American Language (79 page)

It will be noted that Dr. Power, like most spelling reformers, is not quite faithful to his own system, for he spells
said
, not as
sed
, but in the orthodox manner. Another revolutionist, Frederick S. Wingfield of Chicago, proposes in his
fwnetik orthqgrafi
to employ the redundant
c, j, q, w
and
y
to represent the vowels in
at, eat, ah, oh
and
ooze
respectively, and to make various other changes in the values of the letters. Here is the Lord’s Prayer according to his system:

A somewhat similar scheme is that of Dr. R. E. Zachrisson, professor of English in the University of Upsala, Sweden. He calls it Anglic, and it seems to be backed by enthusiasts with plenty of cash, for a monthly magazine in advocacy of it was launched at Upsala in 1930, an illustrated
fortnietly
followed in 1931, and there are textbooks and phonograph records. Its rules fill nine pages of the official textbook,
⁴¹
and seem to be somewhat complicated. The consonants, with few exceptions, have their ordinary values, but there are many changes in the vowels, some of which are doubled or provided with mòdifying vowels. This clustering of vowels tends to be confusing, so italics or bold-face type are used to distinguish stressed syllables,
e.g.
, in
kreaet
(create) the
ae
is so distinguished. Here is the first sentence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in Anglic:

In 1927 the late Dr. Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate of England and founder of the Society for Pure English, began publishing a series of prose pamphlets embodying some new spellings and a few new letters. One of the latter was a symbol for the sound represented by
i
,
ic, ie, ei, y, ye, ig, igh, eigh, uy, ay, ai, ey
and
eye
in the words
I
,
indictment, tie, eider, fly, dye, sign, sigh, height, buy, ay, aisle, eying
and
eye
. It was an
i
with a hook attached to its right side, making it a sort of
h
with a dot over it. Another was a symbol for the
ng
of
sing
. It was an
n
with a similar hook. Dr. Bridges also used a script
a
to distinguish the broad
a
of
father
from the flat
a
of
cat
, and a script
g
to distinguish the soft
g
of
gentle
from the hard
g
of
thing
. Further, he omitted the final mute
e
in most situations, though retaining it when it indicated a long preceding vowel, as in
finite
, and when it occurred at the end of a syllable “which has a long vowel, and can
be recognized only as a whole, as
love
”
⁴³
These reforms got no support in England, and seem to have passed out with their distinguished author, who died in 1930.

On January 28, 1935, the Chicago
Tribune
announced out of a clear sky that it had adopted twenty-four simplified spellings and was preparing to add others from time to time. Its first list was rather cautious —
catalog
for
catalogue, cotilion
for
cotillion, controled
for
controlled, fantom
for
phantom, hocky
for
hockey, skilful
for
skillful, advertisment
for
advertisement, harken
for
hearken
, and so on. Many of these, in fact, were already in more or less general use. But when, in its second list, dated February 11, it added
agast
for
aghast, aile
for
aisle, bagatel
for
bagatelle, bailif for bailiff, burocracy
for
bureaucracy, crum
for
crumb
and
missil
for
missile
, it got into wilder waters, and when, in subsequent announcements, it proceeded to
genuinly
for
genuinely, hefer
for
heifer, herse
for
hearse, staf
for
staff, warant
for
warrant, doctrin
for
doctrine, iland
for
island, lether
for
leather, trafic
for
traffic
and
yern
for
yearn
, it was far out upon the orthographical deep.
⁴⁴
Its innovations met with a mixed reception. Some of its readers applauded, but others protested, and in a little while it was constrained to abandon
iland
. Its list did not include such favorites of the Simplified Spelling Board as
thro, thru
and
filosofy
.

