620 



SPELL 



SPELLING 



K|ir.-inifii> and did a go<xl deal of route-plotting. 

 In 1854 he joined Burton in an excursion into the 

 Somali country, and barely -got back with hU life. 

 Three years later the Royal Geographical Society 

 ent out the same two travellers to search for the 

 great equatorial lakes of Africa. Speke, whilst 

 travelling alone, discovered the Victoria Nyanza, 

 and was convinced that it was the head-waters of 

 the Nile. In 1860 he returned in company with 

 Captain J. A. Grant (q.v. ; died 10th February 

 1892), and not only explored the western and 

 northern shores of the large lake he had previously 

 di-1'nvered. but followed tlie Nile far enough down 

 its course to establish its identity with the great 

 river of Egypt. Nevertheless his identification 

 was disputed by Burton and others ; and Speke 

 was to hold a public discussion with Burton at the 

 British Association meeting at Bath on 15th Sep- 

 tember 1864, when, on that very morning, he acci- 

 dentally shot himself whilst out shooting near that 

 city. He wrote Journal of the Discovery of the 

 Source of the Nile (1863), and What led to the 

 Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1864). 



Spell. See INCANTATION. 



Spelling is originally phonetic, its aim to con- 

 vey to the eye the sound heard by the ear ; but in 

 modern Eng'lish the usage of pronunciation has 

 drifted far from the conventional forms established 

 by a traditional orthography, with the result that 

 the present spelling of our written speech is to a 

 large extent a mere exercise of memory, full of 

 confusing anomalies and imperfections, and involv- 

 ing an enormous and unnecessary strain on the 

 faculties of learners. The modern English alpha- 

 bet consists of twenty-six letters, of which five are 

 vowels, and of these not even the consonants are 

 consistent in sound, as may be readily seen in the 

 current pronunciation of such words as /''"'- .'/'" ' 

 cent, cant; thin, this; cough, dough; sough, hic- 

 cough, hough ; loch, arch, patriarch. Some again 

 are superfluous, as hard <; q, x, their sounds being 

 capable of being represented by other letters ; while 

 others remain silent in pronunciation, as seen in 

 t/imagh, plough, debt, knell, write, lamb, malign, 

 demesne, trait. Further anomalies appear in loalk, 

 folk as opposed to malt, fault ; while a stranger 

 series still appear in such words as colonel, lieuten- 

 ant, foreign, scent, island, scythe, scissors, rhyme, 

 ache, sceptic. Again, the same vowel or diphthong 

 meets us in such varying forms as the following ( from 

 Mr Iunsbnry's lists) : the short e variously in met, 

 sweat, any, said, says, jeopardy ; the long e, in meet, 

 mete, meat, machine, grief, receive, Key, quay, 

 people, agis. Again, take the varying forms of the 

 same vowel-souml in rile, rued, rood, routine, 

 rli'-wm, drew, shoe, move, bruise ; while on the 

 other hand six different sounds have the same form 

 in sour, pour, would, tour, sought, couple; ami five 

 in heat, sweat, great, heart, heard. Groups of 

 words like man, Inne, ask, salt on the one side, 

 and irhy, wine, eye, lie, or air, heir, eyre, ere, e'er 

 on the other, show equally a violation of the 

 fundamental principle of all rational spelling viz. 

 that of representing every sound by an invariable 

 symbol. 



