Imatges de pàgina
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The argument upon this point is simple. Let the question be one of simply teaching the art of reading; and let k mean k, and s mean s,-nothing beyond, nothing short of this. Let e be nowhere; either absolutely ejected from the alphabet, or used with another power. At least, let it be made wholly independent of both kand s. Let each word beginning with the proper sound of these two letters be spelt accordingly, or in the natural manner: or, changing the expression, let can and contrary, be spelt like kill and kettle, as kan and kontrari. In like manner let city and cider be spelt siti and sider. What happens when the child is taught to spell these words? Simply what happens when he is taught to spell tabby or tippet, lily or loving. K is to him ast; and sas l. What knows he, or cares to know, or ever dreams of being expected to know, anything about any difference between the vowels which may, or may not, follow? Enough if he knows ior a, e oro; for what they are in and of themselves. Whether they affect the sound of the consonant which precedes them, he never thinks of asking. And it is well that he does not. Provided that the alphabet and the orthography are merely what they are meant to be, phonetic, he has no need to ask.

It is clear that, in this case, k and s are simply in the position of b and t, p and d, or any other letters: and it is equally clear that when c is introduced it is in a different one, and this a non-natural

one.

Now once again be it stated that it is not in behalf of readers, but for children learning to read, that this treatise is written. Phonetic spelling, and phonetic spelling alone, suits these. It suits others besides: but it is enough to show that for those who learn to read it is a necessity. Yet the arguments are not addressed to children. True, they are addressed to those in whose hands the education of the present generation of the children lies; and among them it may (it is hoped) be said without discourtesy that there are many objections, which, to say the least, require to be reconsidered.

SECTION XXXI.

THE DEMERITS OF THE OTHER CONSONANTS COMPARED WITH THOSE OF C.-NONE OF THEM NON-NATURAL.

The fault of non-naturalism is co-extensive with the influence of the cas a substitute fork: and is limited by it. The other consonants are, one and all, open to exceptions; but they are of a different and a more venial kind. Let us take them in order, beginning with the Liquids.

The Liquids, as a class, are very regular in their import, and where they are not so the explanation of their irregularity is evident. Thus, when either Iorr loses, or changes, its natural sound, it is when it follows a vowel; the sound of which has been, to some extent, modified by the contact. With I we find this in such words as falcon and salmon. We know here that, though the presence of l, according to the current pronunciation of these words is, phonetically, objectionable, it was at some earlier (and that not a very distant) period not only justifiable but natural and necessary. The consonantal sound has since been softened down, and that of the vowel only remains In "falcon" (faucon) it is in the first stage of its change; in "salmon (sammon) the change has gone further. To those, however, who say saumon the two l's are in the same category. Ras has just been stated, agrees with I in changing its consonant character for that of a vowel. But this is, also, a natural, and explicable change.

The sound of the a in "father," or of the a of the French and German languages, differs from that of the a in fate and the a in fat, in the same way that the sound of aw in bawl differs from that of the o in note or not. The e, too, at the end of such words as meine, deine, etc., in German=mine, thine, is of this character. It is not mute like the French e. It is not sounded like y, as it would be, were it sounded at all, in English. It is not sounded like er, as the Germans sound it; for between the pronunciation of meine and meiner they make a decided and important difference; and one that often puzzles an Englishman. Nine Englishmen out of ten, especially if they come from the southern counties, think that, if they are told to pronounce the -e in meine, but not to pronounce it as meini, meinee, or meiny, they have no alternative but to pronounce it as meiner. And, in one sense, their opinion is correct. The sounds of the two words are alike; but it is not the vowel -e which he pronounces as er; but the liquid r which he pronounces so lightly as to make it undistinguishable from the simple vowel.

Against the other two liquids, m and n, the little that can be said is that one of them is occasionally mute. They might both be so; if it were not for a mere accident in the English language. Nafter m is silent; and "condemn" is sounded as if it ended in m only. The combination nm happens not to occur in English, otherwise m would be mute also; and the statement that m and n could not come together at the end of the same syllable might take a place in our grammars.

