INTERNATIONAL SPEECH 159 



countries. Indeed, there seems to be, at least with us in America, a 

 wide-spread sort of shamefacedness about the use of any other but 

 the flat " a " and " a " sounds for " a," and the long " e " and " i " 

 sounds for those letters. " Ask," " half," " waft " are pronounced far 

 and wide as " ask," " half " and " waft," if not indeed " aysk," " hayff " 

 and " wayft." " Amen " is " aye-men," " Alabama," " Kansas," 

 " Iowa " are attractive in their vowels, properly pronounced ; but 

 " Ail-bay-ma," " Kain-zuss," " Eye-o-way " or " Eye-6-wi " are suffi- 

 ciently common to indicate the trend among the unchecked multitudes. 

 The Spanish " Colo-ra'-do " is beautiful ; but what of our universal 

 " Colo-rad'do," to say nothing of the unspeakable, but, alas, not un- 

 heard, " Colo-ray'-do "? Americans, especially western Americans, 

 do seem to feel it an affectation to use correctly the available sound- 

 materials of the English tongue. 



The point is, that while our vowel sounds do admit of beauty 

 and euphony in the spoken tongue, and while our better speakers and 

 more cultivated people do actually use their delicate shadings, to the 

 delight of sensitive ears, the general drift among the English-speak- 

 ing masses is to limit themselves to the use of a few of the least 

 attractive and melodious of these sounds, and to those which are the 

 least familiar to the masses of other nations as applied to the letters 

 in question. This tendency certainly does not add to the allurements 

 of English for foreigners. So far as the consonants are concerned, 

 we undoubtedly possess one combination, the " th " sound, as in " the," 

 which seems to present unusual difficulties to almost all other peoples. 

 Who can formulate a rule that will cover the irregularities exhibited 

 by " gem " and " get," by " ginger " and " gimlet," by " gill," the 

 measure, and " gill," of fish ; of " s " in " serve " and " preserve," 

 " sound " and " resound," " hawsers " and " trousers," that will serve 

 to aid the foreigner learning English ? 



Taking our orthography as a whole, there seems to be but little 

 hope for the success of any radical scheme for revision. Witness the 

 hoots of derision that, from London to San Francisco, have followed 

 at the heels of Mr. Carnegie and his simple spellers, with their little 

 handful of three hundred phoneticized words. As a matter of fact we 

 are proud of our spelling as a national heritage. It preserves for us 

 " the history of the language." We have a word " phthisical " which 

 we should spell " tizical," since that is its peculiar pronunciation. We 

 refuse to spell it in that way, because the combinations " ph " and 

 " th " have been arbitrarily chosen to represent two Greek letters 

 that do not exist in our alphabet ! Despite the weakness of the argu- 

 ment for our orthography as preserving the historical origins of 

 words, it remains as the most potent, because the most sentimental 

 obstacle to reform, unless it be that blind subservience to routine, 

 that love of the unchanged thing for its own sake alone. Be this as 



