CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 

 Sound-E nglish 
 
 A Language 
 
 for tine World 
 
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 Price 25 Cents 
 
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The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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SOUND-ENGLISH 
 
 A LANGUAGE FOR THE WORLD 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTiN j:noflach, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GERMAN SIMPLIFIED," "SPANISH SIMPLIFIED," ETC. 
 
 SOLD FOR THE AUTHOR BY 
 
 G- E. STECHERT. 
 
 NEW YORK ; 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 
 LEIPZIG: 
 
 Wellington Street, 
 
 828 BROADWAY. 
 
 Hospitalstr., lo. 
 
 Strand, W. C. 
 
 
 
Entered according to act of CongreBs, In the year 1890, 
 
 by AuQUaTiN Knoflach, 
 
 in the office of the Libraiian of CongresB, at Waehington, 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 55884B 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The English Language ; its Simplicity — English, the Language 
 OF THE Future — The Only Obstacle — Wanted, a Phonetic 
 Alphabet — It. Would Destroy the Historical Character of 
 THE English Language. Woulu it ? — Conservatism — Have 
 You ever thought of Your Poor Children? — Time and 
 Money Wasted — Difficulties Encountered by Foreigners — 
 Requirements op a Phonetic Alphabet — How do You Ex- 
 pect IT ever to be Introduced ? — How can we Further its 
 Introduction ? 5-25 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 "CHAPTER 
 
 I. Preliminary Remarks 26 
 
 II. Vowels 36 
 
 1. Shoi-t Vowels 26 
 
 2. Long Vowels 27 
 
 3. Diphthongs 29 
 
 III. Consonants 30 
 
 IV; Syllabication 32 
 
 V. Accent 33 
 
 1. -Primary Accent 33 
 
 2. Secondary Accent 36 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VI. Unaccented Vowels 37 
 
 VII. Double Consonants 40 
 
 VIII. Emphasis on Monosyllables 41 
 
 IX. Inflections 43 
 
 X. Abbreviations 45 
 
 XI. The Alphabet 45 
 
 XII. Modipicatios of Signs and Penmanship . . . .47 
 
 XIII. Suggestions to Printers 49 
 
 XIV. Suggestions to Type-writers 49 
 
 XV. A Page from Macaulay in Sound-English ... 51 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 Appendix A. Interview with Dr. Criticus . . . ... 53 
 
 Appendix B. Keys to the Exercises, etc 61 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The English Language.— Its Simplicity. 
 
 At the time when Volapuk began to attract attention in the 
 United States, the author of this little work often said to himself : 
 ' ' What do English-speaking people want a new language for ? Let 
 them amend the spelling of their vernacular, and they will have a 
 ' world language,' a simpler than which cannot be desired, and one 
 that is already spoken by over a hundred millions of the most 
 civilized people on earth." 
 
 The wonderful simplicity of the English language can, indeed, 
 hardly be appreciated by persons unacquainted with the other lan- 
 guages of civilization. If we look, for instance, at the French, we 
 find that not only living beings, but inanimate objects as well, are 
 •either masculine or feminine, there be'ing no neuter gender ; that 
 the gender is subject to rules, or to no rules, as the case may be, but 
 it must absolutely be ascertained in some way, because not only the 
 pronouns, but the articles, and usually the adjectives also, have one 
 form for the masculine, another for the feminine, and must agree in 
 gender with the noun which they modify. We find different endings 
 for the different moods, tenses, numbers, and persons of the verb, 
 with four different conjugations, one tense more than in English, 
 ■and numerous rules for the use of the subjunctive ; and last, but 
 not least, a powerful array of irregular verbs to bring up the rear. 
 The same state of affairs prevails in Spanish and in Italian. In Ger- 
 man, the verbs do not give much cause for serious complaint, and 
 there are the same three genders as in English ; but, then, objects 
 without life may be masculine, feminine, or neuter, with no rule 
 to go by (at least hardly any worth knowing) ; there is the article, 
 with its different form for each gender ; there is the formation of 
 the plural, to be learned mainly "by practice"; there are the de- 
 
b SOUKD-BNGLISH. 
 
 clensions of nouns and adjectives ; and there are the prepositions^ 
 some of which govern one case, others another, others a third, and. 
 others, again, sometimes one and sometimes another, according to 
 circumstances ! Is it any wonder that Mark Twain has found this a. 
 rich field for his humor ? 
 
 If, on the other hand, we turn to English, we find that the mas- 
 cuUne gender is used for males, the feminine for females, all things, 
 without life being neuter; we find one form of the article for all 
 genders ; a few simple rules for the formation of the plural and of 
 the possessive case, the only remnants of inflection in the nouns ; 
 adjectives remain the same in all genders and cases ; the personal 
 pronoun ymi is used to address whomsoever, while in other lan- 
 guages we have one pronoun for the "familiar" way, another for- 
 the "polite" way; the only change in the conjugation of the verbs 
 is the addition of s or es in the third person singular of the present 
 tense, ed to form the past tense and past participle, and ing for thei 
 present participle or gerund ; the irregular verbs may be memorized 
 in one day; and the prepositions always govern the objective case. It 
 is no exaggeration to say that the whole accidence ( or "etymology ") 
 of the English language, which a foreigner needs to know for thfr 
 practical purposes of every-day life, could easily be printed on six- 
 teen pages, ordinary school-book size, and, with proper economizing 
 of space, there would even be room left for the most important rules 
 of sjmtax. 
 
 For all that, the English language is capable of expressing the 
 most subtle thought ; in it has been written the richest and greatest 
 literature ; it was the language of Shakespeare ; and it is, and has. 
 always been, the language of progress and freedom all over the- 
 world. 
 
 Somehow it is also the most practical language. Clear, concise, 
 always to the point, with its words arranged in their most natural 
 order, it is pre-eminently the language of business and business cor- 
 respondence, and of telegraphic communication. In ease of utter- 
 ance it compares favorably with most of the other languages ; issu- 
 ing forth, as it does, "trippingly on the tongue," it taxes the organs 
 of speech very moderately for the production of its sounds. And 
 it is undoubtedly the language most kindly taken to by the growing 
 generation. Let him who doubts this observe the children of our 
 citizens of foreign birth, who frequent English schools but hardly 
 hear anything at home but their parents' native tongue, and he will 
 find that they alraost invariably converse in English the moment 
 they are left to themselves. 
 
SOUND-ElfGLISH. 
 
 English the Language of the Future. 
 
 Surely, a language which combines such extreme simplicity with 
 all the qualities demanded of a language expressing the thought of 
 the most advanced civilization ought to have the first claim to 
 becoming the language of the world, or, at least, the basis upon 
 which the universal language of the future is to develop. And this, 
 indeed, seems to be the destiny of the English language. All Eng- 
 lish-speaking people are agreed upon this point, while the other 
 nations do not seem inclined to contest it ; there is, at least, no one 
 nation which puts forth a claim for its own speech as superior to 
 that of the English. 
 
 "It is estiihated," said the Rev. H. L. Wayland in a paper read 
 at the General Meeting of the Social Science Association in Septem- 
 ber, 1883,* "that in two hundred years, Italian, French, German, 
 and Spanish will be spoken by 788 millions, while English will be 
 spoken by 1887 millions. But, in fact, these figures are not large 
 enough. They do not allow for the fact that as a language becomes 
 more and more important, becoming the language of business and 
 of the courts of law, more and more it will be adopted by the mill- 
 ions of mankind ; thus it is only a question of time when the Eng- 
 lish will be spoken by the 350 millions of Victoria's East Indian 
 subjects. Surely we must rejoice in this future, not alone from a 
 pride of race and tongue, but because English is the language of 
 progress, of intelligence, of liberty. It is the language of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, of the Bill of Rights, of the Habeas Cor- 
 pus Act. " 
 
 Professor A. H. Sayce, in his ' ' Introduction to the Science of 
 Language," t says on this subject : "Science, too, is beginning to 
 claim it [the English language] for her own, and it is not long ago 
 that a Swedish and a Danish writer on scientific subjects chose to 
 speak in English rather than in their own idioms, for the sake of 
 
 gaining a wider audience The great Grimm once advised 
 
 his countrymen to give up their own tongue in favor of English, 
 and a time may yet come when they will follow the advice of the 
 founder of scientific German philology. " 
 
 * See " Journal of Social Science," Vol. XVTI. Two snfesequent quotatione, cred- 
 ited to Mr. Wayland, are taken from tbe same article. 
 
 t " Introduction to the Science of Language," by A. H. Sayce, Deputy Professor of 
 Comparative Philology in Oxford, Vol. n., Chapter X. (London: C. Kegan Paul 
 & Co.) A subsequent quotation, credited to Professor Sayce, is taken from the same 
 chapter. 
 
SOUKD-BNGLISH. 
 
 The Only Obstacle. 
 
 What an inestimable boon would it not be for humanity to be able 
 to use one language ! And what an inestimable boon for the mill- 
 ions who now speak English, to have it chosen for that language ! 
 It seems a dream too beautiful ever to be realized. And yet there 
 is but one obstacle in the way of taking the first practical steps 
 toward the realization of that dream — of breaking ground, as it 
 were — and that is the present absurd, illogical, irrational, preposter- 
 ous, ridiculous, ho-word-bad-enough-for, orthography. But that is 
 not the word. No, orthography is not the word. Orthography 
 means the art of writing correctly, or, in literal translation of the 
 Greek, "right- writing," while the present spelling of the English 
 language is as ingenious a system of " wrong- writing " as was ever 
 devised for the use of mankind. It is related of His Satanic Maj- 
 esty that one day, when the angels had made a perfect flsh— the 
 shad— for the delight of man, and were carrying it down to this 
 earth, he came running after them and threw a lot of bones into it. 
 This story might well be adapted to our case, thus : When the angels 
 had finished a perfect language — the English — for the happiness 
 of man. His Majesty came sneaking along and threw the spelling 
 into it. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is quoted* as saying: "I often think that if I 
 were a foreigner and had to set about learning English, I should go 
 mad. I can honestly say I cannot conceive how it is that he learns 
 to pronounce English, when I take into account the total absence of 
 rule, method, or system, and of the auxiliaries that people usually 
 get when they have to acquire something difficult of attainment." 
 
 The author of Sound-English was over twenty-five years old when 
 he "set about" learning English ; he did not "go mad" (at lea^t 
 there are no pronounced symptoms) ; but oh ! for the countless pre- 
 cious hours wasted in the attempt to master the pronunciation ! 
 "What is the sound of a in this word ? Is that o an 6 or an 5 ? Is 
 this vowel long or short ? Is that e sounded or silent ? Is this s 
 pronounced like an s or like a ? On what syllable does the accent 
 lie in this word ? Where is the secondary accent in that one ? " 
 These or similar questions crowded upon him at every line ! And 
 in every single instance he had to find the answer in his big diction- 
 d,ry. And, somehow, the more answers he found, the more ques- 
 
 * In "Sensible Spelling," a reprint from the New York Home Journal, containing 
 the opinions of many eminent scholars and writers in favor of spelling reform, col- 
 lected in 1879-80. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 9 
 
 tions seemed to turn up, until at last it came to such a pass that he 
 could not read a single newspaper paragraph, no matter how sim- 
 ple, without there being something that called, for the dictionary, 
 so that he had to put a stop to that thorough-going method and 
 study for a certain period every day, while keeping the dictionary 
 under lock and key the rest of the time, or he might have seriously 
 injured his nervous system, if not actually "gone mad." 
 
 Let us listen, for a few minutes, to a conversation between a 
 teacher of English and his foreign pupil. It is the first lesson in 
 pronunciation from a spelling-book. We will translate into English 
 what they say in some foreign language. The pupil, not being 
 acquainted with the English names of the letters, is supposed to 
 point to the words in the spelling-book ; we give all. such words in 
 brackets. The diacritical marks used here and elsewhere in this 
 book are those of Webster's Dictionary. The teacher begins : 
 
 " This first letter is an a." 
 
 "Ah ! indeed ? I thought it might be an a, as in other languages. 
 Well, then, this word [at] is pronounced at, is it not ? " 
 
 "No, here the a has the sound of h, ; the word is St." 
 
 " Is it ? Well, then, I suppose this next word [ate] is pronounced 
 
 .ats." 
 
 " No, here the a has its first sound and the e is silent." 
 
 " Oh ! I see. Why, how ingenious 1 This silent e at the end 
 'Changes the sound of the «." 
 
 " Yes, silent e has that effect." 
 
 "Then, of course, this next word [are] is pronounced ar ? " 
 
 ' ' No, here the a has its Italian sound, a long, open a ; the word 
 is ar." 
 
 " But that is another sound altogether." 
 
 " It is akin to a in at, although in reality a different element." 
 
 " Well, but how am I going " 
 
 " Please observe this word, b-a-l-m, in which the a has the same 
 sound." 
 
 "Balm?" 
 
 ^ ' Yes, but the I is silent ; bSm." 
 
 " Oh ! the I is silent, is it ? And that gives the open sound to 
 the a ? " 
 
 ' ' It seems indeed to impart that sound to the vowel. In all the 
 words you see here, in this line, balm, calm, calf, half, palm, the I 
 is silent, and the a has the sound of a." 
 
 " Why, this is interesting, I am sure ; and here in the next line 
 are two more [talk, walk], pronounced, of course, tak, wak." 
 
10 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, the a in these words has its hroad sound, a." 
 
 "Another sound again ? " 
 
 " Yes, an entirely different element." 
 
 " Then you pronounce these words, talk, walk? " 
 
 "Yes, but the I is silent, tak, wak." 
 
 " But you just said that the silent I gives to the a its open, Ital- 
 ian sound. Are talk and wcHk, then, exceptions ? " 
 
 " You may consider them in the light of exceptions." 
 
 " Is Z always silent ? " 
 
 "Not always, but usually before final consonants, especially/,. 
 k, and m." 
 
 " Then these words at the top of the next page [elf, elk, elm] are 
 pronounced ef , ek, em ? " 
 
 "Why, no ; here the I is not preceded by o." 
 
 " Oh ! I see ; it is silent only when preceded by a ; how stupid 
 of me ! But then in this word [realm] it is silent ; is it r6-am, or 
 r6-am?" 
 
 " No, here it is the a that is silent, not the I." 
 
 " The a silent, you say ? " 
 
 "Yes, this word is pronounced r61m." 
 
 "Then you mean to say that the a has four different sounds and 
 sometimes no sound at all ? " 
 
 ' ' Yes, and most dictionaries distinguish two more sounds, the a 
 in care and the a in ask\ but we may pass those over for the 
 present." 
 
 " "Well, but how am I going to " 
 
 ' ' Will you be good enough to pass to another letter ? The a is 
 somewhat confusing in the first lesson. Take the o, for instance." 
 
 ' ' Is this called an 6 ? " 
 
 " Yes, this is an o." 
 
 " Then this word [on] is pronounced on, is it not ? " 
 
 " No, here the o has its short sound, 6 ; the word is 6n." 
 
 " To my ear, it does not sound like the short sound of o." 
 
 ' ' You are quite right, it is only called the short sound, although 
 really a distinct element. It is very nearly related to a in talk, only 
 shorter and a trifle more open." 
 
 " Oh, is it? That is good to have another sound to go by in 
 learning it. So that is 6n, you say ? " 
 
 "Yes, that is 6n." 
 
 ' ' Then, I suppose, in this next word [one] the -e is silent and the & 
 is switched back unto the long sound, as the a in ate ; on, is that it ? * 
 
 "•No, this word is pronounced wiin." 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 11. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ? " 
 
 "Wfin." 
 
 "Wttuiinnn? How in the name oif America do you make- 
 that out?" 
 
 " The has the sound of short u, and but here is an easy" 
 
 word, in which the o has its regular long sound, so." 
 
 "And the next one, do ? " 
 
 " No, here the o has the sound of 6b ; the word is ddo." 
 
 "And this other one [doe], is that afso dob?" 
 
 "No, that is do." 
 
 "By virtue of the retroactive force of the silent e ? " 
 
 "You may explain it that way, if you wish." 
 
 " Then, of*ourse, this word [shoe] is pronounced sho?" 
 
 "No, here the o has the same sound as in do; we pronouncen 
 that shoo." 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 ' ' What do you take me for ? " 
 
 "Really, I " 
 
 " How do you expect me to learn these things without giving me- 
 a rule to go by ? " 
 
 "A rule?" 
 
 " Yes, of course, a rule. How am I to know when the a is an a,, 
 or an S, or an a, or an ^, or nothing ; or when the o is an o, or an 6,, 
 or an oo, or what not ? " 
 
 " I never heard of any rule." 
 
 " Then how did you learn to read your language ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I do not remember ; that was such a long time ago, you: 
 know. But, really, I can not see any difficulty. I teU you the pro- 
 nunciation of every word and you say it after me." 
 
 "And you expect me to remember the pronunciation of every 
 single word in the language ? " 
 
 " I do not see how you are going to learn English in any other' 
 way. " 
 
 " That will do, sir. Here is the money for this term. Good-bye." 
 This is the impression that English pronunciation produces upon 
 the foreign mind ; and while there is no doubt that it is possible to 
 pursue a more systematic course than the one exemplified in the 
 above lesson, the fact remains that there are far more exceptions: 
 than rules, and that in the end we have to rely upon our memory,, 
 or aural memory, if we may so call it, for the pronunciation of any- 
 jiven word in the language. 
 
12 ,SOUND-ENaLISH. 
 
