254 ROMANCE LANGUAGES 



same time-honored objections from those who held sway, or thought 

 they held sway, over these matters of language. But the opposition 

 is weakening, and will weaken more and more in proportion as sane 

 ideas on the relations of the spoken tongue to the written language 

 shall become familiar to the public, and it is to be hoped that some 

 day each of what we may call the national languages will be pro- 

 vided with an improved system of spelling. I do not say that these 

 systems need be strictly phonetic, like that proposed for English 

 by A. Melville Bell, in which each sound, simple or compound, is 

 denoted by a single symbol: this is neither practicable nor really 

 useful. But the improved spelling should be logical, the same sound 

 should not be expressed in three or four different ways, and the 

 same symbol should not be applied to different sounds. When that 

 time comes it will be possible, thanks to a branch of teaching which 

 at present does not exist, orthoepy, it will then be possible I do 

 not say to fix the language once for all, but at least to retard its 

 tendencies to change. Philologists have in fact ceased to look upon 

 language as a living being which develops according to its own 

 laws. We must not be deceived by metaphors which at times 

 may be used to clothe an idea with an outward form. It is now 

 perceived that the will of man often interferes, intentionally and 

 arbitrarily, with the transmission of language, especially in those 

 countries and periods where literary culture has become a common 

 possession. The complete knowledge of a language, whether we are 

 speaking of the vocabulary, the forms, the syntax, or the sound- 

 system, is no longer gained solely by unconscious imitation of others 

 speaking, as is true in the case of languages which are not cultivated : 

 this knowledge is obtained through the instruction given in the schools, 

 and as regards the sound-system (that is, the pronunciation) this 

 instruction up to this time has not had a solid foundation, because 

 an irregular and inconsistent notation of sounds cannot serve as 

 a guide for pronunciation. I might cite a large number of French 

 words in which the pronunciation has been vitiated by the ambigu- 

 ity of the spelling. For example, some pronounce anguille, camo- 

 mille, and often oscille, sdntille, vocille, with the palatal I as in file, 

 while the true pronunciation is anguile, camomile, oscile, scintile, 

 vocile, with the ordinary I as in file. These are mistakes due to 

 the double value of the group ille in the French official spelling: 

 not having been corrected by school-teachers, they have become, or 

 threaten to become general. This is one example out of a thou- 

 sand which show that the teaching of pronunciation is possible only 

 in countries which possess a perfectly regular and definite system of 

 orthography. 



Nothing is born from nothing, nihil ex nihilo, said the ancient 

 sage. The sciences fructify each other and furnish the elements of 



