Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/69

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ANSERS TO OBJECTIONS
29

practically, even if it does cost a little effort, and even if its benefit to the individual is not immediately apparent. The really worth-while benefits of a better spelling wil be les for the present than for future generations; but our children, and the generations that wil follow them, can not enjoy those benefits if the present generation wil not take some trouble, make some effort, now.

All that the Board asks of those who do not feel the impulse to make the effort, however, is not to oppose the efforts made by others. If, while they stand aside so as not to block the progress of the movement, they wil applaud and encourage it, so much the better; even if in doing so they employ in their writing the spelling to which they ar accustomd.

Wil Not Make Present Books Unreadable
Objection to simplified spelling has been made on the supposition that it "wil cut us off from the literature of the past," meaning that those taught in the new way wil be unable to read the books red today. This can not be so, because the present spelling wil be no more difficult to read by one who has learnd to spel the new way, than is the new spelling by one who has learnd the old way. Children who hav learnd to spel in the simplified way wil, in fact, read the books printed today as easily as we read books printed one and two centuries ago.

Past Literature Printed in Present Spelling
Those who make this objection can hardly be aware that the works of authors of former times that they enjoy and value ar not now printed with the spelling in which they wer written. Publishers habitually