 "Out of the twenty-six letters," says Mr. Wayland, after taking 
 a critical ramble through the alphabet, "there is not one of which 
 we can say that it represents always one and the same sound— a 
 sound which it has all to itself,— and that it is always sounded. 
 ... If it were proposed to introduce such a system, we should cry 
 out in amazed, indignant horror ; nothing makes it tolerable, for 
 an instant, save the fact that we were bom into it, and that we had 
 become wonted to all these airocities before we had sufficient power 
 of reason to understand how monstrous they are." 
 
 It does, indeed, take a foreigner who in his youth was introduced 
 to written language according to a system in which a sign stands 
 for a sound, and usually, if not always, for the same sound, and 
 who then, as an adult, becomes acquainted with a written language— 
 the English— in which a sign is indeed supposed to stand, usually, 
 for a sound, but may stand equally well for a good many other sounds 
 or for no sound at all, so that he comes to the conclusion that the 
 simplest way is to commit to memory the exact pronunciation of so 
 and so many thousand words in about the same way as the Chinese 
 have to learn their so and so many thousand characters — it takes 
 such a foreigner, we say, to appreciate fully the charms of English 
 spelling and to sympathize with that poor German who, after 
 struggling a long time with English pronunciation, gave up in 
 despair when he found that the author of "David Copperfleld" 
 spelled his name " Boz" and pronounced it "Dickens." 
 
 Natives to the English language, who in early youth trained, not 
 their brains to understand, but their little lips to repeat, that 
 double-yoo-a-wi "spelt" wa, and double-yoo-e-I-je-atsh "spelt" wa, 
 too; that e-ar-e and a-i-Sr and atsh-e-I-ar all "spelt" er, just a» 
 pe-e-a-ar and pe-a-ar-e and pe-a-i-ar all "spelt" pdr ; who have 
 learned to take it as a matter of course that tall, talk, hawl, ArauA, 
 fork, George, awe, broad, cawZk, caught, tougM, and extroordinary 
 all contain the same vowel element, a in all, as well as he, "key, 
 ■quay, treat, reel, seize, people, field, Casar, seigfnior, valise, tur- 
 quois, ossophagus, and Portugwese all contain the e as in me ■ while, 
 on the other hand, fhougli, through, tough, hough, hiccough, cough, 
 and slough are all written with the same mysterious " ough," but are 
 all pronounced differently, without any apparent reason, based on 
 -either law or equity, —persons, we say, who have undergone such a 
 process of intellectual adjustment from childhood, may be forgiven 
 if they fail to perceive the enormous absurdity of English spelling.* 
 
 * Some of the possibilities of English spelling are amusingly illustrated in " Inggllsh 
 i;as She is Spelt," by Fritz Federheld. New York ; G. W. Dillingham. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 13' 
 
 Nevertheless, there are many even among those who call English 
 their native tongue, who, like the gentlemen above quoted, are 
 keenly alive to the necessity of a change ; and they are not obscure 
 "cranks," but the men most distinguished in philology and litera- 
 ture. Max Mllller, A. H. Sayoe, Henry Sweet, our own Professor W. 
 D. "Whitney of Yale, Professor F. A. March of Lafayette, President 
 D. C. Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Professor and Ex-President Noah 
 Porter of Yale, Professor A. P. Peabody of Harvard, Ex-President 
 Thomas Hill of Harvard, the late Professor S. 8. Haldeman of the 
 University of Pennsylvania, the late President F. A. P. Barnard of 
 Columbia, and many others, have expressed themselves in favor of 
 reform. 
 
 Wanted— a Phonetic Alphabet. 
 
 A "reform," however, commendable as it is, would not go far 
 enough in paving the way for the English language as the future 
 language of the world. The removal of the most glaring inconsist- 
 encies and the dropping of absolutely superfluous silent letters will ' 
 not make it easier, in any appreciable degree, for a, foreigner to- 
 learn the English language. What he wants is a perfectly phonetic 
 alphabet, in which every sound has its sign and every sign always • 
 stands for the same sound, an ideal -that is approached in Dutch, 
 Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and other European tongues. 
 Then, and then only, will it be possible for any foreigner possessing 
 an ordinary common-school education in his vernacular to takfr 
 advantage of the wonderful grammatical simplicity of the English 
 language. Given a phonetic alphabet, and any foreigner of average 
 intelligence would learn enough English in two or three weeks, 
 to express himself on the ordinary topics of every-day life. "What 
 could, then, be preferable to English as a means of international 
 communication, for the present, and as a basis for one universal lan- 
 guage in the future ? 
 
 Among the several objections which we hear usually advanced 
 against the introduction of a phonetic alphabet, the principal one is 
 that 
 
 It "Would Destroy the Historical Character of the 
 English IJanguagev Would It? 
 
 The answer shall be given by men in the front rank of scientific 
 philologists and therefore most competent to speak and most entitled 
 to a respectful hearing. 
 
14 SOUKD-ENGLISH. 
 
 Says Professor Max Mtlller : * 
 
 "There remains, therefore, this one objection only, that whatever 
 the practical and whatever the theoretical advantages of the phonetie 
 system may be, it would utterly destroy the historical or etymolog- 
 ical character of the English language. Suppose it did ; what then ? 
 . . . Language is not made for scholars and etymologists ; and if 
 the, whole race of English etymologists were swept away by the intro- 
 duction of a Spelling Reform, I hope they would be the first to re- 
 joice in sacrificing themselves in so good a cause. But is it really 
 the case that the historical continuity of the English language would 
 be broken by the adoption of phonetic spelling, and that the pro- 
 fession of the etymologist would be gone forever ? I say, No ! em- 
 phatically, to both propositions. . . . Etymological spelling would 
 play greater havoc in English than phonetic spelling, even if we 
 were to draw a line not more than five hundred years ago." 
 
 Mr. Henry Sweet says in his " Handbook of Phonetics " : t 
 
 ' ' One of the commonest arguments against phonetic spelling is 
 that it would destroy the historical and etymological value of the 
 present system. One writer protests against it as a ' reckless wip- 
 ing out of the whole history of the language,' imagining, it appears, 
 that as soon as a phonetic alphabet has once firmly established itself, 
 the existing Nomic I literature will at once disappear by magic, 
 together with all the older documents of the language from Alfred 
 to Chaucer. It need hardly be said that a few months' study of the 
 language of Chaucer, or, better still, of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, 
 ■or, best of all, of both, of them, would give what a life spent in the 
 mechanical employment of our Nomic orthography fails to give, 
 namely, some of the materials on which a rudimentary knowledge 
 •of the history and etymology of the English language might be 
 based. 
 
 " As a matter of fact, our present spelling is in many particulars 
 a far from trustworthy guide in etymology, and often, indeed, en- 
 tirely falsifies history. Such spellings as island, author, delight, 
 
 * In a pamphlet reprinted from the FartrdghUy JReview for April, 1876. London : 
 T. Pitman, 20 Paternoster Bow. Two subsequent quotations, credited to Professor 
 Max Mliller, are taken from the same pamphlet. 
 
 + " A Handbook of Phonetics, including a Popular Exposition of the Principles of 
 Spelling Reform, by Henry Sweet, President of the Philological Society, author of 
 * A History of English Sounds,' etc. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1877." 
 
 t A word adapted from the Greek by Mr. A. J. Ellis, to designate our present orthog- 
 raphy, in contradistinction to " Glossic," invented by him. (" On Glosik, a neu sistem 
 •ov Ingglish speling, proapoazd fanr konkurrent eus, in aurder to remidi dhi difek-ts 
 widhou-t ditrak'ting from dhi valeu ov our prezent aurthografi." In London Phu' 
 Soc. Transactions, 1870.) 
 
SOUIfD-EKGLISH. 15 
 
 ■sovereign, require only to be mentioned, and there are hundreds of 
 others involving equally gross blunders, many of which have actu- 
 ally corrupted the spoken language ! 
 
 " Even if we carried out — that is, if it were possible — the princi- 
 ple of etymological spelling consistently, by writing each word in 
 its primitive Indo-Germanic form, writing, for instance, Maipawar- 
 dha for lord, we should only be giving a portion of the materials of 
 etymology. We should have to give in brackets or foot-notes to 
 «ach word the Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English, together with the 
 present English forms, the last in phonetic spelling, and lastly, a 
 brief abstract of the laws which govern the various changes of form 
 and meaning. Even if we arbitrarily resolve not to trace our his- 
 tory further back than the sixteenth century, we shall have to write 
 each word twice over. It is absurd to say that the spelling knight, 
 for instance, throws light on any word in the present English. Of 
 course the word meant is nait. But where do we find the existence 
 of such a word even hinted at ? All that the spelling knight tells 
 us is that a word existed in a certain form in sixteenth-century Eng- 
 lish ; it tells us nothing about its present form. 
 
 " In short, historical spelling destroys the materials on which alone 
 Mstory itself can be based." 
 
 The idea, too, that because etymology is an amusing and in- 
 structive pursuit, it should therefore be dragged into practical 
 orthography, is about as reasonable as it would be to insist on every 
 one's having Macaulay's ' History of England ' permanently chained 
 around his neck, because history is an improving study. 
 
 " lu conclusion, it may be observed that it is mainly among the 
 ■class of half-taught dabblers in philology that etymological spelling 
 has found its supporters. All true philologists and philological 
 hodies have uniformly denounced it as a monstrous absurdity both 
 from a practical and a scientific point of view." 
 
 Professor W. D. Whitney says in his "Oriental and Linguistic 
 Studies"*- 
 
 " The anomalies of our orthography, unfortunately, are far from 
 being calculated, in the gross, to guide the unlearned to etymolog- 
 ical research. For one of them which is of value in the way of in- 
 citement and instruction, there are many which can only confuse 
 and discourage. In the first place, there are not a few downright 
 blunders among them. Thus, to cite a familiar instance or two, the 
 ^ of sovereign (French souverain, Italian sowano) has no business 
 
 * Oriental and Linguistic Studies. By William DwigM Whitney, Professor of 
 Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Tale College. Second Series, YH. New 
 Tork : Chas. Scribner's Sons. 
 
16 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 there, since the word has nothing whatever to do with reigning;- 
 island (from Anglo-Saxon ealand) is spelt with an s, out of igno- 
 rant imitation of isle (Latin insula), with which it is wholly uncon- 
 nected." 
 
 " It is, moreover, to be noted that a phonetic spelling, far from 
 contributing, as its enemies claim, to the alteration and decay of the 
 language, would exercise an appreciable conserving influence and 
 make for uniformity and fixedness of pronunciation." .... 
 
 "A consistent spelling would awaken and educate the phonetic 
 sense of the community. As things are now, the English speaker 
 comes to the study of a foreign written language, and to the exami- 
 nation of phonetic questions generally, at a disadvantage, when 
 compared with those to whom other tongues are native. He has 
 been accustomed to regard it as only natural and proper that any 
 given sound should be written in a variety of di&erent ways, that 
 any given sign should possess a number of different values ; and 
 it requires a special education to give him an inkling of the truth 
 that every letter of our alphabet had originally, and still preserves 
 in the main, outside of his own language, a single unvarying 
 sound." * 
 
 " A thoroughly consistent spelling would be a far more valuable' 
 means of philological education than such a one as we now follow, 
 were the latter twice as full as it is of etymological suggestive- 
 ness." 
 
 "We are, then, clearly of the opinion that a phonetic orthogra- 
 phy is, of itself, in all respects desirable." 
 
 In view of the opinions of these learned men, who have made; 
 scientific philology the strfdy of their lives, it is refreshing to hear, 
 as we may hear every day, the same old argument that "phonetic 
 spelling would destroy the history of our language," advanced by 
 persons who have never given the subject a moment of serious 
 thought, let alone study ; but who yet advance it with the utmost 
 gravity and with the air of men who feel that they deliver them- 
 selves of a weighty opinion and are doing their share toward saving- 
 their mother tongue from corruption and ruin 1 
 
 With such persons — and they are still in the majority — the objee- 
 
 * Teacbeis of foreign languages can relate woeful tales about this want of a pho- 
 netic sense on the part of their English-speaking pnpils, which, in some cases, amounts", 
 to absolute "sound-blindness." We fear that even many teachers of English in foreign 
 countries are suffering from this defect, for in no other way can we account for our 
 meeting with highly educated foreigners, who have devoted years of study to th& 
 English language and still do not know its vowel sonnds or even the difference between 
 a surd and a sonant consonant, the very comer-stone of a correct enunciation ot 
 English. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 17 
 
 tion to phonetic spelling arises, not from a desire to serve a useful 
 purpose by retaining the "etymological" spelling, but from pure 
 and simple, unthinking 
 
 Conservatism, 
 
 which, being based on the law of inertia, is a perfectly natural 
 tendency of the human mind. 
 
 All that is new to eye or ear, looks or sounds odd, sometimes 
 funny, often ridiculous. " No one, we presume," says Prof. Whit- 
 ney," will be found to question that one very important reason why 
 we cleave to our present modes of spelling is the simple fact that 
 they are ours. We have learned them, by dint of diligent study, if 
 not of painful «fEort ; we are used to them, our spoken words in any 
 other garb would look to us strange and quaint, or even, ridicu- 
 lous So our friends the ladies, if they should suddenly 
 
 appear before our sight in the head-gear which they ar§ going t» 
 wear five years hence, would shock us and provoke the cut direct, 
 yet we shall by that time be looking back to the bonnets of this, 
 season as the height of absurdity." Changes in sound have the: 
 same effect. When, some fifteen years ago, the author of this little 
 book was expected to adopt the Eoman pronunciation of Latin and 
 pronounce c always like k, he thought it barbarous ; now he is 
 heartily ashamed of his former opposition, and it would requira 
 weighty reasons to make him go back to the old way. 
 
 Every one of us is conservative in some things, and therefore we 
 have no right to think hard of those who cling tenaciously to the 
 present manner of spelling their language. It has taken them such 
 a vast deal of work to acquire it, and now that they have acquired 
 it, they want to get something out of it in return for their trouble ; 
 like the farmer who had his teeth pulled, to get even with the 
 dentist for a load of potatoes. And phonetic spelling does look 
 funny at first, there is no use in denying tliat. 
 
 " Yes, and (so our conservative asks) how are you going to dis- 
 tinguish between words now spelled differently, but pronounced' 
 alike ? When you write at, how are we to know whether you mean 
 the number 8 or the past tense of to eat ? " 
 
 "How do you know in the spoken language ? " 
 
 " From the context," 
 
 " And so you will in the written language, know it from the con- 
 text. Moreover, in phonetic spelling you will not find such words, 
 as -read, and then have to look way up and down the context, to find 
 out whether to say read or read, and a foreigner will not be liable; 
 
18 SOUKD-EKGLISH. 
 
 tp read that ' the girl shed a tedr, because she saw a Uar in her 
 dress. ' " 
 
 " Oh ! yes, that may be ; but then, anyway, the present system 
 has been good enough to put English-speaking nations in the front 
 rank. " 
 
 ' ' How much farther ahead might you not be with a sensible way 
 of writing your language ? " 
 
 "No time for puzzles to-day ; too busy." 
 
 Arguments will not go far with your conservatives ; example 
 does more, sometimes, especially within their own ranks. So, per- 
 haps, if we called their attention to the fact that even Sir Leicester 
 Dedlock dropped the superfluous a from his name — but hold on ! 
 Many otherwise conservative men will do almost anything in the 
 interest.of their children. May be that will move them. Let us try, 
 and shout into their ears ; 
 
 Have you ever thought of Your Poor Children ? 
 
 The irreparable harm done to their young minds at the very 
 threshold of their intellectual development, by their being made to. 
 learn signs and sounds and expected 1 o connect them, when there is 
 no connection between them, when a letter may represent one thing 
 in this word, another in the next, and nothing in the third, without 
 reason, or rule, or system ; the creating in their young hearts of a 
 distrust inus, their elders, when we represent to them as grave and 
 solemn truths what sooner or later they must find to be nothing but 
 senseless absurdities ; the blow to their love of justice, when they 
 are constantly blamed for faults which they cannot avoid, and for 
 which no one is to blame but ourselves ! Have you ever thought of 
 those things ? 
 
 "Woe to the child," says Professor F. A. March,* " whoattempts 
 to use reason in-spelling English ; it is a mark of promise not to 
 spell easily. One whose reason is active must learn not to use it. 
 The whole process is stupefying and perverting ; it makes great num- 
 bers of children finally and forever hate the sight of a book." 
 
 " Consider the harm," says Mr. Wayland, "to the child's mind, 
 to his reasoning powers. We say to him : ' Here is this letter ; it 
 has this sound, this force. ' But he then finds that it is purely a mat- 
 
 * In his opening address to the International Convention for the Amendment of 
 EngJish Orthography, held at PhUade'.phla in 1876. See Circular of Information No. 7, 
 of 1880, iesnecl by the U. S. Bureau of Bducatipn (now out of print, but found in every 
 well-appointed library). Another quotation credited to Professor March is taken from 
 the same address. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 19 
 
 ter of chance whether it has this sound or something utterly difler- 
 €nt. Suppose we should say that 'Sand 3 make 4'; and then the 
 child should find that, if it is apples, 3 and 3 make 5 ; if marbles, 
 they make 3 ; if plums, 6 ; and if potatoes, 7 ? We destroy or injure 
 reliance on general laws, which is one of the most valuable of mental 
 habits. In fact, that the minds of the children are not ruined, is a 
 result that I can only explain on the basis of the Providence that 
 ■watches over children and drunken people and America." 
 
