THE SPELLING REFORM.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2498, 8 January 1877, Page 2

THE SPELLING REFORM.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

, Sib,—As there is a brisk discussion now going on in the leading educational journals of Great Britain and America on the subject of phonetic spelling, i c., the spelling of a word by its pronunciation, and as a reform is started in England for the purpose of doing away with the old—-the present-r-style of spelling, and as such reform is not confined exclusively to the above-named countries, but should be'in vogue wherever the English language is pp'okpn, Ideem jta £ay.our if you will publish this let.ter, Jt must occur fc'o most people, if not everybody, that the present style of spelling is cumbrous and t'aultful, and altogether out of vogue with the present strides of advancement educational matters hare taken. In the in-

fant class of any school on the Thames specimens of phonetic spelling may be heard; thus a writer in a Canadian newspaper, and the principal of a public school there, says:—" Apart from its perplexities everyone knows that spelling is no joke, but only those who hive made phonetics a study fully recognise the troubles that beset the learner. On the bare plea of humanity those having charge of infant classes ought to know, at all events, that such a study as phonetics exists. knowing even so much or so little, they would think more and dogmatise less iii the presence of their confiding, but reasoning and inquisiti-. s pupils." Illustrative of what 1 mean, permit me to picture just suck a scene as may be witnessed in, say, half the schools .in this province every day :— Teacher: Spell so. Pupil: S-o, so. Teacher: That's right; spell to. Pupil fails. Teacher: Can't you say t-o ? Pupil: T-o, toe. Teacher:. Nonsense! to is to, not toe. Now, Sammy, what is g-o ? Pupil: Please, ma'am, jo. Teacher: Well, well, I never saw such a lot. Do you not hear quite plainly that gee-o, is go? Of course they all say "Yes, ma'am," but they don't " see it" for all that. Teacher: Mary, you spell cat. Mary begins with k, when the good, wise, kind teacher says very crossly, "next." The next possibly blunders in c-a-l, and is rewarded by the teacher's smile, as she says, " Certainly it is ; c-a-t spells cat, just as plainly as p-i-g spells pig." And she is right, too, the wise teacher that she is, for c-a-t sounds sate, and' pig, piey. It is now believed by many that the day will come when the most sanguine supporters of. this new educational agency will have failed to estimate the debt which the world will one day admit to. be due to it as a replacer of that great existing obstacle to the diffusion of enlightenment and culture—our present barbarous and indefensible orthography. Philosophers are the men who are especially interested in the adoption of phonetic spelling, such philosophers as—Max Muller, Latham, Weiss, Skeatt, Grimmy, and Ellis being in the lead. " Why," says a writer, "is the opposition to- the -introduction of phonetic spelling so decided and firm." Because the change is too radical, answers an opponent (imaginary). Parents and teachers cannot themselves read phonetic spelling, and must encroach upon already well-occupied time; and it might not succeed at all. The " Gordian Knot Cut," a little pamphlet, says, in reference to phonetic spelling:—'• A child of 6 years of age will, after an eighteen months' course of phonetic spelling and reading in an infant school or at homo, be able to read phonetic spelling with fluency, and that another eighteen months of practice at our present spelling renders the child master of the latter also to a greater extent than is generally attained under the present system by children of the same rank of life at the age of fifteen." The same pamphlet, also contains the experience of Dr .Martin, vith regard to national schools of Portlaw, Ireland, in which hie reconnaended phonetic spelling as a great boon. By the use of this method of spelling, at least 80,000 words could be saved in each issue of the London Daily Telegraph. — I am, &c,

Phono.