Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/10

2 friend, heifer, foreign, Leicester, leopard, many, oecumenical, said, says.

There ar at least 20 different ways of representing the sound of sh, as in ship (ship, sure, issue, mansion, schist, pshaw, conscience, conscientious, moustache, nauseous, suspicion, partial, partiality, mission, ocean, oceanic, machine, fashion, fuchsia) ; at least 24 ways of representing the sound of a, as in fate (a, aye, bay, arraign, straight, weigh, vane, vain, vein, obey, allegro, reign, champagne, gauge, demesne, gaol, Gael, dahlia, halfpenny, Maine, matinee, ballet, eh, yea); and so on.

Many words contain, in writing and printing, letters that ar not sounded at all in speech, as b in lamb, debt; c in scissors; e in are, have, heart, lived; g in diaphragm; h in ghost, school, rhyme; u in build, honour, mould; etc.

Our spelling has become so irrational that we ar never sure how to spel a new word when we hear it, or how to pronounce a new word when we read it.

Like Chinese

Indeed, the present tendency in the scools is to disregard the fonetic basis of English spelling, and to treat the written and printed words as ideografs—like Chinese—the pupils being taught to recognize a word by its appearance as a whole, rather than by a futil attempt to analize the supposed sounds of the letters composing it. Vast amounts of mony and incalculable years hav been spent in efforts, never wholly successful, to teach children to memorize the intricate and unreasonable combinations of letters that conventionally represent the spoken words of the English tung—a feat that, more than any other accomplishment, is unreasonably assumed to stamp them as "educated".