SIMi'LlPlED SPELLING. 



By R. T. A. Innes. F.R.S.E., F.R.A.S. 



It might be thou^jht that a paper urging the advantages ot 

 simplified spelling would be unnecessary before a scientific asso- 

 ciation, because the scientific method is the experimental method, 

 and because a belief in evolution as a living principle is inherent 

 in scientists. If this is so. why, then should experiments in 

 spelling not evolve? In spite of grammars and dictionaries, our 

 spoken English is evolving. Why should our s]jelling suffer 

 because of an alien yoke long since forgotten? (1 refer to the 

 influence. of the printers from Holland, who settled in England 

 and virtually crystallized c.ur spelling. ) 



Personally, I don't want to write in a simplified spelling, 

 nor do I want to read in a simplified spelling : but then my 

 learning days are perhaps past. It is not for myself or others 

 who have acquired all the knowledge they ever will that I 

 would advocate the need of simplified spelling. Nor is this 

 advocacy to-day confined to ideahsts and visionaries. At the 

 Annual Conference of Educational Associations held recently in 

 the University of London, the subject was al)l\' discussed. 

 Professor Gilbert Murray said it Vvas their hope that the English 

 language would be read and spoken as widely as possible over 

 the surface of the world, and one essential obstacle to their 

 aim was that foreigners learning English had practically to learn 

 two languages — one spoken, one written. Language should be 

 written as pronounced. The English langtiage was in a different 

 position from many Euroi)ean languages. In most a watch had 

 been kept over the relation between the written and the spoken 

 word. Scandinavian and (lerman were fundamentally but not 

 minutely and exactly jjhonetic ; Italian and Spanish were ex- 

 quisitely and beautifully phonetic. Whoever hears an Italian 

 word can spell it. In French, though the sound was not a good 

 guide to the spelling, the sjjelling was a very safe guide to the 

 sound. Some languages had gone wrong — as, for instance, 

 Russian and Greek; and luiglish is in a bad condition. Practical 

 teachers estimated that luiglish spelling entailed a dead loss of 

 alj<:)ut one year of the pupil's time, which was serious enough, 

 but more serious was the positive harm of gi\ing children a 

 training in imreason. The object of education is to put before 

 the child as far as possible a reasonable world, instead of which 

 the tendency in teaching spelling was to present to the child 

 a thoroughly mad world, and t" make the teacher appear 

 capricious. 



Sir Frederick Pollock, LL.U., l).Cf>.. compared the spell- 

 ings as follows: In the first class he would i)ut Spanish with 

 special distinction, then Italian, then Dutch, although their 

 \()wel system was open to .some <^l)jection ; in the second class 

 German fairly consistent but clumsy, then (iaelic and Russian. 

 Jn the third class French and Cireek. ,\s for English, charitv 