Examples enough have been given to demonstrate 

 the utterly unscientific character of English spell- 

 ing ; it now remains to ask how this has originated, 

 and whether any measure of relief from such a 

 burden is practicable. It was only slowly that this 

 modern uniformity became rigid, and we may dis- 

 miss as completely without foundation the defence 

 put forward nypre-soienti fir philologists like Trench 

 that the modern spelling is valuable as preserving 

 an index to the derivation. Even if this were true, 

 are we justified in paying so great a price for an 

 tad MI little ? But when we Took at the fact* we 



find that if the conventional spelling in some few 

 cases preserves a hint as to the ultimate origin, a* 

 in a mil, newt, knart, debt, it is far more often the 

 case that it obscures the order of descent, or merely 

 preserves the memory of some error through false 

 analog)' or sheer ignorance, as in words like shame- 

 faced, rhyme, comptroller, isinglass, whole, bride- 

 groom, stark-nakeil, battledoor, be/fry, tafrail, 

 sj>ruce-beer. Again, the infallible writers for the 

 press talk with indignation of being divorced from 

 the tongue of Shakespeare and the Bible ; but, as 

 I)r Murray says, the slightest glance at 17th-century 

 orthography will show what an immense amount of 

 spelling reform has lieen done since then. Thus 

 Psalm cvi. , as printed in 1611, differs in 116 spell- 

 ings from that printed in 1892; the first chapter of 

 Genesis, in 135 spellings. One of the most imjKirtant 

 spelling reforms in English was that made alxmt 

 1630 when it was made a vowel and v a consonant, 

 for up to that time these were only forms of the 

 same letter having a position-rank like long / and 

 short s. From the 14th century onwards a fashion 

 grew of adapting the spelling of words to their 

 supposed Latin originals, with what confusion to 

 the real history of the words may \- imagined from 

 the accidental or capricious errors of sciolist* inno- 

 cent of scientific method. But generally speaking 

 up to the 16th century English spelling was mainly 

 phonetic like the present German. Tlie old scribes 

 allowed themselves large liberty in the forms they 

 adopted, to which Chaucer refers in the well-known 

 lines, ' and for there is so great diversite in English, 

 and in writing of our tong.' The Ormulum is an 

 interesting example of a consistent attempt at a 

 phonetic spelling. But as literature developed 

 and the printing-press began to assert its author- 

 ity the spelling i>ecame more and more fixed, 

 till at last it became quite stationary, while 

 the pronunciation continued to go on changing 

 without intermission until, as Mr Sweet savs, our 

 present spelling does not represent the English we 

 actually speak, but rather the language of the 16th 

 century. This progress towards uniformity went 

 on actively during the 17th century, but it was 

 Johnson's Dictionary (1755) that gave universality 

 to the currency. Meantime spoken language grew, 

 and natural divergencies arose, resulting in the 

 modern pronouncing dictionary, which Trench 

 called with justice ' t he ahsurdest of all liooks.' 



Halliwell tells us Shakespeare spelt his name in 

 some thirty different forms ; the young Pretender 

 writes of hut father indifferently as Jems or Gems ; 

 Claverhouse, says Macaulay, spelt like a washer- 

 woman ; and the great 5larll>oroiigh used the 

 same freedoms as Thackeray's Jeanies or the ordi- 

 nary Englishman whose education stopped short 

 for ever at the Fourth Standard. But we may 

 remember that Will Honeycomb never liked ped- 

 antry in spelling, and speft like a gentleman, not 

 like a scholar. And we must not suppose that 

 great as was Johnson's influence all his spellings 

 nave lieen accepted. His musick, ambatsadnm; 

 horrour, cimeter, waterfal, parsnep, skr/ilirk, 

 tackcloath, have disappeared ; but some of his 

 strange pairs of inconsistencies survive : moveable 

 and immiinililr, chilifactory and chyle, bias and 

 unbiassed. Similar are recognize and surjirise, "in- 

 fer and rmiferrfd, worship and worshtpjter. Web- 

 ster in his 1828 edition gives us many original 

 spellings, as melasses, pretense, bridcgopm, all 

 of which were swept away in the revision of 

 1864. Julius Hare and Thirlwall adopted such 

 forms as forein, soverein, cherisht, preacht, from 

 one-sided considerations of philology ; Ritson's 

 habit of adding -ed to the preterite of all verbs 

 was but one among many of tlie whimsical notions 

 of a half-crazy antiquary ; Pinkertpn's vagaries 

 are beneath notice ; the usages familiar to readers 



