Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/46

 tiv(e), definit(e), determin(e), promis(e), etc., where the preceding vowel is "short"; retains it—until the public is prepared to accept a better principle of notation—in words like alive, finite, define, etc., where the preceding vowel is "long" ; but does not advize its extension.

Silent Letters as Diacritics

To indicate the quantity or quality of a vowel by the addition of another, silent, letter, insted of by a dia- critic mark, or "accent," is a frequent, and—with the present paucity of vowel signs, and the wel-founded prejudice against diacritics—a defensible practis in English spelling. iether method is a makeshift; and, while the use of diacritics is the more sientific method, the use of silent letters has certain practical advan- tages. The objection to it on sientific grounds is that it givs rize to vowel combinations that ar not—what all vowel combinations should be—true difthongs. To separate the diacritic sign—whether a simple mark or another letter—from the vowel it is used to qualify by an intervening consonant is, however, clumsy and unsientific, demanding amendment.

Not Inconsistent

In recommending the spellings delite and spritely, the Board does no violence to its principles, since in these two instances it seeks merely to restore historic and les objectionable forms. Delight came into the language as delite, and has no relation to any of the words ending in -ight Its changed spelling, to accord with a more complex analogy, was made without justification. A similar attempt to change sprite to spright was not permanently successful, but by a curi -