score of additional sounds are thus 
 made regularly available, in some cases with 
 alternate symbols. The new combinations are 
 in each instance based upon and suggested by 
 
60 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 existing forms, and they add materially to the 
 possibilities of representing explicitly what is 
 at present only implicit and often invisible to 
 superficial observation. None of the additional 
 symbols are new. But by being regularised 
 they become a great alphabetic resource instead 
 of what they .are at present — a fruitful cause 
 of contradiction and confusion. The symbols, 
 of course, still fall far short of the standard 
 requirements, not to say, of the multitude of 
 sounds — individual, local, provincial, national^ 
 actually to be heard. Once more we are thrown 
 back upon the basic fact, that the symbols, 
 especially vocalic, can at best be only approxi- 
 mations, ".blank cheques," mere outlines form- 
 ing the common basis of communication, but 
 variously interpreted and represented by 
 speakers of different types. Language, it must 
 also be remembered, is an organic growth and, 
 as already pointed out, is in constant process 
 of evolution. Human aid has, so far as sym- 
 bolism is concerned, done nothing to assist the 
 evolutionary process for the past two centuries. 
 Nothing short of the maieutic art of Socrates 
 can deliver our tongue. Usage acquiesced in by 
 the eighteenth century, but even then and earlier 
 felt to be inadequate, is in the twentieth no 
 longer tolerable. We do not speak or spell as 
 did Chaucer, Spenser, or Shakespeare. We 
 may at least spell — approximately^ — ^as we our- 
 selves speak, If rational spelling help us also 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 61 
 
 to articulate with a little more care and accuracy, 
 we shall have benefited doubly by the reform. 
 
 XXVIII. A TEST LETTER. 
 
 In order further to illustrate the meaning and 
 extent of the proposed changes, a test may be 
 selected from the monosyllables of one of the 
 letters of the alphabet. The letter d has turned 
 up as the dictionary is opened, and will serve as 
 well as another. The chief monosyllables with 
 initial d are found to number 140-150. The 
 following are already phonetically accurate and 
 require no change : — 
 
 Dab, dad, daft, dam, damp, dance, dark, 
 darn, dart, dash, daub, daunt, daw, dawn, day, 
 deal, dean, dear, deed, deem, deep, deer, den, 
 dent, depth, desk, deuce, dew, did, dig, dim, din, 
 dip, dirk, dirt, disc (disk), dish, doe, dog, doit, 
 don, doom, dot, dower, down, draft, drag, drain, 
 dram, drat, draw, drawl, dray, dream, dree, 
 dreg, drench, drift, drink, drip, droop, drop, 
 drown, drub, drug, drum, drunk, dry, dub, duds, 
 dug, duke (title), dump, dun, dunce, dung, durst, 
 dusk, dust, dwarf. 
 
 In most of the others the change is of a single 
 letter ; the general effect may be judged from 
 the revised forms : — 
 
 Dace, dam ( = damn), das (dais ?), dam, dangk, 
 dair (deir, dar ?), dM, d^z, ded, def , derth, deth, 
 det, dek, dayn, del, delv, dens, dir, dice, dy, dyk, 
 (dik), dil, din, dir, dich, div, doo, dok, doge, doh, 
 
62 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 d6l, dol, dolt, d6m, dun ( = done), dor (dor?) dop, 
 dos, dot, douht (dout?), door, duv, dows, doz, 
 draf, drak, dred, drege, dres, dril, driv, drol, 
 dr6n, dros, drdv, drows, druge, droop( = drupe), 
 duk, dud, dul, dum (duml)?), dun, dup, dwel. 
 
 The first list contains eighty words, the 
 second sixty-six. Many of the latter might 
 remain in their current form, i.e. be transferred 
 to the first list, without essential loss. Dill, 
 ditch, dock, duck, etc., err merely by superfluity. 
 As a whole the alterations are surprisingly 
 slight. Words like dhow, douche, hardly come 
 into the count. Draught was originally rhymed 
 with fraught, in which case the spelling would 
 be drauht : otherwise it must be assimilated to 
 draft. Drachm is scarcely an English word : 
 the alternative form is dram. 
 
