28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



The two hundred effective letters have only about five hundred and 

 fifty values, an average of two and one half each. So that to guess 

 what value to give to each letter when written is easier than to divine 

 what symbols to choose to represent a sound uttered, in the proportion 

 of two and one half to eight and one half, or of twenty-five to eighty-five. 



" Of the fifty thousand words of our language which have been ex- 

 amined, not more than fifty, or one in a thousand, are pronounced as 

 they are spelt, that is, if we take the first sound or name-sound of each 

 letter as indicating its power. Hence the spelling of a word is no in- 

 fallible guide to its pronunciation ; and there is absolutely no way of 

 indicating, by the alphabet now in use, what the pronunciation of a 

 word should be. 



" From the very anomalous and irregular nature of our written lan- 

 guage follows the extreme difficulty of learning to read, it taking chil- 

 dren not less than fifteen times as long as if each sound had one sign, 

 and each sign one invariable sound. The difficulty is not simply what 

 it would be if they had two hundred characters to learn. It is far 

 greater. In regard to many of the letters and combinations, a child 

 can never learn the sound. He can only learn that the sound is to be 

 ascertained by authority, whenever the letter occurs. Take, for ex- 

 ample, the first letter of the alphabet as occurring in the following 

 sentence. 



12 3 4 5 6 



" ' Many, comparing this man with his father, fall into the mistake 



3 7 8 9 



that he wants little of being an image of him.' 



" Here are nine different sounds of the a ; and a child who had mas- 

 tered them would be none the better prepared to give the sounds of a 

 in any other word which should occur. He could at best guess that it 

 had one of these nine sounds, and proceed to try them in succession, 

 but each of the nine guesses would be wrong if the word were bread 

 or heaven, or any other in which a is silent. Or take the letter e in the 

 following sentence : — 



" ' Let her leave her burden at the rendezvous, and show the clerk 

 her pretty tame mouse.' 



" Here the letter has eight different sounds or powers, and the effect 

 of learning it would be only to confuse the mind in reference to the 

 sound of e in every word not contained in this sentence. Take one of 

 the combinations of two letters, at, for instance, in this sentence: — 'Cap- 

 tain Paine said he had a pair of plaids.' After learning the five sounds 



