Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/67

 ings, like ail, ale; bare, bear; bough, bow; beau, bow; to, too, two; etc.

If that seems an objection, it wil be offset by the service the simpler spelling wil render in indicating the distinctiv sounds of words now speld the same way, but pronounst differently, like bow (a knot, to incline the hed); lead (a metal, to go before); read (present tense, past tense); slough (a swamp, to cast off); sow (a female pig, to plant); tear (water from the eye, to rend apart); etc.

As a matter of fact, easily demonstrable, different spellings ar not needed to distinguish homonims. No such distinction is made or is possible in the spoken language. The meaning is plainly indicated by the position of the word in the sentence, by its obvious relation to the other words. Write the sentence down, and the meaning wil be as apparent in one spelling as another. Try it. "He said a glas of ail was good for what aled him." "He fought the bare with his bear hands." "Oh, that this to, two, solid flesh would melt!" Such spellings and worse, by illiterate persons, may cause amusement, but do not hide the sense.

Not only is it unnecessary to distinguish homonims by different spellings, but they ar actually so distinguisht in comparativly few instances. There is scarcely a word in the English language that is not used in more than one sense—some of them in many very different senses. Box is a good example. Bank is another. Point—a word, by the way, speld with fonetic precision—is used in more than a hundred different senses. A suggestion that more than a hundred different spellings should be invented to distinguish these separate meanings would be greeted with horror or lafter as it was taken seriously or as it ought to be.