 Ex-President Thomas Hill of Harvard says in his "True Order of 
 Studies"*: 
 
 " Not only is a child unable to pronounce a new word by the aid 
 'of his alphabet, but no scholar of whatever ability can tell the pro- 
 nunciation of, an English word which he has never chanced to hear 
 or to see printed with diacritic signs. It may therefore be justly 
 said that English is, like Chinese, not alphabetic in its dress, but 
 logographic ; and there is no man living, in England or America, 
 who has learned, or can learn, to read it ; that is, to pronounce any- 
 thing and everything written in it. For this reason, learning to 
 read, being the attempt to accomplish an impossible thing, is the 
 most difficult task undertaken by an English child. A tough con- 
 stitution resists a great deal of hardship and abuse ; a vigorous in- 
 tellect frequently survives the labor of learning to spell in the ordi- 
 nary mode He who will reflect, however, seriously, upon the 
 
 absurdities of English orthography, and upon the gravity with which 
 those absurdities are usually introduced to the child as reasonable 
 things, must perceive that such instruction has an injurious effect 
 upon the child's mental powers, and upon his love of truth." 
 
 Lord Lytton says :t " A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed 
 delusion than that by which we confuse the clear instincts of truth 
 in our accursed system of spelling was never concocted by the father 
 of falsehood. . . . How can a system of education flourish that 
 ■begins by so monstrous a falsehood, which the sense of hearing suf- 
 fices to contradict ? " • 
 
 Mr. Fred. A. Fernald says in his article, "How Spelling Damages 
 the Mind," in the Popular Science Monthly for September, 1885 : 
 "Learning to read the English language is one of the worst mind- 
 stunting processes that have formed a part of the general education 
 of any people. ... No child learns English spelling without get- 
 ting the pernicious notion that cram is better than thinking, and 
 
 * " The Trne Order of Studies," by Thomas Hill. New York and London : Q. P. 
 Putnam's Sons, 1882. Two other quotations, credited to Ex-President Hill, are taken 
 from the same work. 
 
 tIn"TheCaxtons." 
 
20 SOUND-EBTGLISH. 
 
 that common sense is a treacherous guide. The child who can take 
 what he is told without asking why, who can repeat a rule without 
 troubling himself about its meaning, gets along best. On the other 
 hand, the child who has difficulty in learning to spell may be ex- 
 pected to develop strong logical faculties. He is constantly trying 
 to spell according to some principle, and, of course, constantly com- 
 ing to grief. . . . Here is a chief source of the incapacity for think- 
 ing, which academy and college students bring into the science lab- 
 oratories." . . . 
 
 No ! If the arguments in favor of our present spelling were a 
 thousand times more weighty than those who advance them would 
 make us believe they are, they would all vanish before our duty to 
 the growing generation, for whose education we are responsible. 
 
 But, even apart from the positive injury to the child's mind, let 
 us consider the 
 
 Time and Money Wasted. 
 
 in learning and teaching spelling lessons. 
 
 "We ought," says Professor March, "to try to improve our spell- 
 ing from patriotic and philanthropic motives. If these do not move 
 us, it may be worth while to remember that it has been computed 
 that we throw away $15,000,000 a year paying teachers for addling 
 the brains of our children with bad spelling. " . . . . 
 
 Professor Max Miiller says : " The question, then, that will have 
 to be answered sooner or later, is this : ' Can this unsystematic sys- 
 tem of spelling English be allowed to go on forever ? Is every Eng- 
 lish child, as compared with other children, to be mulcted in two or 
 three years of his life in order to learn it ? Are the lower classes to 
 go through school without learning to read and write their own lan- 
 guage intelligently ? And is the country to pay millions every year 
 for this utter failure of national education V I do not believe or 
 think that such a state of things will be allowed to go on forever, 
 particularly as a remedy is at hand. I consider that the sooner it 
 is taken in hand the better." 
 
 Tlie great and almost insurmountable 
 
 Difficulties Encountered by Foreigners 
 
 as compared with the facility with which they might acquire the 
 English language, were it spelled phonetically, have been sufficiently 
 dwelt upon. Suffice it to call attention to the fact that there are 
 now thousands upon thousands of foreigners in the United States, 
 many of whom are not wanting in native intelligence and are fairly 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 21 
 
 ■well educated in their mother-tongue, but still acquire but a very 
 indifferent speaking knowledge of the English language after years 
 of residence, and never learn, or dare attempt to learn, to read and 
 ■write it in all their lives. 
 
 Requirements of a Phonetic Alphabet. ' • 
 
 It is believed that a new system, to be perfect in its design and 
 •capable of easy introduction, must possess the following qualities ; 
 
 1. There must be one, and only one, sign for each and every 
 SOUND of the English lailguage. 
 
 2. There must be a simple method of indicating the accent. The 
 author knows firom experience that, for foreigners, to know where 
 the accent lies is almost as important as to know what the sounds 
 are. 
 
 3. The present equipment of any phinting office must suffice, 
 ■without the necessity of casting new types or even employing dia- 
 critical marks, because these are found only in large printing-estab- 
 lishments, and even there hardly in sufficient quantities. 
 
 4. All the leading typewriters now in use must be adapted or 
 easily adaptable to the new system without destroying their useful- 
 ness in writing the present spelling. 
 
 The author believes that he has succeeded- in de^vising a system 
 answering all the above requirements. 
 
 "But," some one says, "granting the system to be perfection 
 itself, 
 
 How do you expect it ever to be introduced? 
 
 Will Congress pass a law, making it obligatory to use the new or- 
 thography, after a certain date, in the U. S. Courts, in all official 
 correspondence ■with the Departments, in the Army and Navy, and 
 in all documents issued from the Government Printing Office ? Or 
 will all the State Superintendents of Public Instruction hold a con- 
 vention and fix the date after which the new spelling shall be taught 
 in all the public schools in the United States ? And if so, what a 
 ■confusion will not ensue, when half the people have learned their 
 language in the old way and the other half in the new way ? And 
 what -will become of the thousands of tons of books ? WiU they all 
 •be waste paper or historical relics ? And the publishers ? Will they 
 melt arid sell as old metal the millions of plates, which now represent 
 such a vast capital ? And our dictionaries, our dear old Webster 
 And Worcester, and the new Century Dictionary, ■will they have to 
 be thrown away ? " 
 
2g SODSTD-ENGLISH. 
 
 No ; there- will be no need of any law, convention, or confusion,, 
 nor will anything be wasted, melted, or thrown away. 
 
 At first it will be the foreigners with a more or less elementary 
 education who will seize most eagerly upon a system of spelling that 
 will te^h them to speak every-day English in an almost incredibly- 
 short time. 
 
 It will also be discovered very soon how incomparably easier it ia 
 for children to learn to read by a phonetic system, and then it will 
 not be long before Sound-English forms the basis of elementary in- 
 struction at home and in kindergartens. 
 
 "But," many will say now, " what will be the use of it? The 
 system maybe well. enough adapted to introduce foreigners to a 
 speaking knowledge of English, but what benefit will it be to oar- 
 children to learn to read one way, when, they have to unlearn it 
 again as they grow older ? Will, it not confuse them ? " 
 
 Far from it ; on the contrary, it is a fact established by the testi- 
 mony of many educators that it is far easier for children to learn 
 the present orthography, after they have first learned to read by a, 
 phonetic alphabet. 
 
 "The child," says Ex-President Hill, "who learns to read ia 
 phonotype, will learn common orthography more rapidly, because- 
 he perceives more clearly its oddities and anomalies ; and that fixes 
 them on his memory. Experiments in Waltham upon many hun- 
 dreds of pupils, continued through a series of six or seven years, 
 showed that those who had learned phonotype, or even phonogra- 
 phy, were better in spelling than other scholars. Bad spelling, in- 
 deed, usually arises from an attempt to spell phonetically with the 
 common alphabet ; so that we might say that the cause of bad spell- 
 ing is that children are taught to spell." 
 
 Mr. Fred. A. Fernald says, in his article quoted heretofore : 
 " Children can and do learn to read English spelt phonetically in a 
 very few lessons, and leai-n the traditional spelling so quickly after- 
 ward that much less time is required for the whole process than is 
 commonly devoted to memorizing the current spelling alone. Classes 
 taught to read in this way, in Massachusetts, so early as 1851, proved 
 the advantage of the method to the satisfaction of that able educator, 
 Horace Mann, and the method has been successfully employed in 
 many places in this country and in the British Isles." 
 
 The late Mr. William Colbourne, manager of the Dorset Bank at 
 Sturminster, England, said in a' letter (quoted by Professor Max 
 Mliller) : "My little Sidney, now a few months more than four years 
 old, will read any phonetic book without the slightest hesitation. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 23 
 
 The hardest words or the longest names in the Old or New Testa- 
 ment form no obstacle to him. And how long do you think it took 
 me to impart to him this power ? Something less than eight hours. 
 . . . I know you will be inclined to say : ' All that is very well, 
 but what is the use of reading phonetic books ! He is still as far off, 
 and may be farther, from reading romanic books.' But in this you 
 are mistaken. Take another example. His next eldest brother, a 
 boy of six years, has had a phonetic education so far. "What is the 
 consequence ? Why, reading in the first stage was so delightful and 
 easy a thing to him that he taught himself to read romanically, and 
 it would be a difficult matter to find one boy in twenty, of a corre- 
 sponding age, t^j^t could read half so well as he can in any book." 
 
 Ex-President Hill says further: "The use of a phonotype, or 
 even pronouncing type, has also the advantage of giving unceasing 
 instruction in accuracy of enunciation, and no other method has 
 been so successful in removing from a school provincialisms, brogues, 
 and vulgarities of pronunciation. " ' 
 
 Sound-English, then, will not be a stumbling-block, but a step- 
 ping-stone, even while the old spelling remains the rule. A good 
 many foreigners, however, will not take the trouble, or not-have the 
 time; to study the old " orthography," and still they will want to 
 read English ; so, a demand will spring up for books and news- 
 papers printed in the new -way. Foreigners will also write phonet- 
 ically and expect English people to understand their writing, and 
 thus the latter will have to familiarize themselves with Sound- 
 English, a feat, by the way, which any person fairly acquainted with 
 the sounds of the English language can accomplish in about one 
 hour. Parents, also, may want some reading-matter for their 
 children, b^ore they teach them the present spelling, and thus there 
 wiU come a demand for juvenile literature. And as the demand for 
 Sound-English books increases, the publishers, instead of making new 
 plates for old books, will make the old plates do service a little longer 
 and publish new Sound-English editions of the same books instead. 
 
 As regards the dictionaries, they require new editions from time 
 to time, owing to the many new words introduced into the language 
 by the continuous discoveries in the Sciences, etc., and when the 
 time comes for Sound-English to make its influence felt, they will at 
 first give the Sound-English spelling in parenthesis, after the ordi- 
 nary spelling, and by and by they will give the Sound-English ^rsi, 
 and the old spelling after it, just as they now give the pronuncia- 
 tion, and then they will print the defliytions and examples in Sound- 
 English, tQO. 
 
■^4 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 The thousands of tons of books already in existence still remain 
 "to be accounted for." Now let us pause for a moment, to ask : 
 "How many books printed to-day will remain in the market for 
 twenty-flve years?" or, inversely, "Who reads, habitually, a' book 
 printed twenty-flve years ago?" A great many books, of course, 
 are read, and not a few school-books are studied, at this day, that 
 were writtm more than twenty-five years ago ; but they appear in 
 new editions, printed from new plates, made from newly set type. 
 The great bulk of the original books has been ground to pulp in 
 the paper-mills long ago, and the rest are in libraries,, public and 
 private, and in second-hand book-stores. Very well, then, to 
 make new plates in the new style of spelling will not cost more 
 than it would in the old ; and even if publishers should really have 
 to dispose of some remnants of old editions as old paper, which they 
 might have sold as books, had not the orthography been changed, 
 ihey wUl be liberally compensated by the great demand for standard 
 authors printed in the new style. And the books in the libraries 
 will be read by the coming generation with much less difliculty than 
 we read old English books now. "Our present books," says Pro- 
 fessor Sayce, " would present no greater difficulties to the ordinary 
 Teader than the poems of Spenser do now. Indeed, the difficulties 
 would be far less, since they would contain no obsolete or unknown 
 words, such as make the task of studying the works of Spenser or 
 ■Chaucer doubly hard." 
 
 That is the manner in which, as the author of Sound-English im- 
 agines, his system will work its way, and if it is not exactly in that 
 manner, it will be by some similar perfectly natural process. Pho- 
 netic spelling must come, because the time is ripe for it. And when 
 it has been adopted, people will wonder how they ever got along in 
 the old way, and how any sane person ever attempted to read and 
 write the English language without being committed to a lunatic 
 asylum before he was half-way through. Julian West, in Bellamy's 
 "Looking Backward," evidently forgot to comment on the use of 
 .Sound-English in the year 3000, because it had then been introduced 
 such a long time as to pass for a matter of course, without at- 
 tracting the slightest notice. It did not even occur to him to men- 
 iion that the volumes in Dr. Leete's library were printed in Sound-. 
 English, as the difficulty he experienced in reading them was so 
 slight that he soon forgot all about it. 
 
 Now, if some kindly disposed people should say : "Very well ; 
 you have convinced us of the great advantages of Sound-English ; 
 now tell us. 
 
SOUND-EN-GLISH. 25 
 
 How can we further its Introduction ? " 
 
 we should answer : 
 
 1. By making a business of speaking of it approvingly among 
 your friends. Avoid arguments ; they rarely convince, in matters of 
 spelling, and the laughers are always on the side of the unthinking 
 conservative. A quiet, unostentatious remark will go much farther ; 
 such as : "It seems quite practical ; " or, "If it really saves so 
 much trouble to children, I should think it worth trying;" or, 
 "Come to think of it, seriously, our spelling does seem rather 
 absurd ; " or, " It seems, after all, that we ought to have an easier 
 way to teach foreigners our language ; " or the like. Then stop and 
 talk about the weather. 
 
 2. By 'calling the attention of foreigners to it, and assisting them 
 in the pronunciation. Many persons having some knowledge of 
 foreign languages would surely find little difflciilty in forming even- 
 ing classes for the instruction of foreigners, at a fair compensation. 
 A hand-book for Germans will probably be published by the author 
 ■of "Sound-English" on or about the 1st of October, 1890, to be fol- 
 lowed at short intervals by similar books for the use of Spaniards, 
 Italians, French, Portuguese, Scandinavians, etc. 
 
 3. By sending those books abroad and telling your correspondents 
 that if their -letters are written in Engli^, in the new way,<they will 
 be understood. Words denoting articles of merchandise, etc., which 
 they find in catalogues, price lists, etc. , but which they cannot write 
 in Sound-English, as they are not acquainted with their pronuncia- 
 tion, may be written in the old spelling, under quotation marks. 
 -^See Part Second, end of Chapter XII.) 
 
 4. By teaching your little ones at home and in kindergartens, 
 •etc., to read according to Sound-English. By so doing, you will not 
 only help to introduce the new system, but spare the poor children 
 many a tedious hour and a great deal of injury to their young 
 minds. A Sound-English Primer will probably be published by the 
 author of this book on or about the 1st of July, 1890. 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 The system will be presented here as it was finally deter- 
 mined upon. Any persons interested in the reasons for adopt- 
 ing this or that principle, or this or that sign, are respectfully 
 referred to Appendix A, where, it is hoped, they will find 
 answers to all their inquiries. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Preliminary Remarks. 
 
 1.. Sound-English has not any capital letters. Proper 
 nouns are distinguished by the context, as they are in the 
 spoken language ; if necessary, they should be printed in 
 italics, or, in writing, placed between quotation marks. 
 
 2. There are not any silent letters. No sound, no sign. 
 No consonants are doubled, except 'for special reasons, in a 
 few words of rare occurrence. (See Chapter VII.) 
 
 3. Surnames may be spelled either phonetically, according- 
 to the rules of Sound-English, or in the old way ; in the 
 latter case, they should be placed between quotation marks. 
 Signatures should, for the present, be spelled in the old way, 
 without quotation marks. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Vowels. 
 
 I. Short Vowels. 
 
 1. The following are the short vowel-sounds of the English 
 language : 
 
 *i in pin. o in on. 
 
 *e " pen. u " but. 
 
 a " at. *o " propeL 
 
 *a " ask. *u " put. 
 26 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 27" 
 
 2. For the five sounds designated by an asteriskj we use 
 the same si.gns as at -present. The three remaining ones are 
 expressed as follows : ' 
 
 (1) For the a in at we remove the dot, with part of the 
 top line, from the a ; thus, a ; from the italic type we remove 
 a small part of the right side ; thus, a, ; at, at ; lad, map. 
 
 This change in the type can be eflected without the least difficulty 
 with a penknife ; and this is the one and only character in the whole 
 system of Sound-English that requires a slight modification of the type. 
 But it is not necessary that any printer should go to even this little 
 trouble and expense, unless he aims at great accuracy. The difference 
 between a in at and a in ask is one that thousands of educated Amer- 
 icans are not aware of, and that even some-dictionaries do not talie into 
 account. Hence, there will be no harm in using our present a or a for 
 both a in at and a in a»k. The author, however, considered it his duty 
 to the phonetic sense of the growing generation to embody the two 
 sounds in his "Sound-English Primer," and, consequently, the same 
 coui'se had to be followed in this book. 
 
 (2) The in on is represented by an inverted a ; as, bu, 
 j'Bb, n^t (on, job, not). 
 
 (3) The u in but is represented by an inverted c ; as, bot, 
 fon, gom {but, fun, gum). 
 
