SPELLING 



5491 



SPELLING 



The old drill method often neglected the 

 meanings of words; the present "thought" 

 method lays as much stress on meaning and 

 pronunciation as on spelling. It is not suffi- 

 cient that a pupil be able to repeat glibly the 

 definition of a new word; he must be able to 

 use it in a sentence in such a way that it ad- 

 mits of no ambiguity. Each word should be 

 made to call up as many associations in the 

 pupils' minds as possible; in fact, spelling 

 should become a real word study, and not a 

 mere letter-by-letter study of words. 



The Use of Rules. In arithmetic almost 

 everything can be reduced to rule; in spelling 

 comparatively few rules are possible, and these 



are no longer taught at the outset, as under the 

 old method. Only when the pupils have mas- 

 tered enough individual cases to make gener- 

 alization seem reasonable are the rules intro- 

 duced. When such derivatives as plan, plan- 

 ning ; compel, compelling; run, running, have 

 been mastered, the rule that "monosyllables 

 and words accented on the last syllable, end- 

 ing in a single consonant preceded by a single 

 vowel, double the final consonent before a suf- 

 fix beginning with a vowel" may be introduced 

 naturally. All other rules, many of them cum- 

 bersome, are to be mastered, if at all, in about 

 the same manner; they must follow and not 

 precede their illustrations. 



Spelling Reform 



As stated in the article PHONETICS, the ideal 

 language would be one in which every letter 

 had but one sound and every sound was rep- 

 resented by a letter. In such a language each 

 word would be spelled exactly as it sounds, and 

 spelling would be a very simple matter once 

 the principles of phonetics were mastered. No 

 speech in the world to-day attains this ideal, 

 and English comes very far short of it. One 

 has but to consider the pronunciation of tough, 

 though and through to be convinced of this 

 fact. 



Many scholars in England and America have 

 from time to time voiced their dissatisfaction 

 with the chaotic state of English spelling, and 

 have attempted to set on foot movements for 

 so-called spelling reform, or simplified spelling. 

 They have always, however, met with deter- 

 mined opposition; for while they may have 

 reason and logic on their side, their opponents 

 have sentiment on theirs the affection of men 

 and women for the ordinary word forms which 

 they have always used and about which their 

 associations have grown up; and sentiment is 

 a far harder thing to conquer than reason or 

 logic. In recent years, however, some advance 

 has been made in popularizing the general prin- 

 ciples of spelling reform. 



The American Philological Association and 

 the British Philological Society made recom- 

 mendations for the simplifying of a number of 

 English words, and the National Education 

 Association of the United States adopted in 

 1898 the following "reform" spellings for use 

 in its publications: 



altho demagog program thorofare 



catalog pedagog tho thru 



decalog prolog thoro thruout 



In 1906 there was organized in New York the 

 Simplified Spelling Board, which was endowed 

 by Andrew Carnegie and headed by Brander 

 Matthews. Its simplifications were somewhat 

 more sweeping, and were included under sixty- 

 one rules, or recommendations. The Board 

 recommended, for instance, such changes as the 

 following : 



1. The use of e instead of the diagraph ae, 

 except at the end of a word ; thus, medieval for 

 mediaeval; ether for aether. 



2. The omission of the silent & before t; thus, 

 dout for doubt; dettor for debtor. 



3. The use of e instead of ea in words having 

 the short e sound: hed for head; helth for health. 



4. The dropping of final gh when it is silent ; 

 as, thru for through; tho for though; and the 

 substitution of / in such words as laf for laugh 

 or tuf for tough. 



5. The substitution of er for re in such words 

 as theater, meter or scepter. 



6. The omission of silent g and silent k before 

 n; thus, nat for gnat; naw for gnaw; nock for 

 knock; nife for knife. 



7. The substitution of / for ph pronounced like 

 /; thus, fantom for phantom; sfere for sphere; 

 trofy for trophy. 



A complete list of these rules cannot well 

 be given here, but a study of the above exam- 

 ples will show that some of the simplified 

 forms have already made considerable head- 

 way. Medieval, for instance, no longer looks 

 strange; theater is commonly used; and even 

 tho has come to seem fairly familiar. Some of 

 the forms, on the other hand, are as far from 

 acceptance as they were when first suggested, 

 and indications are that the struggle for com- 

 pletely simplified spelling will be a long and 

 hard one. 



In August, 1906, President Roosevelt issued 

 an order that reformed spelling should be used 