 XXrX. TWO CRUCIAL EXAMPLES. 
 
 The most critical test of all, apart from the 
 Scriptures, already illustrated, is afforded by 
 literature, especially poetry. Our impressions, 
 say, of the sonnets of Shakespeare or Words- 
 worth, are bound up with associations of 
 familiar form no less than of the thought and the 
 music of the poetry, and it is almost a tempting 
 of fate to draw illustration from such a quarter. 
 Still, the reformer must not shrink from letting 
 the extent of his demands appear. These 
 crucial examples of gain and loss may appropri- 
 ately supplement those given at the outset. 
 
SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 63 
 
 Let me not to the marrage of troo minds 
 Admit impediments. Litv is not luv 
 Wiiich aulters when it aulteration finds, 
 Or bends with the remoover to remoov : — 
 
 no ! it is an ever-flx-ed mark 
 
 That looks on tempests, and is never shiiken ; 
 
 It is the star of every wandering bark 
 
 Whos wurth's unknoen, aulthoh his hiht be tiiken. 
 
 Luv's not tim's fool, thoh r6sy lips and cheeks 
 
 Within his bending sikel's cumpas cum ; 
 
 Luv aulters not with his breef hours and weeks, 
 
 But bairs it out hv'n to the ege of doom : — 
 
 If this be error and upon me proov'd, 
 
 1 never writ, nor no man ever luv'd. 
 
 Erth has not anything to shoe mor fair : 
 Dul woohd he be of s61 who cood pas by 
 A siht so tuching in its majesty : 
 This City now duth Ilk a garment wair 
 The beuty of the morning : silent, hair, 
 Ships, towers, doms, theaters, and tempels ly 
 Open unto the feelds, and to the sky, — 
 Aul briht and glittering in the smokies air. 
 Never did sun mor beutifuUy steep 
 In his first splendor vally, rok, or hil ; 
 N'er saw I, never felt, a cahm so deep ; 
 The river glideth at its oen sweet wil : 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
 And aul that mihty hart is lying stil. 
 
 XXX. CONCLUSION. 
 
 The principles of reform, thus sketched in 
 brief outline, are so conservative as to do little 
 violence to sentiment, or even to prejudice. 
 Relatively the proposed changes are very slight, 
 yet they are adequate to regularise large 
 
G4 SPELLING OF THE KING'S ENGLISH 
 
 portions of the vocabulary. They are individu- 
 ally independent ; one may be taken and another 
 left. The rate of progress in reform may at 
 discretion be rapid or sIom^. In most instances, 
 a trifling sacrifice secures a great, even enor- 
 mous, gain. Yet nothing appears more plainly 
 than the fact that, after its owrn. fashion, a very 
 considerable fraction of the language is already 
 phonetic. It is difficult to say whether school 
 or nation stands to gain most by reform. Per- 
 haps for the former the necessity is more 
 urgent. One thing seems fairly certain that if 
 speUing can be placed on a rational basis, there 
 vi^ill be no return to the traditional methods. 
 Once the schools adopt reform, gradually and in 
 no long time the nation will be permeated by 
 it. In view of the national and international 
 issues involved, general action could effectively 
 be taken only by a properly constituted repre- 
 sentative body. But in the last resort, thinking 
 men and women, of whom the country possesses 
 a multitude, must take action to help themselves. 
 To teachers, first and in chief, must appeal 
 be made. If the present suggestions, tentative 
 and incomplete as they are, serve to show the 
 possibility of improvement and to point its 
 direction, they will have served their main pur- 
 pose. On grounds alike of Education and of 
 Empire reform brooks no delay. 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, ABERDEEN