 II. liong Vowels. 
 
 In considering the long vowels, the reader must try to dis- 
 abuse his mind of the present way of marking the vowels, by 
 which the long vowel corresponding to t in pin is i in ice, 
 that corresponding to e in pen, e in me, etc. He must con- 
 sider only the sounds of the letters, as they appear in the 
 following table. The dashes indicate that there are no long- 
 sounds corresponding to the short ones placed opposite, and_ 
 
 vice versa. 
 
 
 ' 
 
 Short 
 
 Sounds. 
 
 i 
 
 in 
 
 pin. 
 
 e 
 
 (( 
 
 pen. 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 at. 
 
 a 
 
 (< 
 
 ash. 
 
 
 
 cc 
 
 on. 
 
 I.ong Sounds. 
 
 e 
 
 in 
 
 me. 
 
 a 
 
 ti " 
 
 ' ape. 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 arm. 
 
 a 
 
 ee 
 
 all. 
 
:38 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 Short SouiMls. Long Sounds. 
 
 u " but. 
 
 e, u " fern, burn. 
 
 " propel. " old. 
 
 u " put. u " rule. 
 
 Note. — The letter y is not used as a vowel (except in surnames spelled 
 the old way), its sound being expressed by i or ai (see " Diphthongs "). 
 
 Long u as heard in use, mute, unite, etc., is replaced by yu (see the 
 Hetter y under "Consonants"). 
 
 The short o heard in propel, indolent, etc., corresponding to long o in 
 ,old, occurs only in unaccented syllables. Compare, however, Webster's 
 Dictionary, "Principles of Pronunciation," § 30. 
 
 In representing the long vowels we double the correspond- 
 ing short vowels ; but, instead of placing the letters by the 
 aide of each other, we put them on top of each other, to save, 
 time and space. For this purpose we use thick, or " full-face " 
 type, and instead of speaking of doubled letters, we speak 
 of "strengthened" letters, to prevent a misunderstanding. 
 
 The e in fern or u in burn is expressed by an inverted, 
 strengthened e. 
 
 Thus, the letters and words contained in the above table 
 are j)rinted in Sound-English as follows : 
 
 1 m pm. 
 -e -'■' pen. 
 •a (a) " at (at) 
 a '' ask. 
 ■B " i3n. 
 " bot 
 
 1 m 
 e " 
 
 mi. 
 ep. 
 
 a " 
 
 arm. 
 el. 
 
 
 a " 
 o " 
 u " 
 
 farn, barn, 
 
 old. 
 
 ml. 
 
 " propel* 
 u " put. 
 
 * The reason for strengtheDing the I in this word will he found under "Accent." 
 
 In writing, we strengthen the letters by shading them ; 
 :eee Chapter XII. 
 
 On nearly all the leading type-writers the strengthening 
 may be effected by holding down the space-bar and striking 
 ;the same letter twice ; see Chapter XIV. 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 29' 
 
 EXEECISB 1. 
 
 The Ke 
 
 ys to all the Hxen 
 
 cises imll he jom 
 
 »i m Appendix B. 
 
 il 
 
 men 
 
 am 
 
 d'Bn 
 
 il 
 
 men 
 
 mdn 
 
 dBn 
 
 in 
 
 pen 
 
 ant 
 
 neb 
 
 min 
 
 pen 
 
 ant 
 
 dub 
 
 it 
 
 wed 
 
 staf 
 
 nBd 
 
 it 
 
 wed 
 
 haf 
 
 lud 
 
 hot 
 
 arb 
 
 on 
 
 ful 
 
 mod 
 
 *1 
 
 Ots 
 
 ful 
 
 pqn 
 
 bard 
 
 go 
 
 pul 
 
 dOT 
 
 farm 
 
 do 
 
 pvil' 
 
 doz 
 
 wark 
 
 bon 
 
 fut 
 
 son 
 
 tarf 
 
 got 
 
 but. 
 
 
 in. 
 
 Diphthongs. 
 
 
 1. Th^re are, in English, three diphthongs, yiz. : i m I 
 (or y in my), ou in out (or ow in cow), and oi in oil (or oy 
 in hoy). 
 
 In Sound-English i in / is represented by ai. 
 ou " out " "■ " an. 
 
 oi " oil " " " vi. 
 
 3. Diphthongs are two (different) short sounds "welded" 
 together to form a long one. Being, then, long by nature, 
 they are not strengthened, except in cases of emphasis, which 
 will be considered in subsequent chapters. 
 
 
 Exercise 2. 
 
 
 ai 
 
 aul 
 
 Bil 
 
 mai 
 
 aut 
 
 bei 
 
 daim 
 
 hau 
 
 W 
 
 fair 
 
 nau 
 
 jein 
 
 kaind 
 
 flaur 
 
 tril 
 
 waind 
 
 faund 
 
 veid 
 
30 SOUND-BN'GLISH. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Consonants. 
 
 1. Unless commented upon in the following paragrapis^ 
 the consonant signs are used with the same values as in the 
 present spelling. 
 
 2. The sign must always correspond to the sound. Thus, 
 for instance, of, is, laugh must be spelled vv, iz, laf, because 
 the/, s, and gJi in these words have the sounds of v, z, and 
 /", respectively. Eemember, also, that all silent consonants 
 
 are dropped. 
 
 3. C has either the sound of h, as in cat, oi of s, as in 
 cent, or of z, as in sice, these words being written in Sound- 
 English hat, sent, saiz. Consequently, the letter c is dropped 
 from the Sound-English alphabet ; but its type is used in 
 the digraph ch and, inverted, for tlie u in hut. 
 
 4. G has always the sound of g in get. When, in the 
 present spelling, it is sounded like /, as in gem, we use in 
 Sound-English a j ; Jem. Before a J-sound d is silent ; thus, 
 ■edge is spelled ej. 
 
 5. Q is replaced by hw or kj quick, queer, antique are 
 written hwik, hwir, cntik. 
 
 6. P is silent between m and t j thus, tempt is written 
 temt. 
 
 7. Ph is replaced by /or v, according ,to its sound ; phase, 
 nymph, Stephen are written fez, nimf stivn. 
 
 8. When u forms one syllable with the. vowel following it, 
 as in guano, Ouelph, it is replaced by w ; gwano, gwelf, 
 
 9. The sound of wh is represented by hw j what, when are 
 wl'itten hwnt, hiven. 
 
 10. X has the sound of ks, gz, or z, and is replaced by 
 those letters; mix, text, exalt, xyst are written miks, tekst, 
 ■egznlt, zist. The letter x is dropped from the Sound-English 
 alphabet. 
 
 11. Yu or, when long, yu is used to represent the sound 
 ■of our present u ; use, due, mute, unite are written yus (or, 
 as a verb, yuz), dyu, myut, yunait. . 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 31 
 
 The y is omitted only after r, sh, zh, ch, and /, and after I 
 preceded by another consonant; rule, sure, leisure, chew', 
 June, and conclude are written rul, shur, Uzhur, chu, jun, 
 kvnklud. (For the sign zh in Uzhur, see below, 14.) 
 
 Note. — The reasons for strengthening the ai in yunait, and for 
 .strengthening other diphthongs or consonants in several examples given 
 in this and the following chapter, wilfbe found in Chapter V. 
 
 12. / is replaced by y whenever it forms one syllable with 
 ■the vowel following it ; thus, imion is written yunyon ; but 
 when the i forms a separate syllable, as in medium, its char- 
 acter is retained., jnidiom. In dou]Dt, preference should be 
 ^iven to y j thus we write indyan rather than indian. 
 
 13. When u is preceded hy d or i and by an accented syl- 
 lable, the y-element often coalesces with d or t to form the 
 isound of _/ or ch ; thus, verdure and nature are pronounced 
 verjur and ndchur by good speakers. Likewise, in unac- 
 <;ented syllables, when d precedes a y-sound, or when t pre- 
 cedes ia or io (sounded like ya or yo) and is itself preceded 
 by s or x, or when t is followed by eous, the d or i oftien 
 coalesces with the sound of y, i, or e, to form the sound of / 
 •or ch ; thus, soldier, question, bounteous are often pro- 
 nounced soljer, kweschun, bounchus.* In Sound-English, 
 no account is taken of these modifications of d and t ; the 
 -vowel element following these letters in the cases above re- 
 ferred to is expressed by y ; thus, we write vardyur, netyur, 
 soldyer, kwestyon, bauntyos. 
 
 14. The sign zh is used for the vocalized sound of sh; 
 thus, seizure is spelled sizhur. The signs sh or zh are used 
 whenever their sounds occur, no matter what the old spelling 
 may be ; thus, nation, ocean, chaise, abrasion are spelled 
 neshon, oshon, shez, abrezhon. 
 
 15. When n has the sound of ng, it is replaced by that 
 digraph ; thus, ink, anger are written ingk, angger. 
 
 16. Vocalized th is represented by dh ; that, them are 
 ispelled dhat, dhem. 
 
 17. Ch is always pronounced as in church. 
 
 * See Webster's Dictionary, "PrincipleB of Prommdatloii," %% B8, 86, 77, and 97. 
 
32 
 
 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 18. y is silent before ch j catch is spelled kach. 
 
 Note. — Whenever the letters composing the digraphs sh, zh, th, dhy 
 and ng retain their own individual sounds, as in dishearten, exhaust 
 (egz-haust), outhouse, adhere, congratulate, we must insert a hyphen be- 
 tween them, though the words may not be such compounds as even in. 
 the present spelling are usually divided by a hyphen, such as house-hold^ 
 hot-house, etc. ;, thus we write dis-hartn, egz-hvst, aut-hmis, ad-hir,. 
 knn-gratyulet ; and, of course, we insert the hyphen in haus-hold, hvt- 
 hoMS, etc., as in the present spelling. 
 
 
 
 Exercise 3. 
 
 
 
 hiz 
 
 det 
 
 es 
 
 kej 
 
 lait 
 
 blak 
 
 bdz 
 
 klaim 
 
 ais 
 
 kejd 
 
 d^ter 
 
 kk 
 
 k«f 
 
 akt 
 
 sel 
 
 enjin 
 
 er 
 
 kam 
 
 tof 
 
 kep 
 
 tres 
 
 nat 
 
 aur 
 
 WBk 
 
 h^k 
 
 kard 
 
 saipres 
 
 nom 
 
 naif 
 
 lim 
 
 slau 
 
 koros 
 
 dizarn 
 
 nyu 
 
 no 
 
 him 
 
 kwin 
 
 hwil 
 
 dyuk 
 
 milyon 
 
 peshent 
 
 rangk 
 
 kwel 
 
 hwel 
 
 fyuz 
 
 pinyon 
 
 moshon 
 
 fingger 
 
 «blik 
 
 hwens 
 
 rii 
 
 orient 
 
 soshal 
 
 dhi 
 
 sam 
 
 tdks 
 
 cWuing 
 
 krityur 
 
 tenshon 
 
 dho 
 
 kor 
 
 takst 
 
 shurli 
 
 miketyur 
 
 lokshuri 
 
 smudh 
 
 faial 
 
 egz-h^rt 
 
 jvi 
 
 raityos 
 
 glezher 
 
 padhz. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Syllabication. 
 
 1. One consonant between two vowels goes with the second ; 
 aS;, be bi {baby), le tent {latent), klo Ter {clover). 
 
 The exceptions to this rule will be found under "Accent."' 
 
 3. Of two Towels not forming a diphthong, and of a diph- 
 thong and another vowel, one goes with the preceding, th& 
 other with the following syllable ; as, bi ing {being}, bai ing 
 {buying). 
 
 3. Of two or more consonants, the first, goes with the pr&- 
 ceding, the other or others with the following vowel ; as,. 
 am bush {ambush), ab strus {abstruse), ap roch {approach). 
 
POUND-ENGLISH. 33 
 
 The digraphs sh, zli, ch, dh, th, and ng are treated as 
 single letters ; as, lo shon (lotion), li zhur {leisure), lo dhing 
 (loathing), po cher (j)oacher), fing ger (finger). 
 
 4. Compound words or derivatives follow the general rule ; 
 as, bangkropt (bankrupt), i nen (inane),. ^rin ted (printed). 
 
 Remarks. — 1. In the termination bh the e is silent and bl forms a 
 syllable with the Yowel preceding it ; as, ebl (able), fi zibl {feasible). 
 
 5. When the e or o is silent in the terminations el, en, or on, the I or 
 n is added to the preceding syllable ; as, hezl {hazel}, ivn {even), trizn 
 {treason). These words, as well as ebl, are, in Sound-English, mono- 
 syllables. 
 
 3. Words ending in rt? change that termination to er ; as, eker {acre), 
 lyuker (lucre), seijiter (centre). 
 
 4. When, in derivatives, a compliance with the rules of syllabication 
 would make the second part difficult of utterance, we may divide the 
 component parts ; as, start-ling, instead of star-tling {startling). 
 Compound words, also, should be divided into their component parts, if 
 the composition is such as to allow habitually the use of a hyphen, or if 
 both parts of the composition may be used as separate words ; as, gli-klob 
 (glee-club), port-wain (port-wine), bangk-not (bank-note), sports man 
 (sportsman) ; but we divide bang kropt, not bctiffk rapt, because this 
 word is not divided by a hyphen, except at the end of a line, nor is rupt 
 ever used as a separate word. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Accent. 
 
 I. Primary Accent. 
 
 1. The accented syllable is always indicated by the strength- 
 ening of one or two of its letters. 
 
 2. When the accented syllable contains a long vowel, the 
 strengthening of that vowel serves to mark the location of 
 the accent ; as, obe, leter, lider. (The present spelling of 
 these and all subsequent examples that are given only in 
 Sound-English will be found in the Keys, Appendix B.) 
 
 Of two syllables containing long vowels the accent rests on 
 the first J as,'arbitret, diviet. 
 
 In the very few words that are accented on the syllable 
 containing the second long vowel, we indicate the accent 
 by a special strengthening, using "extended" or still heavier 
 
34 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 full-face type, shading more heavily with the pen, or striking 
 the same letter four times on the type-writer while holding 
 down the space-bar ; as, ijldho, portre, forgo. 
 
 Note. — Most of theSfe exceptions, however, are more imaginary than 
 real, as the first vowel in such words as the above, though marked 
 "long" in dictionaries, is rarely given its full long sound, and we might 
 as well leave it without strengthening, especially the o, since our new 
 alphabet provides us with the real short sound of long o. If a proper 
 shade_ of heavier full-face type is available, we recommend that it be used 
 for the vowel in the accented syllable ; if not, that the first vowel be 
 left without strengthening. 
 
 3. A diphthong in an accented syllable must have both its 
 vowels strengthened ; as, maizer, julai, naitin-gel, an'Bi, 
 hauzing. ■ If a diphthong is hot thus strengthened, a sylla- 
 hle containing a long simple vowel has the accent in prefer- 
 ence to the diphthong ; as, filain, aidial. 
 
 4. When a syllable containing a short vowel has the accent, 
 we strengthen the consonant next following that vowel ; as, 
 omit, k'Bntrakt, k'entrakt, insident, landskep, aiitilop, 
 mailer, leter, def init, aiiimet, agonaiz. 
 
 The strengthened consonant always forms a syllable with 
 the preceding vowel, contrary to the rules of syllabication ; 
 thus, the last five examples are divided man er, let er, def i nit, 
 an i met, ag o naiz. 
 
 In the digraphs sh, zJi, cTi, dh, tli, and ng, both consonants 
 must be strengthened, and both form a syllable with the 
 preceding vowel; as, bashful, roshing, azh ur, hachet, 
 radh er, eth el, bang kwet, sing er. 
 
 It follows from the above rules that, in designating the 
 accented syllable, a strengthened consonant "takes prece- 
 dence " ; next comes a strengthened diphthong, and last, a 
 long vowel. 
 
 5. Compound words, whether divided by a hyphen or not, 
 follow the same rules as simple words ; as, bangk-st'ek, man- 
 laik, laikwaiz, haus-hold, haus-dBg, leter-peper, gud- 
 netyurd. 
 
 When both the component parts contain a strengthened 
 consonant, or both contain a strengthened diphthong, the 
 
SOUND-ElfGLISH. 
 
 35 
 
 principal accent rests on the first word, while the second 
 word has a secondary accent (see next chapter); as, blod- 
 vesel, blakberi, taip-raiter. 
 
 Note 1. — We observe, frojn the above examples, that monosyllables 
 which do not require any strengthening when standing alone, must often 
 be strengthened when entering into compounds, to indicate the word 
 having the principal accent. 
 
 In the very few cases which form exceptions to the rules 
 regulating the accent in compounds, we must resort to 
 ''special" strengthening as described above under %. Thus, 
 in peper-koter, raiding-master, etc., the principal accent 
 would, according t»-rule, rest on the second word (a strength- 
 ened consonant taking precedence over a strengthened vowel 
 or diphthong), while in arkenjel, oper-teiidom, etc., it 
 would rest on the first, exactly the opposite of what is actually 
 the case. We must, therefore, mark the word having the 
 principal accent by printing its strengthened letter or letters 
 in "extended" full-face type; as, peper-koter, raiding- 
 master, arkenjel, oper-tendom. (On the use of o in-dom, 
 see Chapter VI.) 
 
 Note 3. — In words like upper-tendom we may omit the hyphen and 
 strengthen only that syllable which has the principal accent, while the 
 other comes under the rules governing the "secondary accent" (see 
 next page) ; as, opertendoin, the same as onderteh, intervin, etc. 
 
