144 BROOM ALL : 



word as it is now pronounced. The traditionalists intimate 

 that this change of sound is a degeneration, a perversion, and 

 that the real word in its purity remains in its written form to 

 restrain further phonetic backsliding. 



The maintenance of traditional spelling is supposed to be 

 logically supported because it preserves the etymology of 

 words. But this avails nothing much to the student and 

 nothing at all to the speaker. The student does not need the 

 repetition in daily life of some old spelling to dun him with 

 what he already knows. And to the reader the etymological 

 character is a positive disadvantage. Conscious of the origin 

 of September', October, November and December, the etymologist 

 does not easily transcribe them into Ninth, Tentli, Elevetit/i 

 and Twelftli Months, and vice versa, while the other month 

 names and their corresponding numbers are associated without 

 difficulty. The present accord of meaning and sound is only 

 jarred by the intrusion of the word's history. 



In a country where there are few writers, traditional form 

 is strong. They alone are burdened with learning, using 

 and transmitting forms of writing that no longer represent the 

 sounds. This knowledge distinguishes them, and they like it. 

 But where there are many writers, as in our modern days, 

 writing is no longer an art distinctive of a learned class, and 

 the hold of the traditional form extends throughout the com- 

 numity. It is never wholly absent except where an alphabet 

 is first applied to a language. When the Latin alphabet was 

 first used to write the North European languages, the spelling 

 was phonetic, as far as the alphabet itself had appropriate 

 signs. In modern days when the student writes down the 

 words of some unwritten tongue of America or Asia, it is pho- 

 netic in the same way. These conditions, however, are but 

 momentar}^ in the histor}^ of writing. 



While the pronunciation changes, the old spelling con- 

 tinues. The lack of correspondence increases with the inevi- 

 table phonetic development of language. Tradition at last 

 gives way and there results a change of either alphabet or 