But despite the fact that the activities of the board, as its secretary, Dr. Godfrey Dewey, admits sadly, have “slowed down almost to the stopping point,”
⁴⁵
it has probably had some influence upon the course of American spelling. It failed to bring in
tho
and
thoro
, but it undoubtedly aided the general acceptance of
catalog, program
and their congeners. The late George Philip Krapp of Columbia, who was certainly no Anglophobe, believed that
fonetic, fonograf, fosfate, fotograf
and the like were “bound to be the spelling of the future” in this country.
⁴⁶
Such forms as
burlesk, nabor, naborhood, nite,
⁴⁷
foto, sox, hi, lite, holsum, biskit, ho-made, thanx
and
kreem
, though they
still lack the imprimatur of any academic authority, are used freely by the advertising writers, and by such advance-agents of change as the contributors to
Variety
. The former try to get rid of the twelve ways of representing the
k
-sound by employing
k
itself whenever possible,
e.g.
, in
kar, klothes, klassy, kwality, kosy, kollege-kut, butter-krust, keen-kutter, kutlery, kleen, kake
, and so on.
⁴⁸
They also introduce many other novelties,
e.g., uneeda, trufit
(shoes),
wilcut
(knives),
veribest, dalite
(alarm clocks),
staylit
(matches),
az-nu
(second-hand),
shur-on
(eye-glasses),
slipova
(covers),
nota-seme
(hosiery),
kant-leek
(water-bottle), and the like. Most of these, of course, rise and fall with the commodities they designate, and thus have only the dignity of nonce-words, but in their very number there is some sign of a tendency. Meanwhile the advertisement writers and authors combine in an attempt to naturalize
alright
, a compound of
all
and
right
, made by analogy with
already
and
almost
. In my days as a magazine editor I found it in American manuscripts very often, and it not seldom gets into print.
⁴⁹
So far no dictionary supports it, but in “Webster’s New International” (1934) it is listed as “commonly found.” It has already migrated to England and has the imprimatur of a noble lord.
⁵⁰
Another vigorous newcomer is
sox
for
socks
. The
White Sox
are known to all Americans; the
White Socks
would seem strange, and the new plural has got into the
Congressional Record
.
⁵¹
Yet another is
slo
, as in
go slo
. And there are also
someway, someplace
, etc.,
drive urself
(automobiles for hire),
⁵²
nuf sed,
and
naptha
.
⁵³

In the treatment of loan-words English spelling is much more conservative than American. This conservatism, in fact, is so marked that it is frequently denounced by English critics of the national speech usages, and it stood first among the “tendencies of modern taste” attacked by the Society for Pure English in its original prospectus in 1913 — a prospectus prepared by Henry Bradley, Dr. Robert Bridges, Sir Walter Raleigh and L. Pearsall Smith,
⁵⁴
and signed by many important men of letters, including Thomas Hardy, A. J. Balfour, Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Maurice Hewlett, Gilbert Murray, George Saintsbury and the professors of English literature at Cambridge and London, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and W. P. Ker. I quote from this
caveat:

Since this was written, and probably at least partly because of it, there has been some change in England,
⁵⁶
but the more pretentious English papers continue to accent, and often italicize, words that have been completely naturalized in this country, e.g.,
café, début, portière, éclat, naïveté, régime, rôle, soirée, protégé, élite, gemütlichkeit, mêleé, tête-a-tête, porte-cochère, divorcée, fiancée
and
dénouement
. Even loan-words long since naturalized are sometimes used in their foreign forms,
e.g., répertoire
for
repertory, muslim
for
mos-lem, crêpe
for
crape
, and
légion d’honneur
for
legion of honor
. The dictionaries seldom omit the accents from recent foreign words. Cassell’s leaves them off
régime
and
début
, but preserves them on practically all the other terms listed above; the Concise Oxford always uses them. In the United States usage is much looser.
Dépôt
became
depot
immediately it entered the language, and the same rapid naturalization has overtaken
employé, matinée, débutante, negligée, exposé, résumé, hofbräu
, and scores of other loan-words.
Café
is seldom seen with its accent, nor is
señor
or
divorcée
or
attaché
. Writing in the
Atlantic Monthly
twenty years ago, Charles Fitzhugh Talman said that “the omission of the diacritic is universal. Even the English press of French New Orleans ignores it.”
⁵⁷
Mr. Talman listed some rather astonishing barbarisms, among them,
standchen
for
ständchen
in
Littell’s Living Age
, and gave an amusing account of the struggles of American newspapers with
thé dansant
, then a novelty. He said:

There has been some improvement in recent years, but not much. Even in the larger cities, the majority of American newspapers manage to get along without using foreign accents. They are even omitted from foreign proper names, so that
Bülow
becomes
Bulow
and
Poincaré
becomes
Poincare
. For a number of years the Baltimore
Evening Sun
was the only Eastern daily that, to my knowledge, had linotype mats for the common French and German accents. The New York
American
did not acquire a set until late in 1934, when they were laid in to print some short lexicographical articles that I was then writing for the paper. Even when they are in stock they are seldom used correctly, for American copy-readers take a high professional pride in their complete ignorance of foreign languages, as they do in their ignorance of the terminology of all the arts and sciences. For the former they have the example of Walt Whitman, who, according to Dr. Louise Pound, often omitted accents in “his manuscript notes and in early editions,” and used them incorrectly in his later editions.
⁵⁸
The
Congressional Record
avoids them as much as possible, and the State Department, ordinarily very conservative and English, has abandoned
visé
for
visa
, though it is faithful to
chargé
. With this iconoclasm the late Dr. Brander Matthews was in hearty sympathy. Writing in 1917, and dealing with
naïve
and
naïveté
, which he welcomed into the language because there were no English equivalents, he argued that they would “need to shed their accents and to adapt themselves somehow to the traditions of our orthography.” He went on: