Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixv. (1921), No. 6 



VI. — Some Chapters from the History of English Spelling" 

 and the Need of a New Chapter. 



By Miles Walker, M.A., D.Sc, 



Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Victoria University 

 of Manchester, Faculty of Technology. 



(Read March 8th, iQ2i. Received for publication May 24th, 1Q21.) 



The English Language is spoken by over 200 million 

 people. Its widespread use is not so much due to its inherent 

 virtues as to the enterprise of our ancestors who went abroad 

 and peopled a great part of the American Continent, the great 

 islands of Australia and New Zealand and other colonies. 

 The language itself has many virtues and many faults. It has 

 a very simple grammar, and the conjugation of most of the 

 verbs is of the simplest kind. Indeed, we may say that 

 English is a conspicuous example of the fact that conjugation 

 by means of complicated suffixes is entirely unnecessary, the 

 only requirements being a few auxiliary verbs and a few 

 simple suffixes to form the past tense and the participles. On 

 the other hand, while we have demonstrated this important 

 principle we have neglected wholly to take advantage of it, 

 for many of our common verbs have conjugations of the most 

 shocking irregularity. Another advantage in our grammar is 

 its freedom from meaningless genders and from the agreement 

 of the adjective with the noun. These must seem blessings to 

 foreigners studying our language. One of our greatest virtues 

 is the enormous choice of words for the expression of the finest 

 gradation of thought. We have a great supply of mono- 

 syllables by which an extensive connotation can be expressed 

 in a small fraction of a second. On the other hand, we have 

 a good choice of long words from which we can construct 

 great undulating sentences such as Milton and Burke revelled 

 in. One very serious defect in our language is the number of 

 words which are spelt alike but which have entirely different 

 meanings. 



But by far the greatest defect in our language is its 

 spelling. It has been said by one of our greatest philologists : 

 " Considered as a representation of the sounds of the spoken 

 language, the present English orthography is one of the worst 

 in existence. Almost every sound is expressed in several, 

 different ways " 



June 2^th, ig2i. 



