Page:A plea for phonotypy and phonography - or, speech-printing and speech-writing (IA pleaforphonotypy00elliiala).pdf/27

23 the habit of using, but which only constitute about the 50th or 25th part of the language itself.

Still, learning to read is a very difficult affair—a very tedious, troublesome, wearing, mind-afflicting business; disheartening to the master, repulsive to the pupil; occupying years of toil, years that give many a distaste for books, and are consumed in a kind of drudgery, which makes the boy sigh for holidays.(30) For not only have the effective letters of our alphabet a variety of meanings, but they are used in such a capricious manner, so utterly disregardful of all analogy—all expectation, that it is, as we have seen, totally impossible for even a practised English reader to guess, with any approach to certainty, what may be meant for the pronunciation of any word which he has not previously seen, or how to write any word which he has only heard, and never seen written. We will give a very few examples of this capriciousness, which, were it not for its really hurtful nature, would be only a source of mirth, and which, as we hope to substitute a rational system of spelling that will put the present heterography among the curiosities of literature—its only proper place—we can afford to make merry with. Observe how the meaning of the same combination, not of vowel characters simply, but of vowels and consonants, varies in different words:—

and so on in many, many other instances, with which we will not detain the reader, as he may easily discover them for his own amusement.

The names of the letters in the heterotypic alphabet are, of course, supposed to indicate their sound; and there is a prim facie appearance of this being the case, which it is impossible to deny. Now in the case of the consonants, vowels have been added, and, in one instance (zed), a vowel and a consonant, in order to make up a pronounceable word, these vowels, of course, being only auxiliaries, which are to be rejected when the letter is used in composition. Let us see, then, what the values of the English letters are when thus determined:—

(30.) What a mistaken notion it is to make holydays or relaxations of study a pleasure much to be desired, to be granted as a favour, asked as something delightful, and made, perhaps, the mark of even royal good-will (as is frequently the case at Eton). Verily, our teachers have put a pitifully small margin of honey round the bitter wormwood of study. There is a way to make study pleasing; it is simply to suit the subject of study to the disposition and talent of the boy, to make him feel an interest in what he is taught, till the punishment would be to take his books from him, and he would only grudgingly admit of holydays for the relief of his master's mind. At present, we teach boys a barbarous and absurd heterography and two dead languages, and then feel surprised that they do not feel an interest in them. We all know that neither Scott, nor Liebig, nor Byron, nor Porson, nor many others that might be named, were brilliant at school; though the latter subsequently shone in school studies. ? When will the voice of warning be listened to?