SIMPLIFIED SPELLING.

Otaki Mail, Volume 26, 23 June 1919, Page 4

SIMPLIFIED SPELLING.

Our readers may be interested to know (says the:Christchurch “Press”), that the Simplified Spelling Board, un r shaken by the war, is still at work and lias just issued a fresh list of improved words: “Ad, addrest, anser (d), ar, askt, bil (d), buru, catalog, det, engin, ciiuf, fil (d), fixt, giv> liav, insted, liv (d), program, rceeif, reeeiv (d), shal, sift, tel, telefoue, al (tho), tlioro, (ly), thru (out), twelv, wil, yu.” But it is not enuf —to indulge ourselves for once v/ith a simplified word —to adopt this fist, for the Board remarks: “When yu hav by praetis familiarised yourself with the 30 words, why not, for the sake of consistency, apply the principles exemplified bv. their spelling to other words'?” The Board is encouraged by the fact that “4.00 universities, colleges, and normal schools either use simplified spelling in their official publications and correspondence, or ‘permit .students to use them in their written work.” Of these institutions, 173 have formally adopted more than 200. simplified spellings, so tha t the cause is making sonic progress. No doubt, the Board believes that it is making the English language safe for cv-mocracy, but there is really nj reason wliv they should not have attacked the problem from the opposite, end. To

say that we ought to spell as- wp pronounce is not a bit more reasonable than to say that we should pronounce as we spell. Indeed, it is much less reasonable. To pronounce as we spell might bo.mildly reactionary; the other thing is really Bolshevism.