 Exercise 4. 
 
 ksnve 
 
 disbarsment 
 
 braier 
 
 divan 
 
 diskrit 
 
 enslevment 
 
 endau 
 
 enakt 
 
 fiver 
 
 artichok 
 
 kaunterpeiz 
 
 propel 
 
 solar 
 
 parforet 
 
 kwaiitos 
 
 widhin 
 
 blandish 
 
 antimoni 
 
 abroget 
 
 gBSip 
 
 emti 
 
 ignomini 
 
 destityut 
 
 talent 
 
 sobjekt 
 
 instinktivli 
 
 domestiket 
 
 reched 
 
 sobjekt 
 
 transitorili 
 
 eksersaiz 
 
 singing 
 
 eboni 
 
 hemisfir 
 
 inmost 
 
 not-buk 
 
 ^ektiv 
 
 liberet 
 
 welfer 
 
 buk-warm 
 
 prohibit 
 
 antagonaiz 
 
 werfer 
 
 gud-nait 
 
 inheritans 
 
 invigorefc 
 
 autrait 
 
 gud-spid 
 
36 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 haus-waif blu-beri 
 
 hen-haus msixrans-pBlisi 
 
 blak-leter overdii 
 
 karier-pijon rebin-red.brest 
 
 II. Secondary Accent. 
 
 1. Besides the primary accent, words of three or more syl- 
 lables often have a secondary accent, which usually rests on 
 the second syllable to the left of the one having the primary 
 accent. In some words, two syllables have secondary accents. 
 In the following examples, we mark the primary accent by ", 
 the secondary by ' ; as, en'tertain", lit'iga"tion, in'divis'i- 
 biVity. 
 
 2. When the secondary accent rests in its natural place, 
 i. e., on the second or second and fourth syllables to the left 
 of the primary accent, it may be considered as belonging to 
 the general rhythm of the language and need not be specially 
 marked. Thus we write the above examples in Sound-English, 
 enterten, litigeshon, indiviziiiliti. 
 
 When the syllable having the secondary accent contains a 
 short vowel, the consonant following it is "attracted'' to it, 
 though this may be contrary to the rules of syllabication ; 
 thus, the last two example^ are divided lit i ge shon, in di- 
 viz i Ml i ti. 
 
 3. When, however, the secondary accent is out of its proper 
 place, its position is either designated by its containing a 
 long vowel or a (strengthened) diphthong, or it must be 
 marked by strengthening the consonant following its short 
 vowel ; and if either of these designations of the secondary 
 accent should interfere with the designation of the primary 
 accent, we must resort to the special strengthening described 
 above under I. ("Primary Accent"), 2 and 5. Thus, in 
 pyusilenivniti, haiiroglifik, the secondary accent is on the 
 first syllable, while the primary accent is properly marked as 
 being on the last syllable but two, the strengthened conso- 
 nants m and / having precedence over the strengthened 
 vowel u and diphthong ai, respectively; but in syuper- 
 egz'Blt, administreshon, admirebiliti, we must designate 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 37 
 
 ■the primary accent by special strengthening, as, otherwise, 
 according to the rules laid down above, under I. ("Primary 
 Accent ''), it would rest on the first syllable. 
 
 Thus, also, if the secondary accent is in its proper place, 
 but contains a long vowel which would interfere with another 
 long vowel in the syllable having the primary accent, the lat- 
 ter vowel must receive greater strengthening ; as, pridispoz, 
 nigoshieshon. 
 
 Words like superexalt, predispose, etc., may be considered 
 also under the rules governing compound words ; the result 
 is the same. 
 
 Note. — In regard to some of the vowel signs used in the above exam- 
 ples and in the following Exercise, we refer the reader to the " Unac- 
 cented Vowels," next chapter. 
 
 The words which compel us to use a heavier full-face type are so rare 
 that a very small supply will suffice. If there is not any on hand, print- 
 ers may either leave the secondary accent unmarked of dispense with the 
 special strengthening. An analogous course is recommended for the 
 compound words. 
 
 Exercise 5. ~ 
 
 aperten Bmniprezent individyualiti 
 
 intervin afidevit imperseptibiliti 
 
 entertenment syuperstroktyur parpendikyulariti 
 
 disinherit paradventyur inkomprihensibiliti 
 
 sarseperila inonshieshon 
 
 ri-instet prononshieshon 
 
 syupervin impenitrebiliti 
 
 artikyuleshon onintelijibiliti 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Unaccented Vowels. 
 
 1. In all syllables having a secondary accent, vowels- are 
 ■flubject to the rules governing syllables having the primary 
 accent. 
 
 2. The values of lohg vowels are the same in unaccented as 
 in accented syllables. Thus, we ' write dediket,- antipodiz, 
 
38 
 
 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 etc. For exceptions see below, 3 (1), Remarks 2, 3, and 5, 
 and (2), Exceptions, 6. 
 
 B. In determining the values of unaccented -short vowels, Ve 
 must distinguish whether a syllable, according to our present 
 rules of syllabication, ends in a vowel or in a consonant.* 
 
 (1) When the unaccented syllable ends in a vowel, we 
 represent the vowels as follows : 
 
 Old. 
 
 a 
 
 Nbw. 
 
 by 
 
 ; as, 
 yu ; as, 
 
 elon, 
 
 alone 
 
 dile, 
 
 delay 
 
 dilyut, 
 
 di lute 
 
 obe, 
 
 obey 
 
 yunait, 
 
 uuite 
 
 kepebl, 
 
 capa ble 
 
 herisi, 
 
 her« sy 
 
 pr^biti, 
 
 probity 
 
 kaiiopi, 
 
 canopy 
 
 ondyulet, 
 
 nndu late 
 
 litereri ; 
 
 litera ry 
 
 remidi ; 
 
 rem* dy 
 
 animet ; 
 
 ani mate 
 
 testimoni ; 
 
 teBtimo ny 
 
 tityuleri. 
 
 titulary 
 
 Remarks. — 1. The so^nd of o in on does not occur atthe end of un- 
 accented syllables (i. e., according to the present syllabication). 
 
 3. The vowel u, at the end of an unaccented syllable, is ahort, although, 
 usually marked u in dictionaries to denote its quality. As regards the. 
 dropping of y after r, sh, etc., the unaccented yu follows the rule given. 
 in Chapter III, 11. Thus, we write kvruget, injuri, sobluneri, etc. 
 
 3. At the end of unaccented syllables, vowels, now marked long in 
 dictionaries, as in mildew, meadow, fellowship, etc., need not be strength- 
 ened, unless they are distinctly heard as long in pronunciation, as in 
 harbeeue, mistletoe, and in compound words like outlaw ; we write- 
 mildyu, medo, felosMp ; but, barbikyu, mistlto, autln. 
 
 4. For final a we use the a in ask (not " mutilated ") ; as, aida, 
 parshia.- 
 
 5. Unaccented ey is changed to i ; as, h^ni, medli ; ay in compounds, 
 of day is changed to e; as, wenzde, hulide. 
 
 6. When unaccented i or y has its diphthongal sound, as in iamhic, 
 tyrannical, it is, of course, expressed by ai ; as, aiambik, tairanikdl. 
 
 7. Parliament is written parlement. 
 
 (2) When the unaccented syllable ends in a consonant (or 
 silent e following a consonant, as in nega tive), we represent. 
 the vowels as follows : 
 
 * In making this division, we follow Webster's Dictionary, "Principles of Pro- 
 nunciation," §§ 42 and 43 (without, however, taking any account of final e mute). 
 
S0USrD-E:N'GLI8H. 
 
 39 
 
 Old. 
 
 a 
 
 by 
 
 New. 
 
 a 
 
 u 
 
 yu . 
 
 u 
 
 natyural. 
 
 natyurali ; 
 
 ■BBiXLTOl 
 
 naturofly 
 
 kracheti. 
 
 masteri ; 
 
 crotchety 
 
 masUrj 
 
 latin, 
 
 negetiv ; 
 
 Latm 
 
 negative 
 
 ■Bktober, 
 
 paregBn ; 
 
 October 
 
 paras'oa 
 
 netyur. 
 
 f^rtyun ; 
 
 nature 
 
 iOTtune 
 
 kalomni, 
 
 sobmisiy ; 
 
 calMmny 
 
 SMimissive 
 
 skilfuli. 
 
 fulfilment. 
 
 sklll/My 
 
 VWflllment 
 
 Under a.— (1) The syllable ate, when short, is writ- 
 indiskriminetli ; but, diskriminet (verb), stelet. 
 
 nektar, 
 
 necta/" 
 
 e " e ; rivet, 
 
 rivei 
 
 i " i ; rabit, 
 
 rabbW 
 
 " V ; 'Bpres, 
 
 oppress 
 
 vardyur, 
 
 ■vexdwre 
 
 ophold, 
 kerful, 
 
 careful 
 
 Exceptions.— 1. 
 ten et ; as, sartifiket, 
 prspeget, etc. 
 
 (2) — ain is spelled en; as raaunten, mauntenir. 
 
 (3) — age is spelled ej ; as, langgwej, vilejer. 
 " (4) — ward at the end of a compound is spelled loord; as, fBrword, 
 istword. 
 
 (5) — an in ocean is changed to on ; as, oshon. 
 
 (6) — fast in breakfast is changed to f est; as, brekfest. 
 
 2. Under e. — JSfo exception. Notice, however, that before r we use e 
 (not 9), as in masteri, perfeJet ; the a being used only in accented sylla- 
 bles, as in p9rfeM, partinasiti, and in compounds, when marked e in 
 dictionaries ; as in cdv9ri. 
 
 3. Under i. — In the few words ending in ir or yr, these endings 
 are changed to er ; as, neder, seter. 
 
 4. Under o. — (1) When the syllable containing o immediately follows a 
 syllable having the (primary or secondary) accent, the o Is changed 
 to ; as, Buor, neshon, bigot, bigoted, Bnorebl, Bnoreblnes, nasliondJ, 
 nashonaliti. But in kvlekt, kvmbain, ameznn, it has the sound of v, 
 because in these words it does nqt, or not immediately, follow the accent ; 
 also, whenever it is distinctly marked 6 in dictionaries, as in wecUnh. 
 
 (2) Whenever, in any word, o accented has the sound of u, it retains 
 that sound in all derivatives, though it may lose the accent ; we write 
 hompeni, therefore we must also write Tcompatiyon. 
 
 5. Under u. — The u is sliort in syllables immediately following the 
 accented one, as in netyv/r, although usually marked u in dictionaries to 
 denote its quaMft/. But it is long, when it does not immediately follow 
 the accent, as in fnrfityilr, Uteretyiir, etc. 
 
 6. Under u and u. — No exceptions. 
 
40 
 
 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 Note.— In the case of irregular spellings not commented upon in the 
 above rules and exceptions we are guided by the respelling found in 
 dictionaries ; as, foreign {for'in) ; in Sound-English, fwrin. 
 
 
 BXEKCISE 6. 
 
 
 ebaund 
 
 risait 
 
 minyut 
 
 proklem 
 
 silebl 
 
 eliji 
 
 amiti 
 
 keloni 
 
 miseleni 
 
 sekriteri 
 
 seniineri 
 
 antimopi 
 
 ■Bbstinesi 
 
 ■ k'Bmpitensi 
 
 antikweri 
 
 serimoni 
 
 depyuti 
 
 karfyu 
 
 aiota 
 
 alau 
 
 sentyuri 
 
 reskyu 
 
 medli 
 
 begari 
 
 fredyulent 
 
 miskBUstru 
 
 jarniing 
 
 bulwark 
 
 yuzhuri 
 
 medo-gras 
 
 sonde 
 
 an'Blans 
 
 velvet 
 
 habit 
 
 k^let 
 
 statyut 
 
 timber 
 
 rejiatri 
 
 kemplai 
 
 atribyut 
 
 milineri 
 
 premisori 
 
 k^ndeiis 
 
 lejisletyur 
 
 diliberet 
 
 kapileri 
 
 kwod 
 
 enraptyur 
 
 polseshon 
 
 palet 
 
 imej 
 
 melon 
 
 glotni 
 
 akyuret 
 
 imejri 
 
 konjur 
 
 sorveor 
 
 vileni 
 
 kartilej 
 
 atribyut 
 
 wilful 
 
 mauntenos 
 
 n'Brthword 
 
 teniperetyur 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Double Consonants. 
 
 1. In the present spelling, the doubling of a consonant is 
 usually either entirely superfluous or serves merely to indi- 
 cate that the preceding vowel is short. In Sound-English 
 we write, in either case, only one consonant ; but if it follows 
 immediately the short vowel of the accented syllable, we 
 strengthen it, to indicate the accent, as shown in Chapter V. 
 We know from Chapter I. and from many examples that have 
 occurred heretofore, that such words as add, ebb, inn, fall, 
 pass, attach, assort, allow, suppose, innoxious, unhnown, 
 'immortal, irregular, are written ad, eh, in, fnl, pas, atdk, 
 astart, alau, sopoe, invkshos, onon, imnrtal, iregyular ; 
 
SOUKD-ENGLISH. 41 
 
 •while adder, ebbing, inning, passing, patted, selling, supping, 
 innocent, innovate, are written adev, ebing, ining, pasing, 
 pated, seling, soping, inosent, inovet. 
 
 2. There are, however, a few derivatives and compound 
 nonns, in which two like consonants meet and are distinctly 
 dwelt upon by the organs of speech. This is the case, for 
 instance, with the italicized letters in prowewess, who%, mi.s- 
 ^•ound, ou^^alk (compare slowness, holy, misown, 02itact). 
 In such words we retain the double consonant and write 
 pronnes, holli, missaund, auttnk. We also retain it in 
 such words as immit, irruption, writing imm it, irropshon, to 
 distinguish them ffom emit, eruption, the e in these words 
 heing also represented by i, imit, iropshon. 
 
 In doubt, write only one consonant. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Snipliasis on Monosyllables. 
 
 1. The strengthening principle furnishes us with a simple 
 means of producing emphasis on monosyllables ; as, ai did 
 n^t se dhi man, ai sed e man. 
 
 2. In Sound-English, the following words should be written 
 with short vowels, unless emphasized ; as, 
 
 (1) The articles the and a ; dhi, e. 
 
 (3) The pronouns me, he, she, we, ye, you, they, her, your, 
 their, who; mi, hi, shi, wi, yi, yu, dhe, her, yur, dher, hu. 
 
 (3) The verbs he, (thou) art, are, were, and the auxiliaries 
 do and may ; bi, art, ar, wer, du, me. 
 
 .(4) The adverbs there, where, so, too ; dher, hwer, so, tu. 
 
 (5) The prepositions to and /or ; tu, f'er. 
 
 {6) The conjunctions or and ?ior j cr, nw. 
 
 (7) The irfterjections and ha ; o, ha. 
 
 3. When emphasized, all the above words have their vowels 
 strengthened ; as, dhi, e, mi, ar, dher. hwer, etc. ; wer be- 
 comes, with us in the United States, war (in England pro- 
 nounced wer).* 
 
 * " Phonetic spelling would malse for uniformity and fixedness of pronunciation." 
 Professor W. D. Whitney in " Oriental and Linguistic Studies," as quoted on p. 16. 
 
43 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 4. Piphthongs may be emphasized by having both their 
 vowels strengthened ; as, hi wanted e t^i, n^t e tai ; ai sed- 
 veis, n'Bt vais. 
 
 5. The word my; when not emphasized, may be written: 
 mi or mat, according to which pronunciation we prefer ; as,, 
 mi hat or mai hat ; when emphasized, it is mai. 
 
 6. Wprds containing a short vowel and ending in a conso- 
 nant, may be emphasized by strengthening the consonant next 
 following the vowel ; as, du yu think dhat wil anser ? never 
 maind dhi k^st, wi most hav it. 
 
 Note. — It will be observed that in the present spelb'ng no monosyl- 
 labic word of the English language contains a short vowel followed by r^ 
 (Remember that e in fern, i in sir, and u in fur are long sounds.) Hence,, 
 there will never be any occasion to strengthen an r for the sake of em- 
 phasis. In Sound-English, we habitually write are, art, for, her, or, nor, 
 their, there, were, where, your, with a short vowel (see above, 3), but in. 
 emphasizing these words we strengthen the vowel, not the consonant. 
 
 7. Any one of the words enumerated under 3 should have 
 its vowel strengthened whenever the position of the word in 
 the sentence causes the sound to be long ; but the strength- 
 ening of diphthongs and consonants should be resorted to 
 onlyjn cases of special emphasis, when in the present spelling" 
 we might use italics. 
 
 8. Words containing long vowels and all words of more- 
 than one syllable are emphasized by being printed in italics- 
 (in writing, underscored), or by being printed wholly in full- 
 face type.* In that case, strengthened letters must be Set in 
 heavier full-face type.' If the different shades of type are 
 available, full-face is preferable to italics to express emphasis,, 
 as the latter are used mainly to distinguish proper nouns, 
 etc. For special reasons, emphasis may be expressed by 
 heavier type in the case of any word, inclu'ding the mono- 
 syllables mentioned under 3. 
 
 Exercise 7. 
 did hi si mi ? yes, hi sB yu, bot shi did n'Bt. shi sT? mi, 
 bot shi did n'Bt si yu. wi wer dher, bot yu wbz n'Bt. yu 
 most n'Bt se, "yu wbz,"' se, "yu war." dher dhe ar, nau, 
 and dher sisterz, tu. du yu wish tu spik tu dhem ? hau 
 
SOTJND-ElSrGLISH. 43.' 
 
 du yu du ? yu du luk wel. me ai go ? yu me go, hot. 
 yu most ni3t ste tu leng. wil yu and hi get e praiz ? hi ■er 
 ai, n^t hi and ai. hwer iz yur kozn ? ai du n^t no hwer 
 shi iz. ai premist tu krel fer her. o dir mi ! dhat iz foni,. 
 ha ! ha ! ha ! hi sed dhat dhat dhat dhat dhat hm parst and 
 dhat dhat dhat dhat b^i kanseld, wer dhi sem. did yu rait- 
 to him ? no, ai did n'Bt rait to him, bot ai s'B him. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Inflections. 
 
