with it. To deny this would be to deny an experience common to every one who has used or red simplified spelling.
A Dutch Superfluity
Ghost was originally speld in English, however, with- out the h (gost, goost, goste, etc.). The extra letter was inserted by printers imported from Holland, whose Dutch spelling-habit led them to believ that it was needed to indicate that the g was to be pronounst as in gun and not as in ginger. That the superfluous h would increase the emotional reaction excited by the word was far from their thoughts, since they inserted it likewize in such words as gospel, gizzard, gossip, etc., producing the forms ghospel, ghizzard, ghossip, etc., from which the h was in time simplified away, as it was also, in Holland, from the Dutch equivalent gheest, later geest.
It can not be supposed that our forebears f aild to get the same emotional reaction from gost that we do from ghost. No more is it to be expected that future generations, reverting to the earlier form, and bilding their mental associations around it, wil hav a different experience.
"Ugliness" Merely Strangeness What we call "ugliness" in the new forms is thus seen to be merely strangeness. When the sense of strangeness wears away, the impression of ugliness wil disappear with it. The new forms shock us now only because we so seldom see them. Those who habitually use them find them far more pleasing than the prevailing forms, because they ar economical, reasonable, logical, appropriate, and conform to a consistent and harmonious plan. As they come into more general
