370 LYMAN— A PRACTICAL RATIONAL ALPHABET. [Oct. i, 



ing of a well-fitting closure), may make bold to put forward by 

 their majority vote some alphabetic, or orthographic, system (as the 

 Japanese Roman Letter Society did), and may really delay for a 

 long time the adoption of an altogether rational and practical method. 

 It would be much better for individuals to propose their own plans, 

 and put them into use by themselves and by a portion of the public. 

 Gradually, the best of such plans would take the lead, and come into 

 more and more general use, without having to overcome at the outset 

 the prestige of the dominant approval of a high-sounding society or 

 committee. In any case, it would clearly take many years for such 

 a rational new system fully to supplant the present established usage. 



Meantime, it might be advisable to do something towards 

 simplifying the learning of the present established spelling. To be 

 sure, the difficulty of learning it has been much exaggerated, owing 

 to the general extreme neglect of the study. It seems, however, 

 possible that the six weeks or so that appears to be ample for a half- 

 grown boy or girl to learn to spell well might be reduced to a couple 

 of weeks, at most, with a properly arranged booklet ; so that the 

 present multitudinous army of typists might readily fit themselves 

 to avoid tormenting their employers by ignorance of so simple an 

 art as spelling. 



But however advantageous a simple, purely phonetic spelling 

 might be to a defectively educated typist, or to an adult foreigner, 

 let it not by any means be imagined that the time spent by children 

 in acquiring our more complicated established orthography is use- 

 lessly thrown away. On the contrary, it is a highly useful discipline, 

 not only training the memory in a simple way, well adapted to 

 young children, but giving most valuable habits of close and accurate 

 minute observation (the precision that is the most efficient aid to the 

 conservation of language) , and enabling the easy understanding and 

 remembering of the proper mode of writing a new word or name. 

 Such habits may also be acquired by certain games of children, but 

 in a way not a whit more interesting or " useful " than the old- 

 fashioned spelling match. The comparatively recent way of teach- 

 ing to read by the general appearance of the word, and with total 

 neglect of syllabical spelling, is detestable, and produces results that 

 are full of torture and disgust to those who have to listen to such 

 reading. 