 Sound-English necessitates some modifications in th6 spell- 
 ing of the inflections. These modifications are the natural 
 consequence of phonetic spelling ; yet, the following remarks , 
 may not be out of place. 
 
 1. The indefinite article, e, takes n before words beginning; 
 with a vowel ; as, en arm, en 'enor. 
 
 2. Formation of the Plural. 
 
 (1) To words ending in the surd consonants/, k, p, t, and' 
 th we add s ; as chifs, buks, paips, kats, months. 
 
 (2) To words ending in the sibilant sounds s, z, sh, ch„ 
 and y we add ez ; as, h'Brsez, rozez, broshez, pachiez, pejez;. 
 
 (3) To words ending in a vowel or sonant consonant we- 
 add z; as, dez, lediz, rogz, r'gdz. 
 
 (4) Words which now change / or/e to v., or ill surd to th 
 sonant, have the same changes in Sound-English and add z ; 
 as, kavz, waivz, badhz. Haus makes hauzez. The e in po- 
 tatoes, gnues, etc., is dropped; as, potetoz, nyuz. Plurals; 
 like men, witnen, dais {dice), and daiz {dies), etc., are 
 formed according to the present rules of grammar, subject 
 to the necessary changes in spelling. 
 
 (5) Foreign plurals in es are spelled iz; as, kraisis, pi. 
 kraisiz ; those in i are spelled ai or i, according to their 
 pronunciation ; as, jiniai, banditi ; those in a are spelled a, 
 those in ae, e ; as, deta, larve. 
 
 (6) Letters, figures, and signs take 's, 'ez, or 'z, according 
 to the final sounds of their names ; as, dhi f s, dhi h'ez, dhi. 
 t'z, dhi 8's, dhi 6'ez, dhi 2'z, dhi — 'ez. 
 
-44 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 3. Formation of the Possessive Case. 
 
 (1) In the singular. 
 
 a. Add 's to all words ending in the surd consonants/, h, 
 p, t, and th ; as, chif's, waif's, kuk's, ep's, nait's, smith's. 
 l. Add 'ez to all words ending in the sibilants s, z, sh, ch, 
 
 ■ andj; as, kes'ez, charlz'ez, bush'ez, roch'ez, pej'ez. 
 
 c. Add 'z to all other words ; as, de'z, j^n'z, beb's, m'Bd'z. 
 
 (2) In the plural, if the word ends in s or z, we add an 
 apostrophe ; if not, we add 's or 'z, according to the rules of 
 the singular ; as, chifs', kats', h'Brsez', dez' ; tith's, men'z, 
 jiniai'z. 
 
 4. Verbs. 
 
 (1) Third Person Singular of the Present Tense. 
 
 a. Add s to verbs ending in the surd consonants/, k, p, t, 
 and th ;• as, (he) rifs, reks, rips, prints, friths. 
 
 l. Add ez to verbs ending in the sibilants s, z, sli, ch, and/; 
 as, (he) pasez, railzez, broshez, pachez, jojez. 
 
 c. Add z to verbs ending in any other letter ; as, (he) lez, 
 
 ■ sBbz, begz, selz. 
 
 Note 1. — The second person singular takes eat after sibilants, and est or 
 st after other letters, according to the manner in which the" word is to be 
 pronounced ; as, (thou) pasest (passest), (thou) meest or mest {mayest). 
 
 (3) Past Tense and Past Participle. 
 
 a. Add ed to verbs ending in d or t, as at present ; as, 
 divaided, printed. 
 
 b. Add t after the surd consonants /, k, p, th, s, sh, and 
 
 ■ ch ■; as, rift, ri3kt, ript, f r^tht, past, brosht, pacht. 
 
 c. Add d after all vowels and^onant consonants ; as, stred, 
 rod, rauzd, jojd, begd, dimd. 
 
 Note 3.— If ed is pronounced as a separate syllable, as is often the 
 case in poetry, the e is retained ; as, (he) emed {aimed). 
 
 5. Adverbs are formed by adding K to. the adjectives; as, 
 badli, redili. 
 
 If the adjective ends in I, that letter is dropped before 
 we add U ; as, byiitif uli, ebli ; excepting the monosyllables 
 in which the I is immediately preceded by a long vowel or 
 diphthong ; as, holli, faulli, soUi (see Chapter VIL). 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 45. 
 
 Note 3. — The adding of an inflection often necessitates the strength- 
 ening of a consonant or diphthong, according to the rules of the accent ; 
 as may be observed in several of the above examples, e.g., in brosllez,. 
 hauzez, pasez, printed, badli. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Abbreviations. 
 
 The abbreviations are the same as at present, but in small" 
 letters ; a period follows each abbreviation ; as, 10 a. m... 
 m. d., dr., 11. d., etc. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Alphabet. 
 
 The following are the names of the letters and, their order 
 in Sound-English. Special names are provided for the long- 
 and the short sounds of those vowels that have both long and 
 short sounds ; in merely reciting the alphabet,, however, the- 
 long sounds only should be given. 
 
 1. 
 
 i. 
 
 i. 
 
 e, it. 
 
 18. 
 
 ah,. 
 
 zhe. 
 
 3. 
 
 e. 
 
 e, 
 
 a, gt. 
 
 19, 
 
 sh. 
 
 6sh. 
 
 3. 
 
 a. 
 
 
 at. 
 
 "30. 
 
 h 
 
 ]■§• 
 
 4. 
 
 a. 
 
 a. 
 
 a, af. 
 
 21. 
 
 eh,. 
 
 6tsh., 
 
 5. 
 
 «, 
 
 °»> 
 
 a, 6t. 
 
 23. 
 
 V, 
 
 ve.. 
 
 6. 
 
 0, 
 
 
 lit. 
 
 23. 
 
 f. 
 
 6f. 
 
 7. 
 
 9. 
 
 
 gr. 
 
 24. 
 
 dh. 
 
 the.. 
 
 8. 
 
 0, 
 
 0, 
 
 6, to(5fl!ceo). 
 
 25. 
 
 th. 
 
 6th.. 
 
 9. 
 
 u, 
 
 u> 
 
 u, ut- 
 
 26. 
 
 h. 
 
 ho. 
 
 10. 
 
 1> 
 
 
 ya. 
 
 ; 27. 
 
 b. 
 
 be.. 
 
 11. 
 
 w. 
 
 
 we. 
 
 28. 
 
 P. 
 
 6p.. 
 
 12, 
 
 1, 
 
 
 61. 
 
 29. 
 
 gr 
 
 ge. 
 
 13. 
 
 m. 
 
 
 6m. 
 
 30. 
 
 ng. 
 
 eng. 
 
 14. 
 
 n. 
 
 
 6n. 
 
 i 31. 
 
 k. 
 
 6k. 
 
 15. 
 
 r, 
 
 
 ro. 
 
 : 32. 
 
 d. 
 
 de. 
 
 16. 
 
 z. 
 
 
 ze. 
 
 33. 
 
 t. 
 
 tow (as in now 
 
 It. 
 
 s. 
 
 
 6s. 
 
 
 
 
/ 
 
 ^. 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 /^ 
 
 B 
 
 y, 
 
 m 
 
 /€ 
 
 
 Z 
 
 ch 
 
 a 
 
 
 y^ 
 
 5 
 
 A:t4<m^, .-Ct^J;. .-tz^, -<%^ '^i?^^. 
 
 
 ^-. 
 
 ^1 
 
 ?^, 
 
 «>^^, ^^^^ 
 
 l^'^/ 
 
 t&n^, -n<:^i^M, A^lutt- .i^n^i^i^ctM. 
 
 /M- 
 
 ^A 
 
 iPn//n-. 
 
 U) (Z) (3) 
 
 i i I e e e ^ ^ fe 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 47 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Modiflcation of Signs and Penmanship. 
 
 Being now acquainted with all the signs used in Sound- 
 English and their corresponding sounds, we know that, of 
 the thirty-three signs of the new alphabet, twenty-three single 
 Jetters and six digraphs are used, more or less, with their old 
 values, while four, a, v, o, and a, are used with new values, 
 •c, q, and x having been rejected. 
 
 The 1), 0, and 3, as well as the digraphs, must be looked 
 upon as temporarj»expedients, to avoid the necessity of cast- 
 ing new types. In course of time, type-founders will pro- 
 vide us with new signs, for which the designs projected by 
 the author will be found on p. 46. For the a in at, also, a 
 special type, resembling the present "mutilated" one (a), 
 will be provided, and the dot connected with the "&" in 
 '" ask " will be made larger, so that we may distinguish it 
 readily from the "a" in ''at."* 
 
 In the first line of p. 46 will be found the types used at 
 present ; in the second line, the projected new forms ; in the 
 ■third line, the script forms ; in the fourth line, the script 
 forms for a in ask, o in on, and u in but, in larger outline, 
 to show the direction of the pen in forming these characters. 
 
 The forms of the new full-face and heavier full-face types 
 will correspond to the simple ones. The modified forms of 
 the italics will be similar to those of the Eoman letters. For 
 italic a, a, and » we suggest italicized forms of a, a, and b, 
 rather than the present italic forms. 
 
 In script, we shall at once adopt the new signs for a, a, », o, 
 and 9. To adopt immediately the new script forms for the 
 
 * In the interest of people's eyes, we beg to call the attention of type-founders to a 
 paper read at the annual meeting of the Spelling Beform Association in July, 1886, 
 " On the Eelative Legibility of the Letters of the Alfabet," being a portion of an 
 article (reprinted from Brain, part 31) " Ou the Inertia of Bye and Brain," by Dr. 
 -James McKeon Cattell, Assistant in the Psychological Laboratory of the University 
 of Leipzig. See "Bulletin of the Spelling Beform Association, No. 22," published 
 by the Library Bureau, 32 Hawley St., Boston. Useful hints may also be found in an 
 ■extract, given in the same Bulletin, from the remarks of Dr. Javal, of Paris, on the 
 "Physiology of Beading" [see the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education 
 for 1880, pp. CCL.-CCn.]. 
 
48 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 digraphs would interfere with the legibility of Sound-English, 
 and be a serious stumbling-block in the way of foreigners. 
 The author's proposing new signs for the digraphs proceeds, 
 more from a desire to present a complete system rather than 
 from the hope or wish to see the new signs immediately in- 
 troduced. 
 
 In strengthening the script letters, we shade all the down 
 strokes. Short letters, when strengthened, may be made 
 slightly longer than usual. All merely ornamental shading, 
 as used in the present script, is dispensed with. 
 
 The following is a Key to the examples given in script r 
 Arm, ask, at, all, on, but, fern, them, leisure, his, me, pin, 
 ape, pen, old, propel, rule, put, subject (noun), subject {verb), 
 anger, lather, pushing, patching, azure, buzzing, mind, house, 
 rely, endow, enjoy, although, supervene, unintelligibility. 
 
 At the bottom of the page, below the dividing line, are a 
 
 few characters which will be found explained in Appendix A.' 
 
 The reader may now turn to the Keys in Appendix B, 
 
 write all the words in Sound-English, and then compare his 
 
 writing with the original exercises. 
 
 In script, emphasis on whole words is usually expressed by 
 underlining, but it may also be expressed by the shading of 
 all the letters and the heavier shading of the strengthened 
 letters. In regard to the use of quotation-marks with proper 
 nouns and surnames, see Chapter I. Quotation-marks should 
 also be used when foreigners acquainted with Sound-English 
 wish to write the names of commodities, the present spelling 
 of which they know from seeing it in dictionaries, catalogues, 
 price-lists, etc., but with the pronunciation of which they 
 are not sufficiently acquainted to write them in Sound- 
 English ; as, 
 jeiitlmen, — pliz send os bai dhi nekst stimer, 
 
 2 "Self-acting All- work Machines, No. %," 
 6 botlz "Sure Cure for Everything," 
 12 k'gpiz " Eoyal Eoad to Wisdom," 
 and charj tu- aur akaunt. 
 
 yurz veri truli, 
 
 J . . . V y Cia.. 
 
80UND-EXGLISH. 49 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Suggestions to Printers. 
 
 Before setting up any considerable matter in Sound-En- 
 glish, compositors will place the full-face type where they 
 now keep the case containing the capitals, and divide the 
 box containing the a'a so as to make room for " mutilated " 
 a's, provided that they wish to make the distinction between 
 the two a's. The regular a serves also for », and c serves 
 for a. When the time comes for using new types for these 
 sounds, space may be provided by dividing the boxes of o 
 (for v) and of c (for o). '. 
 
 The case containing the full-face type will receive a like 
 adaptation. The e will serve for 9 until a special type is 
 provided for this sound, when the box will be divided. 
 
 The a in at and o in boi do not occur as long sounds, but 
 full-face type must nevertheless be provided for them, as we 
 may wish to print whole words in that type. 
 
 As regards the heavier full-face type, its use is so limited 
 that no special suggestions are required. 
 
 In printing, emphasis should, as a rule, be expressed by 
 printing the whole word in full-face type. Italics should be 
 used for proper nouns, if necessary, for setting off certain 
 letters of a word, for attracting attention to certain words 
 without especially emphasizing theni, etc. . Surnames spelled 
 in the old way should be printed between quotation-marks. 
 Compare Chapter I. and Chapter VIII., 8. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Suggestions to Type-writers. 
 
 1. On most of the leading type-writers we may strengthen 
 the letters by holding down the space-bar and striking the 
 same letter twice, or, for special strengthening, four times. 
 All we want, then, are four characters, viz., inverted a, c, 
 and e, and a " mutilated " a. These can be easily inserted 
 
60 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 by dispensing with four punctuation marks that are of rare 
 occurrence or may be " compounded " from others, such as 
 the ";" or" \". If, for the present, the owners of these 
 machines do not wish to go to the expense of making such 
 an alteration, for the .purpose of writing merely a few lines 
 in Sound-English, they may hold down the space-bar and 
 print a comma into the letters a, o, and strengthened e, 
 giving them the appearance of having a cedilla attached to 
 them, which will be understood to mean that they stand for 
 inverted a, c, and e. As for the a in at, they may leave that 
 as it is, but for the a in ash, if they desire to make the 
 distinction at all, they may print an apostrophe into the a, 
 which gives it the appearance of a, bearing the same mark 
 as used in Webster's Dictionary. For the strengthened a and 
 the diphthongs ai and au no special mark is necessary. 
 
 Emphasis on whole words is expressed by underscoring or 
 strengthening. 
 
 . 3. On many type-writers which are not arranged for 
 strengthening letters, it will not be very expensive to provide 
 new types adapted to Sound-English. Unless this is done, 
 strengthened letters will have to be doubled ; as, haam, hem, 
 fill, door, luut {calm, lame, feel, door, boot) ; or we may use 
 the capitals to express strengthening ; as, kAm, lEm, fll, 
 dOr, but. As for the four small letters, we need no special 
 distinction for a in ash; for » we may use aw ; for o, an o, and 
 for inverted e, the regular e without strengthening. These, 
 of course, would be mere temporary make-shifts, in order to 
 provide some way for these type-writers to write a few lines 
 in Sound-English. Eor any practical purpose, all those type- 
 writers that are not arranged for strengthening letters by 
 allowing the same letter to be struck twice in the same space, 
 should be provided with special alphabets. 
 
SOUND-ElfGLISH. 51 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A Page from Macaulay's "History of Eng-land" in 
 Sound-English. 
 
 ai parpos tu rait dhi histori ev ingrgland from dhi akseshon 
 
 BY king jemz dhi sekond daun tu e taim hwich iz widhin 
 
 dhi memori ■ev mea stil living. ^ ai shal rikaunt dhi erorz 
 
 hwich, in e fyu months, elieneted e leial jentri and prist- 
 
 hud f rein dhi haus bv styuart. ai shal tres dhi kors bv dhat 
 
 revolyushon hwich tarmineted dhi kng strogl bitwin aur 
 
 soverinz and dher parlements and baund op togedher dhi 
 
 raits 'Bv dhi pipl and dhi taitl 'bv dhi rening dalnasti. ai 
 
 fihal rilet hau dhi nyu setlment wez, dyuring meni trobld 
 
 yirzj soksesfuli difended egenst f'erin and domestik enimiz ; 
 
 hau, onder dhat setlment, dhi ■Btheriti 'bv Ib and dhi sikyuriti 
 
 -BV prBperti wer faund tu bi k'Bmpatibl widh e liberti ev dis- 
 
 koshon and individyual akshon never befor non; hau, 
 
 fr^m dhi Bspishos yunyon 'bv -erder and fridom, sprang e 
 
 prBsperiti •by hwich dhi analz bv hyuman af erz had farnisht 
 
 no egzampl ; hau aur kontri, fr^m e stet bt ignominios 
 
 Tasalej, rapidli roz tu dhi pies 'bv ompair emeng yuroplan 
 
 pauerz ; hau her ^pyulens and her marshal glori gru to- 
 
 gedlier; hau, bai waiz and rezolyut gud feth, wbz grad- 
 
 yuali estalblisht e poblik kredit frutful et marvelz hwich tu 
 
 ■dhi stetsmen bt eni farmer ej wud hav simd inkredibl ; 
 
 lau e jaigantik kemers gev barth tu e maritim pauer, 
 
 k'Bmperd widh hwich everi odher maritim pauer, enshent 
 
 "Br modern, singks intu insignif ikans ; hau sketland, after 
 
 €jez BV enmiti, wbz at length yunaited tu inggland, nBt 
 
 mirli bai ligal bBndz, bot bai indisolyubl taiz bv interest 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 INTEKVIEW 
 
 between Spurius Criticus Beprehensor, Ph.D., of the first 
 
 part, and the author of Sound- English, of the 
 
 second part, tvherein sundry matters are 
 
 inquired into and commented upon. 
 