This, again, ain, is bad spelling that has once been good. When condemn was a Latin word, it was, at least, a word of three syllables; in which case, m and n which are now crowded together might be what we may call distributed; e.g. "condem-no, condem-natus. However, as the -o and -atus here are no parts of the original root, but removeable or changeable affixes, and as in the English language they are ignored, the contact of m and n gives an unpronounceable, or, at least, an inconvenient combination.

The next class consists of the three sonants b, v, and d. At the present time there is nothing at all against v; whatever may have been the case when it was written instead of u. Nor is there more than one charge against b; and this is the fact that in certain words like “subtle, tle, debtor, dumb," ." it is mute. This, however, like the combination mn is obsolete rather than vicious orthography. D would be as unexceptionable in its character as v and b if it were not the fact of being what would be called by a Hebrew grammarian a servile letter; i.e., a letter which is not only found in the body of a word but is made subservient to its inflection. Such is the case with d in "plant-ed, mov-ed, call-ed," etc., i.e. in the past tense and in the passive participle of our verbs, of which it is what is called the sign. How this affects the steadiness and regularity of its sound is best considered when we come to the notice of s.

ph, th,

In

To the three surds p, f, t, we may add s; for although this last letter, being connected with e, is, strictly speaking, foreign to the present notice, it touches the present group at a point too important to be overlooked. Of p, taken by itself, it may be said that, like b, it is occasionally silent, as in psalm: to which it is scarcely necessary to add that in psalm, as in debtor, it is only out of place in the present stage of the language. Of p, t, and s, collectively, it may be said that in the combinations and sh (the so-called aspirates) they are out of place altogether. Of t, in particular, something more may be said; viz., that when it is sounded as in the, thine, etc., it is doubly so: inasmuch as if the combination with h were legitimate, the combining consonant should be here not t but d. Now here we have a rough sketch of the elements in the way of spelling of no less than ten letters of the English alphabet; against which we set those of the nine connected with e: and we see, at once, that the difference between the two classes is enormous. some sense, indeed, it is a balancing of c, by itself, against nearly half the consonants; inasmuch as the other letters of the class which it represents are, to a great extent, what they are, on account of the connection. The exact nature, however, of the comparison is not worth either enlarging or refining on. The reader has a general view of the relations of the two classes with which it deals; and it may safely be said that no undue charge has been laid against the c series. We can scarcely say as much of the other. In this series have been placed the three non-natural combinations of p, t and s, with h, so as to form three digraphs for sounds that should only be denoted by single signs. It is probable, however, that this is not the right place for them. It is not with the three mutes that the offence lies. It is rather to be charged upon the h: indeed of the consonants which precede it, each is in its right place, provided only thath be; i.e., if fis to be spelt by means of h and any second letter, p is the letter that is required. And so it is with sh. It is the h, then, that has no business to be where it is. If, however, it were otherwise, thes would stand where it ought to do. In th as a sign for the first sound in thine (dh), there is a genuine error; since t is in a place where, under any circumstances, it is an intruder.

