movement—A. J. Ellis and I. Pitman—brought out the Fonetic Nuz, few of those who joined in the chorus of ridicule excited by the new alphabet stopped to consider that this uncouthness was purely the result of habit, and that the Authorized Version of the Bible in the spelling of its first edition would seem to us not less strange and uncouth than in the new-fangled phonotypy of Messrs Ellis and Pitman. Nor did they stop to consider that phonetics and phonetic spelling, so far from being innovations, are as old as civilization itself. The Alexandrian grammarians were not only phoneticians—they were spelling-reformers; they invented the Greek accents for the purpose of making the pronunciation of Greek easier to foreigners. The Romans, too, were phoneticians: they learnt Greek by phonetic methods, and paid great attention to niceties of pronunciation. The Sanskrit grammarians were still better phoneticians.
As a matter of fact, English spelling was still phonetic as late as the time of Shakespeare—in intention, at least. But although people still tried to write as they spoke, the inherited imperfections of their orthography made it more and more difficult for them to do so. Hence already in the 16th century a number of spelling-reformers made their appearance, including classical scholars such as Sir John Cheke, and A. Gill, who was head-master of St Paul's School in London. Gill has left us extracts from Spenser's Faerie Queene in phonetic spelling; but, strange to say, nothing of Shakespeare's, although he and Shakespeare were exact contemporaries. But Gill's and the other alphabets proposed were too intricate and cumbrous for popular use.
Nevertheless, some important phonetic reforms were successfully carried through, such as getting rid of most of the superfluous final e's, utilizing the originally superfluous distinctions in form between i and j, u and v, by using i, u only as vowels, j, v only as consonants, instead of at random—a reform which seems to have begun in Italy. Another important reform was the introduction of ea and oa, as in sea and boat, which had hitherto been written with ee and oo, being thus confused with see and boot.
All these were as much phonetic reforms as it would be to utilize long s and tailed z (ʃ, ʒ) to denote the final consonants in fish and rouge respectively; a reform first suggested by A. J. Ellis, who was himself the first to call attention to the works of these early phoneticians and to utilize them in the investigations enshrined in his great work on Early English Pronunciation.
With all its defects, the present English spelling is still mainly phonetic; we can still approximately guess the pronunciation of the vast majority of words from their spelling. So when we say that English spelling is unphonetic we merely mean that it is a bad phonetic spelling; and all that spelling-reformers aim at is to make this bad into a good phonetic spelling, that is, an efficient and easy one. But the difficulties are great; and the more we know of phonetics, and the more we experiment with different systems of spelling, the more formidable do they appear. One of the difficulties, however, that is commonly supposed to stand in the way of spelling-reform is quite imaginary: namely, that it would destroy the historical and etymological value of the present system. Thus E. A. Freeman used to protest against it as “a reckless wiping out of the whole history of the language.” Such critics fail to see that historical spelling, if carried out consistently, would destroy the materials on which alone history can be based, that these materials are nothing else but a series of phonetic spellings of different periods of the language, and that if a consistent historical and etymological spelling could have been kept up from the beginning, there would have been no Grimm's Law, no etymology; in short, no comparative or historical philology possible.
The advantages of beginning a foreign language in a phonetic notation are many and obvious. In the first place, the learner who has once mastered the notation and learnt to pronounce the sounds the letters stand for, is able to read off at once any text that is presented to him without doubt or hesitation, and without having to burden his memory with rules of pronunciation and spelling. Another advantage of phonetic spelling is that when the learner sees the words written in a representation of their actual spoken form he is able to recognize them at once when he hears them. And if the learner begins with the phonetic notation, and uses it exclusively till he has thoroughly mastered the spoken language, he will then be able to learn the ordinary spelling without fear of confusion, and quicker than he would otherwise have done.
Spelling-reform may be carried out with various degrees of thoroughness. After the failure of many schemes of radical reform, an attempt was made to begin with those numerous spellings which are both unphonetic and unhistorical, or are against the analogy of other traditional spellings. Accordingly, in 1881 the Philological Society of London “aproovd (sic) of certain partial corections (sic) of English spellings,” which were also approved of by the American Spelling-reform Association; and a list of them was issued jointly by the two bodies, and recommended for general adoption. A similar movement has been started in France. But the general feeling appears to be that it is better to keep the ordinary spelling unchanged, and wait till it is possible to supersede it by one on a more or less independent basis.
If the existing Roman alphabet is made the basis of the new phonetic notation of any one language, the most obvious course is to select one of the various traditional representations of each sound, and use that one symbol exclusively, omitting, of course, at the same time all silent letters. A. J. Ellis's English Glossic is an example of such a phonetic spelling on a national basis. The following is a specimen:—
Ingglish Glosik iz veri eezi too reed. Widh proper training a cheild foar yeerz oald kan bee redili taut too reed, Glosik buoks.
But a system which, like this, writes short and long vowels with totally different symbols (i, ee) is only half phonetic: it is phonetic on an unphonetic basis.
A fully phonetic system, in which, for instance, long vowels and diphthongs are expressed by consistent modifications or combinations of the symbols of the short vowels, and in which simple sounds are, as far as is reasonable and convenient, expressed by single letters instead of digraphs such as sh, must necessarily discard any national basis., The best basis on the whole is obtained by giving the letters their original common European sounds, i.e. by returning to the Late Latin pronunciation, with such modifications and additions as may be advisable. As regards the vowels at least, this Latin basis is very well preserved in German and Italian. In French, on the other hand, the Latin tradition was greatly corrupted already in the earliest period through the rapid changes which the language underwent. Thus when the Latin u in luna assumed the sound it now has in French lune, the symbol u was still kept; and when the sound u afterwards developed again out of the diphthong ou, this digraph was used to denote the sound. So when the French system of spelling came into use in England after the Norman Conquest these unphonetic symbols were introduced into English spelling, so that such a word as Old English and Early Middle English hūs, “house,” was written hous in the Late Middle English of Chaucer, although the sound was still that of Scotch hoos, ou (ow) being also used to denote a true diphthong (ou) in such words as knou, know, from Old English cnāwan.
By returning, then, to the original values of the letters we get the “Romic” or international (Continental) basis as opposed to the Glossic or national basis. Thus the passage quoted above appears as follows in Sweet's “Broad Romic” notation:—
iŋliʃ glosik iz veri iizi tu riid. wið prope treiniŋ a tʃaild fɔə jiəz ould kən bii redili tɔt to riid glosik buks.
Another important general distinction is that between “broad” and “narrow” systems of notation. A broad notation is one which makes only the practically necessary distinctions in each language, and makes them in the simplest manner possible, omitting all that is superfluous. From a practical point of view the necessary distinctions are those on which differences of meaning depend. A distinction of sound which is significant in one language may be insignificant in another. Thus the distinction between close é and open é, ê is significant in French, as in pécher, pêcher; so if in French phonetic writing the former