 Dr. Criticus. — After a somewhat careful examination of your system,, 
 I am free to confess that a good many of its features commend them- 
 selves to my taste and judgment, but there is a goodly number of others 
 that do not strike me so favorably. Having made a memorandum of 
 these, I should like to hear what you have to say about them. 
 
 Author of Sound-English. — Very well, doctor, 1 shall delight in 
 giving you all the information in my power. , , 
 
 Dr. C. — Well, then, in the first place, I see that you distinguish 
 between the a in ash and the a in ai ; that is right. I am also pleased 
 to see that your alphabet contains a real short o, as heard in propel. 
 But when you give us the o in old as the long sound of the short o, and 
 simply " strengthen " it, as you caU it, to express length, I should like 
 to ask what becomes of the "vanish" in oo, which always follows the 
 sound of accented long o? And, by the way, what becomes of the 
 vanish in e, which always follows accented long a1 I see you represent 
 that sound only by a strengthened e. Do you not recognize these 
 "vanishes"? 
 
 A.-^I do recognize them ; so much so that I should not call these 
 sounds " vowels with vanishes," but diphthongs. In my opinion, and 
 to my ear, the a in ape is as much of a diphthong as the i in iee, or the 
 oy in boy, and the o in old is as much of a diphthong as the ou in 
 house. The difference is only this : In the a the sound is a-e, and in 
 the the sound is o-ob, being in either case a succession of two vowel 
 elements that immediately follow each other in the vowel scale. There 
 is no vowel element between a and e (if we except short i, which is only 
 a slight corruption of e), and there is no element between o and 6b. 
 Hence they make an impression on the ear which differs somewhat from 
 that produced by the diphthongs *', oy, and ou, in which the component 
 vowels are separated by one or more intervening elements (a-o-e, a-ra-o-e, 
 ar-gr-o-oo, marking only principal elements), which is the reason that 
 they sound like two entirely different vowels welded into one. But the 
 sounds of a and o are diphthongs all the same. 
 
 53 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 53 
 
 Dr. C. — Then why not write them in Sound-English ei and om? 
 
 A. — Because English-speaking people have always been used to regard 
 these sounds as single vowels, and a vast majority are not even aware of 
 the existence of a " vanish." Furthermore, it is an open question in my 
 mind whether we shall not serve the growing generation better by train- 
 ing them to give these letters u pure vowel sound rather than by intro- 
 ducing the diphtliougal element into the spelling, and thus giving full 
 recognition to it. I am sure that teachers of singing will be in favor of 
 the former course. 
 
 Db. C. — ■Well, I do not know but that you may be right. But now we 
 come to another matter. You let a in arm represent the long sound of a 
 in ask, which is correct. You, further, let o in oli represent the long 
 sound of i;i propel, which, barring the vanish, is correct, too. But you 
 also give the sound of e fn me as the long sound of i in pin. Do you take 
 these to belike elements? 
 
 A. — Certainly not; nor is the radical element of a in ape exactly the 
 long sound ■^f e in pen, and yet I write ep and pen. The fact is that, 
 with the exception of on (or u in rule) all the vowels of the English 
 language have three sounds, a long, a short, and a corrupt one. Allow 
 me to illustrate my meaning by some examples. 
 
 Long: 
 
 orm 
 
 all 
 
 ape 
 
 me 
 
 old 
 
 rule. 
 
 Short: 
 
 ask 
 
 gone 
 
 alone 
 
 delay 
 
 propel 
 
 pwt. 
 
 Corrupt: 
 
 at 
 
 on 
 
 pen 
 
 pin 
 
 b«t. 
 
 
 Now, the e in me has for its corresponding short sound the e in delay, in 
 iSound-English wifand dile, but the i in pin is." a distinct, though closely 
 
 allied element In its formation, the tongue is slightly relaxed 
 
 from the position assumed for producing e." — (Webster.) Similarly, the 
 sound of in on and of e in pen are slightly more open than the short 
 sound of a in all and of a in ape, respectively. We might easily make 
 the distinction, in Sound-English, by cutting off the dot from the i in 
 pin and from the type used for o in 07i, and by a slight modification of 
 the e, something like this . . . [See bottom of p. 46]. 
 
 Dr. C— Capital! Why did you not do i»? 
 
 A. — Because I honestly believe that the phonetic sense of the people 
 at large is not sufftciently developed to appreciate such nice distinctions, 
 not to mention the foreigners who would be utterly bewildered by them. , 
 I shall even barely hint at the difference between a in at and a in ask in 
 my hand-books for foreigners. Besides, we should need two new types, 
 and have to spoil some i's and some more a's; and, to be frank, the 
 difference between the italics in remedy and holiday (in Sound-English 
 ■remidi and hvUde) is imaginary ; it is only in monosyllables, and accented 
 •syllables ending with a consonant, that the sound of i is really a distinct 
 element. And, as for the e in pen, it may pass for the short sound of a 
 in ale without the least practical harm. There is a perceptible difference 
 
54 SOUND-ElirGLISH. 
 
 between the o in gone and the o in on, but, as yet, there is not a single- 
 dictionary that I know of, which distinguishes the two sounds by different 
 diacritical marks, and thus we should not have any standard to follow^ 
 Upon the whole, I think we might as well let good enough alone. For,, 
 once we open the way to the distinction qf niceties, we could not stop 
 there. Take the consonants ; the k, p, and t, in sky, spy, and sty, are- 
 not the same as in kite; pie, and tie, their explosive force being modified 
 by the preceding s; nor has the e in fact exactly the same sound as the k- 
 in Uack, its force being checked by the final t. I hold that my system^ 
 forms so sound a phonetic lasis that with the addition of new signs and 
 types of different strength its possibilities are practically unlimited, not 
 oidy to represent different shades of sound, but also different degrees of 
 emphasis on words and groups of words. But first we must get it intro- 
 duced, and in order to do so, we must make it as simple as possible, I 
 hope you will concede that it is now in as good working order as it can- 
 be placed without the introduction of new types ; but if we tinker with it 
 at the outset, it will go out of gear before it has a chance to" work. To- 
 introduce a number of new shades of sound which no one but a pro- 
 fessional phonologist is able to appreciate, would be like stifling an infant 
 in the cradle with an abundance of sweet perfumes, which its weak lungs- 
 are not able to bear. Give the young life a chance. Let the young 
 tree take firm root, and it will bear any amount of pruning and grafting 
 afterwards. 
 
 Dr. C. — Then you believe in a continual improvement in spelling? 
 
 A. — Most decidedly! We progress in everything else, and I do riot 
 see any reason why we should always stand stook-stUl in the matter of: 
 writing our language. 
 
 Dr. C. — But supposing Sound-English to be once introduced as it 
 stands, how is it going to be improved? 
 
 A. — Any author who wishes to introduce what he thinks an improve- 
 ment, is at liberty to do so, just as printers would now use a new style of 
 type. He may invite expressions of opinion as to the desirability of th& 
 change, and if he finds that a majority of the people are in favor of it> 
 he wiU write the next book in the same way, and others will follow his 
 example. Or, better still, let improvements be first introduced in books 
 on phonetics and elocution, and if they fill a want, they will work their 
 way into general practice. 
 
 Dr. C. — That sounds well enough. But now tell me how you came to 
 discard the a in care, for which I find no sign in your alphabet. 
 
 A. — Because it is not different from any other a. There is a sort of 
 vanish, which, as Prof. Whitney very clearly points out, * is caused by 
 the organs' returning to the neutral vowel before forming the r. _ But 
 the e in mere and the oo in poor have the same vanish, and yet the 
 
 * Oriental and LingniBtic Studies, Second Series, Cliapter VHI., § 21. New York r 
 Clme, Scribner's Sons, 
 
SOUND-BKQLISH. 55 
 
 dictionaries mark them simply mere a,jidi pobr. I do not see any reason 
 for making this distinction. Anybody who pronounces the English r 
 correctly, will give that vanish without its being marked. American 
 students of German invariably pronounce aehr like zaur and Mer like 
 Aefir. It is a perfectly unconscious process with them, and it is a hard 
 task to break them from it. But let a foreigner try to give, intention- 
 ally, an li-vanish before r (in an English word), the way he pronounces 
 that letter, ^nd the word wiU hardly be recognizable. 
 
 Dk. C— You speak of pronouncing the English r correctly, but I 
 observe that you do not distinguish between r initial and »■ final. 
 
 A.— The English final r, as I understand it, and as Prof. Whitney 
 explains it, is simply a dropping of the r sound and retaining of the 
 neutral sound or vanirii which precedes the utterance of the final r. 
 Prom my own praotice,«however, I know that there is not the slightest 
 difficulty in pronouncing r initial and final alike. I am firmly convinced 
 that the so-called final r, which in reality is no r at all, is due to careless- 
 ness or affectation and should be branded and discouraged. Like the 
 initial h, which in the mouths of those who habitually drop it, re-appears 
 where it ought not to be (as in '"am and Jieggs"), the final r seems to 
 revenge itself for being shabbily treated by turning around and render- 
 ing those who are guilty of the offense, totally incapable of uttering a 
 pure Italian d or, in fact, almost any long vowel, without attaching an r 
 to it, so that they not only pronounce father and farther alike, but also, in 
 learning Gterman, pronounce ydr for /a, and in learning French, deiir for 
 deux, with as distinct an r as any was ever uttered, as I can testify. 
 And they are not aware of it. However, this is a free country; let any- 
 body who wants a final r invert our present type and be done with it. I 
 won't. By the way, I just happen to think of a good joke that I cut from 
 the N. T. Evening Post some time ago ; just wait a minute, please — here 
 ' it is; kindly allow me to read it to you. 
 
 " A Nut for Scholars to Crack. — Translate Medullosiores monuerunt 
 ut Miltiadem dueem caperent. You give it up ? ' The Pythia advised 
 them to choose Miltiades as leader.' The explanation is simple. The 
 English was dictated by the master, taken down by the boy as ' pithier,' 
 and rendered as above by the help of an English-Latin Dictionary. — St. 
 James Gazette." There is the final r: for you, doctor. 
 
 Dr. C. — Well, I did not pose as its champion, I just wanted to hear 
 what you had to say about it. Now, what comes next? Oh! yes, I see 
 you have the same sign for e in fern and for u in hum. 
 
 A.— So has the Century Dictionary. I hold that there is no difference 
 between the two sounds. In "uttering words like burn we imagine that 
 we give a different sound, because we have the u before our mind's eye, 
 but the sound that leaves the mouth is the same. 
 
 Dr. C.— You call this a long sound? 
 
56 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 A. — It is a long sound. "Webster says that the sound of u in burn 
 " differs from that of short u (with which it has often been identified) in 
 length," and. Prof. Whitney, also, calls it a long vowel. 
 
 X)ii. c. — Why did you not make use of small caps in mafldng this 
 sound and the a iri all, instead of inverting the letters? 
 
 A. — Full-face fonts do not contain any small caps. 
 
 Dn. 0. — Don't they? I did not know that. But, come to think of it, 
 you never use full-face type for a or it, neither of which ever has a long 
 sound. 
 
 A. — No, but we may wish to emphasize a whole word and print it all 
 iri full-face, and the strengthened letters in heavier fuU-faee. 
 
 Db. C. — That's so, sure enough; and I remember now that you allude 
 to it somewhere in the text. But, by the way, will if not be very ex- 
 pensive to keep so much full-face type on hand ? 
 
 A. — We do away with the capitals; that will amply make up for it. 
 
 Dr. C. — How did you come to adopt Jew for our g, and not ku? 
 
 A. — There is no difference between the two as regards ■pronnnciation. 
 But if I wrote, for instance, kuik for our quick, I should have to give a 
 special rule, or rather exception, in syllabication, stating that u following 
 h or k forms one syllable, i. e. , a diphthong, with the vowel following it ; 
 else most foreigners would pronounce kuih and huen as koo 'ih and 
 hoo ' en. The fewer exceptions, the better. For the same reason I 
 always write yu for our present u. If I wrote netiur for nature, it would 
 require an exception in syllabication, and there would be the additional 
 diflficulty that i before a vowel does frequently form a separate syllable^ 
 as in medium, deviate, and then such oases would have to be enumerated 
 again as special exceptions. 
 
 Dr. C. — This word nature is the very one that stands next on my list. 
 I- think you will agree that a majority of good speakers pronounce 
 nachur, and if so, why not make the spelling agree with the sound, as 
 you do in spelling nation, neslian ? 
 
 A. — Because I had to draw the line somewhere. In the first place, 
 many people pronounce the word more nearly ndfyur than nachur. In 
 the second place, if I write nechur, I must, to be consistent, write ejuket, 
 kweschon, etc., and I am afraid we are not prepared to go as far as that. 
 If we want to give way in all things to popular use or misuse, we should 
 liave to write wonchu for won't you and dhishir for this year. It may 
 come to it in time, but I was not prepared to throw obstacles into the 
 way of my system by such sweeping changes. 
 
 ' Db. C. — I see you write sizhur for seizure. Webster gives the pro- 
 nunciation as seez' yur. 
 
 A.— So he does, in the body of his dictionary. But if you will turn to 
 § 106 of his " Principles of Pronunciation " in the same book, you will 
 find that he gives sS zhoor as the correct pronunciation. All of which 
 simply goes to show that even Webster can make mistakes. 
 
SOUKD-ENGLISII. 57 
 
 Dr. C. — Your rules of syllabication would give us some queer divi. 
 sions, such as dik-rai, bis-pik, entirely at variance with the derivation of 
 the words. 
 
 A. — So is our present division of es-pouse, es-py, prog-ress, ref-eree, 
 and hundreds of other words, entirely at variance with the derivation of 
 the words. 
 
 Dr. C. — That is true enough. The next point is, what is your idea of 
 strengthening the consonants to designate the accented syllables contain- 
 ing short vowels? 
 
 A. — When a syllable containing a short vowel is accented, it acquires 
 a kind of "length by position," as we say in Latin; not changing the 
 quantity of the vowel, but causing us to dwell on the next-following con- 
 sonant; and since this "dwelling" is analogous to the lengthening of a 
 vowel, I took the same means of expressing them. Of all the features of 
 Sound-English, this one of marking the accent affords me the greatest 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Dr. C. — Very well, but why not say that a word is always accented 
 on the first syllable unless marked otherwise? So many words of the 
 English language have the accent on the first syllable that we should 
 save a great deal of " strengthening." 
 
 A. — A foreigner would never give the accent correctly, if it were not 
 brought home to his eyes. 
 
 Dr. C. — But in words of two syllables, especially when the first 
 syllable ends in a consonant, as in fetider, question, etc., it would -be 
 natural for anybody to put the accent on the first syllable. 
 
 A. — Not for all nationalities. A Spaniard, for instance, would pro- 
 nounce these words fen-dar', hues-Hon'. Besides, when the hand is once 
 trained to reach for a full-face type, or to strike a typewriter-key twice, 
 or to press down the pen, in every accented syllable, it will be much less 
 trouble to do that than to stop end think of a rule. That is the reason 
 that I even shade the diphthongs when they occur in accented syllables. 
 
 Dr. C". — Will not shading retard the speed of the writing? 
 
 A. — If shading does not interfere with the speed of stenography, I do 
 not think it will do so with long-hand. Besides, we shall not shade 
 more in Sound-English than we do now, Some little shading is grateful 
 to the eye, and while now we shade only for the sake of beauty, in the 
 new system we combine the useful with the agreeable. 
 
 Dr. C. — There is something in that. But now I come to the double 
 consonants, which, I perceive, are nearly all discarded by you. To write 
 ale, disekf, imnrtal, for allay, dissect, immortal, etc., not only looks too 
 funny, but entirely obliterates the derivation of the words. 
 
 A. — As for the derivation, phonetic spelling does not take any account 
 of that. And the funny part lasts only until we get used to it. We 
 now spell amount with one m, while the Italians spell it ammontare, in 
 agreement with its derivation. We write transude, although derived 
 
58 SOUKD-ENGLISH. 
 
 from trans and sudare ; and while we feel bound to write dissect an J^ 
 eonvrmmieate, the Spaniard gets along perfectly well with disecar and 
 comunicar. The French must have two m's in cormMtre, while the. 
 Italians and Spaniards get along with one in conoscere and conocer. All 
 this matter of double consonants rests simply on habit and imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 De. C— But I do hear a double m, when I say immortality. 
 
 A. — Of course you do, beeause there is a secondary accent on the first, 
 syllable. That case is provided for. 
 
 Dr. C— Oh! I see. But, then, I hear it also when I say immortal. 
 
 A. — Having two m's before your mind's eye, you imagine that you. 
 hear them. Believe me, doctor, , you do not hear them any more in 
 immortal than you do in imagine. 
 
 Dr. C. — I think I shall experiment on that. 
 
 A. — Please do so, doctor, and oblige by letting me know the result. 
 
 Dr. C. — The next point is, I see you keep in your system some conso- 
 nant-digraphs, such as th, sh, ch, etc. Could you not have substituted 
 special single signs for these, even without casting new types, by turning 
 letters or the like? 
 
