yOICE, LANGUAGE, PHONETIC SPELLING. 157 



utmost one year to teach a child of six or seven years of age, 

 and of average ability, to read and spell fluently, without 

 fatigue or strain to either child or teacher ; and 75 to 80 

 per cent, of the children master the phonetic reading com- 

 pletely in six months only, if they are regular attendants at 

 school. A few months more will then give them the same 

 facility in reading words spelled in the ordinary way." The 

 results attained are well summarized in an article in 

 " Chambers's Encyclopaedia " as follows : " There can be no 

 doubt that phonetic spelling would greatly facilitate the 

 acquisition of the power of reading, and consequently the 

 education of children and of illiterate adults ; as well as 

 tend to the reduction of dialects to some common standard, 

 and to further the diffusion of our language in foreign 

 countries. To learn to read from perfectly phonetic charac- 

 ters would be merely to learn the alphabet ; and to spell 

 would be merely to analyse pronunciation. A child at 

 school could be made a fluent reader in a few weeks. All 

 uncertainty of pronunciation would vanish at the sight of 

 a word, and dictionaries of pronunciation would be quite 

 superfluous." 



The four principal objections raised against spelling 

 reform were then considered : 



1. The Linguistic objection, which is that phonetic spell- 

 ing will alter the sounds of our language. This statement is ' 

 due to gross ignorance of what phonetic spelling is ; and 

 partly also to the idea that language consists of written 

 signs rather than of sounds. A change of spelling is not a 

 change of language. Phonetic spelling will tend to preserve 

 the sounds, of which language is composed, in their purity. 



2. The Etymological objection : People say phonetic spell- 

 ing destroys etymology. That this statement is untrue is 

 abundantly proved by the unanimous testimony of all living 



