The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. FRIDAY, MAY 7. 1915. THE NEW FROM OF SPELLING

Horowhenua Chronicle, 7 May 1915, Page 2

The Chronicle . PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. FRIDAY, MAY 7. 1915. THE NEW FROM OF SPELLING

The new spoiling, in a modified degree, lias become engrafted on the NewZealand education system. To some extent, modified new spelling has been ineoporated in this system for three years or so. but beyond confidential statements the average enquirer had no proof of it. The incorporation of certain new forms of spelling has reached a stage so arbitrary that the teachers in certain primary schools have an Education 'Department regulation that such common founts of spelling as "plough," and "gramme'' shall not be recognised as correct. The regulation has something of an astonishing quality for middle-aged men. but now that the new spelling has got into the public school curriculum these old-time prejudices for old-time combinations of letters will have to give way. "Be not the first by whom the new is tried : nor yet the last to lay the old aside" is an old-time saw that rings appropriately to-day; so we concede that the "program" of the concert will find a place in "The Chronicle" henceforth, just as it will be our future "honor" to "labor" to keep "plow" and "jail" out of our columns until the homeopathic dose of the first three words I quoted above shall have been assimilated. Doubtless this course will come easy in time, and then the rest of the Education Department's program may be sivallowed allopathically. The eye becomes accustomed to such changes only gradually, but the surety that it "does" become accustomed may be obtained if anyone looks up English publications of the Seventeenth Century, and.see* such words in them as "praeeminent." instead of the now familiar '"pre-eminent," which must have seemed a daring innovation in the spelling in the eyes of our forefathers. Vet the same books will show the present so-called Americanism of "center." and "jail" and many other combinations of letters now strangely unfamil-

iar. Pope's couplet, quoted above, riugs true indeed, and if that the Education Department will set its face against attempts to change the spellings that convey (sometimes) a email history, of world events in them, the prospect of seeing the modernised spelling made world-wide ere long may be viewed with equanimity. And, maybe, when the present and a few more generations shall have passed away the literature of the present century -will be turned up to prove that the "plow" of Shakespeare's and Chancers day came to be spelt "plough" during the nineteenth century and was rehabilitated in its. more olden dress during the Twentieth.