The French are a logical race and they have not frightened at a theory as easily as the two peoples who speak English. And, therefore, the report of the French commission reveals the fact that they are looking further into the future than any English-speaking committee would dare to do while retaining the hope of ever achieving any practical result. The French commission ventures to hint at more radical reforms than have entered the minds of our own Simplified Spelling Board. Yet these final suggestions of theirs are as significant of the trend of scientific opinion as they are interesting in themselves:
These are the changes we propose, and which we hope will not be deemed excessive. The committee is not at all insensible to the objections which may be advanced against its work. The chief one is that the proposed alterations are not the result of a system of spelling logically devised, all of whose elements are rigorously coordinated. But it was not the business of the committee to create a new system of spelling; they were simply authorized to remove as far as possible the anomalies which complicate our spelling and render the study of it so difficult for children and foreigners. The committee has had, therefore, to use as a basis the present system of spelling, which represents a bygone condition of the language—and to restrict itself to regulating this system. They themselves admit that they have not even succeeded fully in this modest attempt. In the cases where a rational and uniform notation could not be obtained except by creating new conventional spellings, or at the price of too numerous changes, they refrained, leaving the present spelling intact in spite of its defects. But their self-imposed restraint does not bar subsequent changes. They foresee in the future reforms more general than those they endeavored to prepare by partial changes. Many of the members have even expressed the hope which ought to be recorded here, that some day a new committee composed not only of grammarians but also of phonetic experts may be set to work to develop a system of spelling better adapted than ours to the present state of the language, and sufficiently elastic to follow it through its inevitable changes.
But from now on, important advantages will be secured if the moderate propositions of the committee are accepted. At any rate, the teaching of the language will be greatly facilitated; the number of exceptions that the pupils must learn will be noticeably diminished. Our language will be more easily acquired by foreigners. Finally, by the suppression of inconsistent and obscure forms which make the real pronounciation doubtful, it will be made possible to teach in our schools, that greatly neglected subject, orthoepy. This teaching alone is able to prevent errors in pronunciation which, individual at first, finish by becoming general.
