A PRACTICAL RATIONAL ALPHABET. 



By benjamin SMITH LYMAN. 

 (Read October i, 1915.) 



How to reform English orthography, and reduce it to simple 

 regularity is an interesting problem. Repeated efforts have been 

 persistently made in that direction. Among others, overhasty 

 enthusiasts, in their disgust at the irregularities and phonetic in- 

 adequacies of the established English spelling, have insisted that a 

 comparatively few of the most glaring irregularities should be 

 " simplified " at once, hoping that later on another larger batch of 

 " corrections " may be adopted. Of course, such alterations from 

 the established usage can only come gradually into general, or estab- 

 lished, use; not in less than fifty or seventy years, as may be seen 

 in the few small changes urged by Noah Webster. Meanwhile, if 

 the alterations meet with somewhat wide acceptance, there must be, 

 on the whole, very greatly increased irregularity in English spelling, 

 approaching, indeed, chaotic lawlessness. The repetition, and there- 

 by prolongation of this painful unruly condition of our orthography 

 in such an ill-considered effort at reform must remind one of the 

 pretended humanity of cutting off a dog's tail by stages of an inch 

 at a time. Would it not be far better to devise a practical and 

 thoroughgoing system of orthography to be used alongside of the 

 present established usage ; and to become more and more used, 

 until at last, it may become altogether adopted and universally used ? 



There are serious difficulties, however, in setting up a practical 

 and thoroughgoing system of orthography. Any plan of reformed 

 orthography should never fail to keep in mind the necessity of being 

 thoroughly practical, if the least hope be entertained of its coming 

 into universal, or even common, use. The great, widespread vogue 

 of the Roman alphabet is doubtless due to its even rude simplicity ; 

 and in many hundred years it has been impossible to introduce into 

 general use more than a very few extremely simple modifications of 



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