NOTE ON SPELLING. 145' 



spellino- to restore phonetic representation. And this process 

 is continually recurring in the history of spelling. 



The readjustment by a change of alphabet occurs where a 

 general shift of sound takes place throughout a language. 

 An English vowel may illustrate this. In Old English he, 

 me, tee, were pronounced as we now pronounce /lay, may, way 

 (omitting a final short / sound), /t of the English alpha- 

 bet then represented the sound it now has in the continental 

 European languages. Under the operation of certain pho- 

 netic changes in English, however, this sound shifted to its 

 modern sound, just as '\i fete were to become /'rr/, and the 

 change occurred in so many words that it carried the letter 

 with it. E was re-named by the sound it came to represent, 

 and is now known and used as the sign of a sound entirelj^ 

 different from what it had when he, vie, ive were first spelled. 

 By this change of the sound associated with the letter, these 

 words, without any literal change, continue to be phonetically 

 spelled. In short, the alphabet was changed to suit the 

 spelling. 



So with the alphabetic names of A and /. They were for- 

 merly sounded as a in fathe?- and / in pique. Phonetic 

 changes occurred in English so generally, whereby a sound, 

 then spelled /, became a-ee, or our modern long i, and a as 

 in fathei- became a as in mate, that it was easier to change 

 the notion of the letters than to change the spelling of so 

 man}^ words in the face of traditional form. But there were 

 words in which these sounds did not shift. It depended upon 

 certain conditions of accent and surrounding sounds. Hence 

 a in mate conforms to its new name and sound as an alphabet- 

 ical sign, while a \\\ father maintains the old sound and the 

 letter is there unphonetic. The readjustment of the alphabet 

 here is only partial, for while we now learn A as in mate we 

 must also remember its sound as in father. 



Here an accident has afforded the means of an approxi- 

 mate readjustment. In many cases the final e of P^nglish 

 words was sounded when the preceding a was pronounced as 



