TOPICS of the DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 263, 10 November 1906, Page 9

TOPICS of the DAY.

(From Our Special Correspondent. , ) LONDON', September 28. BERNARD SHAW ON SPELLING. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always interesting, and bis contribution to the simplificr] spelling ■discussion started by President Roosevelt makes pood reading. In the conr.=c r>f a letter 1o "'The Times,'" Mr. Shaw points out that though the President does not overrate the enormous importance of spelling reform, his methods cannot be regarded as an advance on those of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings. The Roosevelt spelling is not really a simplified spelling: it is a shortened spelling, which is quite a different matter, as a short spelling may leave a foreigner or a child quite as much in the dark as to the sound of a word a=, n long one. Moreover, the Roosevelt spelling anxiously disclaims any pretence to be phonetic-.; but, as Mr Shaw observes. we cannot, get away from phonetic spelling, '"because spelling is as necessarily and inevitably phonetic as moisture is damp." "When we begin by refusing to spell as we pronounce, we end by having to pronounce as we spell,' , declares Mr. Shaw. He instances the history of the words "oblige" and "envelope," awl continues: "As the working classes become literate and please themselves by dragging into ordinary conversation more find more long words svhicb. they have

never hoard pronounced, they introduce. wars of their own of pronouncing them, founded necessarily on the spelling. Programme, n vulgarism which offends the eye as Paris pronounced Paree in offends tho ear, has been in my hearing pronounced so as to rhyme to damn mc. That is how we shall all have to pronounce it some day. I fore/ec the time when I shall be forced to pronounce semiconscious as See my Conscious. Then (here is tho march of preciosity. Already 1 blush when the old habit betrays mc into calling Hothes clow. I have heard a tenor pronouncing the L in HandpiV Where rVr you walk. If Detford has become Depped Ford in spite of usage, I pec no reason to doubt that det will presently become debbed. I am fond of the word ham, meaning a country place larger than a hamlet. lam still allowed to speak of East Ham and West Ham, because the words are written separately, but when I speak of Lewis Ham, Elt Ham. or Peters Ham, 1 am suspected of a defect in my speech, almost as if I had spoken of Cars Halton (properly rhynxing to Walton) instead of Ker ShalltiL The. received pronunciations nowadays are Louis Sham, Peter Sham, L. Tham. and so on. And the people who support the bad spelling which is corrupting tho language in this fashion pretend to have a special regard for it, and prattle of th Bible and Shakespeare! The,y remind mc of a New York Police. Commissioner who once arrested a whole theatrical company for performing one of my plays, and explained, on being remonstrated with, that the Sermon on the Mount ivas good enough for him.' 1

Mr. Shaw's remedy for tho eccentricities of English spelling is a drastic, one. He wants new letters added to the alphabet until our consonants and vowels are for all practical purposes separately represented. The new letters must be "designed by an artist with a fully developed sense, of beauty in writing and printing." By the invention of these additional letters we should get. he says, "a word notation which may be strange at first (which dop* not matter), but wnich will bo neither ludicrous nor apparently ignorant (which does matter very much)." But I fp.ar Mr. Shaw will have fo fiigh in vain for his new sound-sym-bols.