Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/11

Rh English Spelling Originally Fonetic

English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and most other languages, and changed as pronunciation changed. In its case, however, various causes combined to interfere with this orderly process. Among them wer the variations in the early dialects, the different spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance to make our spelling "etimological," and the continual ingrafting of words from other living tungs in their foren spellings—spellings that they retaind with slight modifications after their pronunciation had greatly changed in English speech.

English writers before the invention of printing, and for some time afterward, largely followd their own notions in regard to spelling, but the general aim was to indicate the pronunciation of the spoken word; and it is possible for scolars to determin with a fair degree of accuracy how English was pronounst at different periods in those days.

Invention of Printing, Effect on Spelling

With the invention of printing, however, English spelling began to cristalize into more or les fixt forms. This took place gradually thru the action of the "chapels', or printing houses, in selecting from the current spellings of a given word the one that most pleasd the fancy of the master printer, and adopting it as the "office stile". Unfortunately, the earliest printers of English wer nativs of Holland, who, with far too little knowledge of English or of its proper pronunciation to fit them to be arbiters of English spelling.