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spell that word by a synthetic recombining of those elements. And this, 

 in. the truest sense, is spelling ; for the spoken language is the language, 

 while the written language is merely its mechanical representation to the 

 eye. 



It is not therefore, primarily, "arranging their proper letters" that 

 constitutes the true spelling of words, but the proper arranging of their 

 component sound?. Just so far, then, as the successive letteis of the 

 written word represent — and exclusively' represent — those successive com- 

 ponent sounds of the spoken word, just so far will they be the "proper 

 letters " and the written spelling a proper spelling. That is, in true 

 spelling every symbol should have but one sound, and every sound but one 

 symbol. 



2. What is English Spelling? — By the foregoing amplified definition, 

 it is evident that the great bulk of our English spelling can be so called 

 only by courtesy — only by a deference to a usage that has itself originally 

 deferred to the ignorant printers and proof-readers of by-gone centuries. 

 Orthografy, in its root sense, can hardly be considered an element of 

 Victorian English. 



Indeed, as Lord Lytton well says, "A more lying, round-about, 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 suffices to contradict?'* 



"The greatest genius among grammarians," says Dr. March, "Jacob 

 Grimm, but a few j'cars ago, congratulated the other Europeans that the 

 English had not made the discovery that a whimsical, antiquated orthog- 

 rafy stood in the way of the universal acceptance of the language." 



And why is it a "whimsical, antiquated orthografy?" 



Because, being unfonetic, it is unetymological. "It is the sound of the 

 spoken word," says Skeat, "which has to be accounted for, and all sym- 

 bols which disguise this sound are faulty and worthless. If our old writers 

 had not used a fonetic system, we should have no true data to go by." 

 "We still retain much," says the same author, "of the Elizabethan spell- 

 ing, which, even at that jieriod, was retrospective, with a Victorian pro- 

 nunciation. * * «■ The changes in spelling since IGOO are compara- 

 tively trifling, and are chiefly due to the printers who aimed at producing 

 a complete uniformity of spelling, which was practically accomplisht 

 shortly before 1700. The changes in pronunciation are great, especially 

 in vowel sounds. * * * The shortest description of modern spelling 

 is to say, that, speaking generally, it represents a Victorian pronunciation 

 of popular words by means of symbols imperfectly adapted to an Eliza- 

 bethan pronunciation ; the symbols themselves being mainly due to the 

 Anglo-French scribes, of the Plantagenet period, whoso system was 

 meant to be fonetic. It also aims at suggesting to the eye the original 

 forms of learned words. It is thus governed by two conflicting principles, 

 neither of which, even in its own domain, is consistently carried out." 