And other abatements may be added. With both landrit is a question of orthoepy rather than of orthography: and there are many who may argue that words like falcon and salmon are not so much mis-spelt as mispronounced. At any rate, there are plenty of speakers who say saumon; and this is one degree nearer to the spelling. Meanwhile, the naturalist, who has often to deal with the word in its more primitive form, always pronounces the lin "salmo" and "salmonide." So long, then, as there is a notable portion of the community which says saumon, where the remainder says sammon; or a similar body of speakers which calls a faucon a falcon, the question of spelling is merely one of choosing between two pronunciations. A wrong choice may be made; yet, nevertheless, the spelling may be strictly phonetic. This applies in a still greater degree toras it is sounded, or rather not sounded, in farther. They are many who absolutely make no appreciable difference between this word and father. The same persons, in most cases, if they have no knowledge of any language but their own, would, if required to write down the sound of the French, German, and Italian a, write ar. Foreigners who have asked for my own initials, and on being told that it is R. G., have, more than once, written A. G. On being corrected the answer has been,-“Oh, yes! it is err." The evidence, however, as to the fact is ample. Noris the explanation that the difference between the a in father, and the aw in bawl, and ar and or, is merely a matter of degree, difficult. With the exception of the tongue, the different parts of the mouth are in the same position in respect to each other. With r, however, the tongue vibrates between the lower part of the mouth and the palate. These vibrations may be of any degree of strength or weakness; and when they become evanescent the sound of r disappears. After a short vowel, the same result may be expected; so that er as sounded in the German "mein-er," becomes (the German) "meine," in the mouth of an Englishman who speaks without due care. And, what is worse, u, andă are sounded as ě, giving ber as the sound of both bür and fir. This is a fact which embarasses the phonetic reformer; for it is a serious thing to eliminate the r, yet it must be done if we will carry out phoneticism to the extreme. At present it is enough to say that this softening, or reduction, of the sound of r till it absolutely disappears is not universal, however widely it may be prevalent.

There is, then, no undue over-weighting of the e series; but rather the contrary. The c series is non-natural: the other, faulty, but natural. Let us measure the comparative ease or difficulty with which these several details can be explained, by asking how they would strike an intelligent child, or anyone, indeed, learning to read; -the special persons who have a paramount interest in the matter. Should he have before him a word like debtor, or climb, and ask how it came to pass that, though the b was not to be pronounced, it was still used in the spelling, a very moderate amount of common sense on the part of the teacher would furnish an intelligible answer. The inquirer could be told that, when the word was first spelt, the b was actually sounded, but that, in the course of time, some persons left off pronouncing it, and then others, and, at last, everybody contrived to pass it over. This he could certainly understand; and he would, also, when he tried to say "d-e-b-t-o-r," and "c-l-i-m-b," letter for letter, see that the b was really in the way, and that, as it was an awkward sound to utter in certain situations, the easier forms dettor and clime took the place of the others. He might probably say-"Just what I should do myself. If I were talking in a hurry, I should certainly drop the b." The omission, then, of the silent letter he could understand; nor would it be difficult to complete the explanation. It is not to be expected that the changes in spelling and writing can be accommodated at once to those of speaking and pronunciation: especially when it is not likely that all the people in England would agree upon a change at the same time. The process is gradual. The change in speech comes first, that in spelling follows after. I do not say that this is the clearest way of putting the matter; nor yet that every learner would fix his attention upon the explanation at length. There are degrees on both sides. There are teachers who are indifferent at explanations, and there are learners who can never attend. I only submit that the difficulty is one in which a very simple appeal to the understanding is sufficient. The same applies to the r in farther and the

a

in father; though in this case it is possible that no questions would be asked. They are few who, in the first instance, are conscious of sounding the two combinations alike. The eye misleads them; and they believe in the difference because they see it, and because the meanings of the words are different. At any rate the answer is easy. It is simply true that the habit of identifying them is, by no means, general, and that, thousands and thousands, sound the r fully, and differentiate the sounds. Some, without doubt, do it with an effort, on the strength of their studies in orthoepy. But many do it unconsciously. Well, the answer to this is that the difference is real, but that so many people neglect it, that it looks as if the spelling were in fault. With slight variations, an explanation of this kind will carry us over nine-tenths of the difficulties created by these mute or silent letters, when the fact of their being obsolete is the cause of their being mute. Now this is the simplest explanation of a non-phonetic form of spelling in the whole domain of orthography; and it applies to the consonants of the class under notice generally. On the other hand, no rule of equal simplicity applies to c and its congeners. Here the rules rest on two wholly distinct bases; (1) the fact of three signs being used in the expression of two sounds, one that, of itself, requires explanation; and (2) the conditions under which each of them is used. That this is far more complex, and far less capable of being elucidated by a mere appeal to the common-sense of the learner than the other, is evident; and it cannot be argued that the simpli

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