 A. — I fully intended to do so, for a time, having designated capital 
 D, T, S, and Z, for dh, th, sh, and zh, respectively, as well as the x for 
 ch, and the q for ng. But after a while I came back to the old forms. 
 We are so well accustomed to these digraphs that the attempt to replace 
 them by new signs would not only look extremely odd, but interfere 
 seriously with the legibility of Sound-English. Even to foreigners the 
 digraphs will seem more natural than the new signs would. Too many 
 changes will only block the way to the introduction of Sound-English. 
 By and by, of course, we shall have special signs, the forms for which 
 you have no doubt observed on p. 46. 
 
 Dr. C. — So I have, but who is to, fix the time when they shall be 
 introduced? 
 
 A. — Don't let us take any trouble on interest, doctor ; they will creep 
 in by and by by virtue of some natural process. 
 
 Dr. C. — It may be as you say. But now we come to the unaccented 
 vowels. 
 
 A.— A— h— h! 
 
 Dr. C. — What is the matter? 
 
 A. — Nothing. I only sighed in thinking of the labor I had with those 
 unaccented vowels. If you hear of anybody that wishes to qualify for 
 the lunatic asylum, advise him to take a deep draught at the fountain of 
 the unaccented vowels of the English language. 
 
 Dr. C. — I never saw any difficulty in them. Besides, I like, in the 
 main, the way in which you treat them; all but one. You represent our 
 short a, when ending a syllable, by e, writing elon, Icencl, etc. Now, 
 what made you do that? 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 59> 
 
 A.— I owe that and some other suggestions on unaccented vowels to a. 
 conTcrsation with Mr. Wm. Benry P. Phyfe, and to his work, " How 
 Should I Pronounce"*, and my liking for that e has increased, the. 
 longer I have used it. It is perfectly analogous to the e, o, and u, in alL 
 of which we simply shorten the somtd, when they end an unaccented 
 syllable. And thus we must shorten the sovmd of a, and this shortened 
 sound is expressed in Sound-English by e. Try to become reconciled to 
 it for awhile, doctor, to please me, and you will surely grow to like it, as 
 you will like the indefinite article e or en, instead of a or an. 
 
 Dr. C— I was just going to ask you about them. How did you come 
 to write them that way? 
 
 A.^We never say a or &n, but in quick utterance we give them an 
 obscure sound. Well, this obscure sound " comes more natural," so to 
 speak, when we speil them e and en, because the obscure sound comes, 
 much nearer to S than to a. 
 
 Dr. C. — You speak of an "obscure sound." Have not most of the. 
 unaccented vowels an obscure sound? 
 
 A. — 'Tis but too true. But if we want to take account of what we do- 
 with our vowels in quick utterance, we shall never have any phonetic, 
 spelling in English. It would simply be out of the question. If we allowr 
 for the "obscuration" of vowels in unaccented syllables, why not dov 
 the same in words of one syllable, and write Ispostuz for I suppose it 
 does, or heezntseenum for he has not seen them. I have made som^ 
 allowance for the obscure sound, in the exceptions to Chapter VI., 3, 
 but I did not dare go farther without opening the door to endless con- 
 fusion. We must be guided, in the main, by the sounds that a singer 
 gives the unaccented vowels. The modifications that they undergo in: 
 ordinary utterance, must take care of themselves. There is no other way,, 
 at least not now. What the future may bring, when phonetic spelling is- 
 firmly rooted, it is too early to discuss or even conjecture. 
 
 Dr. C. — I think you. are right. Now, one more question. Is this, 
 system entirely original with you? 
 
 A. — Well-nigh all its features are. I had conceived the idea of a world 
 language, based on the English, and thought over, planned, tested, rejected, . 
 and amended my system before I had read any of the works quoted from 
 in Part First. After, and while, consulting them, I made many changes ; 
 and improvements, nearly all of which are original, but how far they may 
 be the indirect result of the thought of others, I am unable to tell. [ 
 think I was encouraged by M>. Henry Sweet's book in doing away with 
 capitals. Perhaps I also owe to the same source the idea of turning 
 letters, which (at least a) he says was first adopted by Schmeller to express a 
 German sound; although I think I had the same idea myself, and rejected 
 
 * " How Should I Pronounce, or The Art of Correct Pronunciation." A Manual 
 for Schools, Colleges and Private Use. By Wm. Henry P. Phyfe, Member of the. 
 .imericau Philological Association. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
 
•60 SOUND-ENGLISH. 
 
 it at first on aooount of the difficulty I imagined it -yould have for for- 
 eigners. In this matter of originality of idea we meet with some queer 
 "accidents." I had, for instance, settled upon the sign given on p. 46, 
 line 2 from the top, as the future sign for sh. Shortly afterwards I saw a 
 volume of Pitman's Phonetic Journal, which I had never seen before^ 
 and there found the very identical sign that I had adopted, doing service 
 for the same sound for which I had intended it. 
 
 I have already mentioned Mr. Phyfe's work as aiding me greatly in 
 settling the question of unaccented vowels. 
 
 The "Principles of Pronunciation " in Webster's Dictionary have ren- 
 dered me invaluable service. I also made good use of his "Speller," but 
 for testing the system and selecting' examples I found Mr. J. Madison 
 Watson's " National Elementary SpeUe* " (A. S. Barnes & Co.) very con- 
 veniently arranged. 
 
 The appearance of Mr. A. Melville Bell's " World-English "* gave a 
 fresh impetus to my smouldering intention in the direction of such a 
 work as Sound-English. 
 
 To all these my thanks are due. Furthermore, I feel that I owe a 
 ' debt of gratitude to Professor Max MuUer, Mr. Isaac Pitman, Mr. A. J. 
 Ellis, Mr. Henry Sweet, of England, to Prof. W. D. Whitney of Yale 
 College, Prof. P. A. March of Lafayette College, President of the 
 American Spelling Reform Association, the Rev. H. L. Wayland, D.D., 
 Mr. Fred. A. Fernald, and to all their co-workers in the cause, for hav- 
 ing paved the way for phonetic spelling; as well as to Mr. Johann Martin 
 Schleyer, who by "his "Volapuk" has familiarized the world with the 
 idea of one universal language, and to Colonel Charles B. Sprague, who 
 has championed it in this country. 
 
 De. C. — I saw it mentioned somewhere that Mr. Sweet wrote some 
 iind of a phonetic primer for Germans. 
 
 A. — So did I, but I have not seen the book, and I had planned a 
 work for Germans according to my system long before I saw any mention 
 ■of Mr. Sweet's book. 
 
 Dr. C. — Now I have nothing more to say but to wish you success. 
 
 A. — Thank you, doctor, same to you. 
 
 * " Hand-book of World-English. By Alexander Melville Bell, author of ' Visible 
 Speech,' etc., etc. New York : N. D. C. Hodges, 47 Lafayette Place. London : TrUb- 
 ner & Co., 57 & 59 Ludgate HUl." 
 
APPE!n'DIX B. 
 
 KEYS 
 
 to all the Exercises and to the Examples in Chapter V. 
 and subsequent chapters. 
 
 To Exercise 1. — 111, eel, in, mien or mean, it, eat, men, mane or 
 main (or Maine), pen, pane or pain (or Payne), wed, wade, am, man, ant,, 
 aunt, staif, half, don, dawn, knob, daub, nod, laud, hut, mud, pun, dove, 
 does, son or sun, herb, earl, bird, firm, work, turf, own, oats, go, doe or 
 dough, bone, goa|^ full, fool, pull, pool, foot, boot. 
 
 To Exercise 2. — I. aye, or eye; my, dime, fire, kind, wind (verb), 
 owl, out, how, now, flour, found, oil, boy, joy, join, toil, void. 
 
 To Exercise 3. — His, has, cough, tough, hough, slough, debt, climb 
 or clime, act, cape, card, chorus, ace, ice, sell or cell, trace, cypress, dis- 
 cern, cage, caged, engine, gnat, gnome, new, light, daughter; air, ere, or 
 heir; our or hour, knife, no or know, black, lock or lough, calm, walk, 
 limb or limn, him or hymn, queen, quail, oblique, psalm, core or corps, 
 phial, wheel, whale, whence, tax or tacks, taxed, exhort, duke, fuse, rue, 
 chewing, surely, jew, million, pinion, orient, creature, mixture, righteous, 
 patient, motion, social, tension, luxury, glazier, rank, finger, thee, though, 
 smooth, paths. 
 
 To Chapter V., I., 2. — Obey, later, leader, arbitrate, deviate, al- 
 though, portray, forego. — 3. Miser, July, nightingale, annoy, housing, 
 feline, ideal. — 4. Omit, contract (noun), contract (verb), incident, land- 
 scape, antelope, manner, letter, definite, animate, agonize, bashful, rush- 
 ing, azure, hatchet, rather, Ethel, banquet, singer. — 5. Bank-stock, man- 
 like, likewise, house-hold, house-dog, letter-paper, good-natured; blood- 
 vessel, blackberry, type- writer; paper-cutter, riding-master, archangel, 
 upper-tendom. — Note 2. Undertake, intervene. 
 
 To Exercise 4. — Convey, discreet, fever, solar, disbursement, enslave- 
 ment, artichoke, perforate, brier, endow, counterpoise, quietus, divan, 
 enact, propel, within, blandish, empty, subject (noun), subject (verb), 
 antimony, ignominy, instinctively, transitorily, abrogate, destitute, domes- 
 ticate, exercise, gossip, talent, wretched, singing, ebony, adjective, pro- 
 hibit, inheritance, hemisphere, liberate, antagonize, invigorate, inmost, 
 welfare, warfare, outright, note-book, book-worm, good-night, good- 
 speed, house-wife, hen-house, black-letter, carrier-pigeon, blue-berry, in- 
 surance-policy, overdo, robin-redbreast. 
 
 To Chapter V., II., 3.— Pusillanimity, hieroglyphic, superexalt, ad- 
 ministration, admirability, predispose, negotiation. 
 
 To Exercise 5. — Appertain, intervene, entertainment, disinherit,, 
 omnipresent, affidavit, superstructure, peradventure, individuality, Im- 
 
 61 
 
'62 SOUND-EIfGLISH. 
 
 perceptibility, perpendicularity, incomprehensibility, sarsaparilla, re- 
 instate, supervene, articulation, enunciation, pronunciation, impenetra- 
 bility, unintelligibility. 
 
 To Chaptbb VI.— 3. Dedicate, antipodes. — 3, (1). Remarks. — 3. Cor- 
 rugate, injury, sublunary. — 4. Ida, Persia. — 5. Honey, medley, Wednes- 
 day, holiday.— (3). Exceptions. — 1, (1). Certificate, indiscriminately, dis- 
 criminate (verb), stellate, propagate. — (3). Mountain, mountaineer. — (3). 
 Language, villager. — (4). Forward, eastward. — 3. Mastery; perfect (wj-ft), 
 perfect (adjective), pertinacity, adverb. — 3. Nadir, satyr. — 4, (1). Honor, 
 nation, bigot, bigoted, honorable, honorableness, national, nationality, col- 
 lect, combine, amazon, wedlock. — (3). Company, companion.^5. Nature, 
 forfeiture, literature. * 
 
 To Exercise 6. — Abound, ■ syllable, miscellany, obstinacy, recite, 
 ■elegy, secretary, competency, minute (adj.), amity, seminary, antiquary, 
 proclaim, colony, antimony, ceremony, deputy, century, fraudulent, 
 usury, curfew, rescue, misconstrue, meadow-grass, iqta, medley, journey- 
 ing, Sunday, allow, beggary, bulwark, annoyance, velvet, timber, milli- 
 nery, deliberate, habit, registry, promissory, capillary, collate, comply, 
 condense, corrode, statute, attribute (verb), legislature, enrapture, pul- 
 sation, gluttony, surveyor, willful, palate, accurate, viUainy, mountain- 
 ous, image, imagery, cartilage, northward, melon, conjure (Jcun-jur'), 
 Attribute (noun), temperature. 
 
 To Chapter VIII. — 1. I did not say the man, I said a man. — 4. He 
 "Wanted a toy, not a tie; I said voice, not vice. — 6. Do you think that 
 "will answer? Never mind the cost, we must have it. 
 
 To Exercise 7. — Did he see me? Yes, he saw you, but she did not. 
 She saw me, but she did not see you. We were there, but you was not. 
 You must not say "you was," say, "you were." There they are, now, 
 and their sisters, too. Do you wish to speak to them? How do you do? 
 You do look well. May I go? You may go, but you must not stay- too 
 long. Will you and he get a prize? He or I, not he and I. Where is 
 your cousin? I do not know where she is. I promised to call for her. 
 dear me! That is funny, ha! ha! ha! He said that that that that 
 "that boy parsed and that that that that boy cancelled, were the same. 
 . Did you write to him? No, I did not write to him, but I saw him. 
 
 To Chapter IX.— Write the following in Sound-English, and com- 
 pare your work with the examples given in Chapter IX. 
 
 1. An arm, an honor. 
 
 3. The plural of chief, book, pipe, cat, month, horse, rose, brush, 
 patch, page, day, lady, rug, rod, calf, wife, bath, house, potato, gnu, 
 man, woman, die, crisis, datum, larva, the foreign plural of genius and 
 . bandit, and the plural of f, h, t, 8, 6, 3, " — ." 
 
 8. The possessive singular of chief, wife, cook, ape, night (or knight), 
 Smith, Case, Charles, Bush, Roach, Page, day, John, Bob, Maud. 
 
 The possessive plural of chief, cat, horse, day, tooth, man, genius (pi. — ^i). 
 
SOUND-ENGLISH. 63 
 
 4. The thM person singular of the present tense of reef, rock, reap, 
 print, froth, pass, rouse, brush, patch, judge, lay, sob, beg, sell. 
 
 The past tense of divide, print, reef, rook, reap, froth, pass, brush, 
 patch, stray, row, rouse, judge, beg, dim. 
 
 5. The adverb of bad, ready, beautiful, able, whole, foul, sole. 
 
 To Chapter XV. — I purpose to write the history of England from 
 the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within 
 the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a 
 few months, alienated a loy^l gentry and priesthood from the house of 
 -Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the 
 long struggle between our sovereigns and their Parliaments and bound 
 up together the rights of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. 
 I shall relate hog' the new settlement was, during many troubled years, 
 successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies ; how, under 
 that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were 
 found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and individual action 
 never before known ; how, from the auspicious union of order and free- 
 dom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had fur- 
 nished no example ; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassal- 
 age, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers ; how 
 her opulence and her martial glory grew together ; how, by wise and 
 resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of 
 marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed 
 incredible ; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, 
 compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, 
 .sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at 
 length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble 
 lies of interest 
 
By the Author of Sound-English : 
 
 German Simplified. 
 
 Spanish Simplified. 
 
 These books do not contain any changes in the spelling or construction 
 of the German and Spanish languages, as one might possibly infer from 
 seeing them advertised on the pages of " Sound-English " ; they are simply 
 concise, lucid, and eminently practical hand-books, containing numerous 
 examples and exercises taken from the actual conversation of every-day life, 
 and forming a complete course of instruction in German and in Spanish for 
 the purposes of reading, business, and travel. They are adapted for class use 
 and private instruction. 
 
 WHAT IS SAID OF 
 
 GERMAN SIMPLIFIED: "More nearly than any other book I have re- 
 cently examined, it approaches niy idea of what a beginner's book should be." — 
 W. H. Carpenter, Instructor in German, Columbia College, New York City. 
 
 *'I find it a good book for class use, even better than I expected. Your method is 
 all tl^t you claim for it." — ^H. W. Johnston, Pro/. Modem Languages^ Illinois 
 College^ Jacksonville, III, 
 
 " An admirable book. I like its simplicity and its gradual introduction of idioms 
 and grammatical forms." — C, W. Hotson, Universiiy of Mississippi^ Ox/in'd, Miss. 
 
 "It meets all the wants of the German class of the Y. M. C. A. of this city as no 
 othfer book that I am acquainted with can,"— J. Bickler, City Superintendent of 
 Schools, Galveston, Texas. 
 
 SPANISH SIMPLIFIED: "'Knoflach's Spanish Simplified' is simply 
 admirable — the best elementary book I have used." — W. G. Crosby, Granger Place 
 School, Canandaigua, N. V. 
 
 "A more thorough examination of 'Spanish Simplified' increases my admiration 
 of the book. The worlc has great merit. I shall use it in my next Spanish class." — 
 — W. H. Long, Waco, Texas. 
 
 "'Spanish Simplified' meets my ideal of a text -book, I shall use it in my 
 Spanish class. It is by all odds the best arranged book for self-instruction which 
 has appeared," — L, W, Lyon, Eagle Pass, Texas. 
 
 Price of either "German Simplified" or "Spanish Simplified/' 
 cloth, $1.25. Edition for Self-Instruction, in 12 pamphlets, with 
 keys, per set, either language, $1.20. 
 
 UHIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 66 and 68 Duane St., New York. 
 
 RETAIL ORDERS MAY ALSO BE SENT TO 
 
 Q. B. STBOHEJRT, 
 
 NEW YORK: 828 BROADWAY. 
 LONDON : 30 Wellington St., Strand, V/.C. LEIPZIG : Hospitalatr., 10. 
 
arW9101 
 Sound-Englith : 
 
 Cornell Unlvarrtty Ubmry 
 
 lifliiiiiiioiiii 
 
 3 1924 031 423 605 
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