Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/544

540

having undergone since that time considerable change which the written form does not indicate.

M. Paul Meyer then calls attention to the fact that "the great obstacle to the development of a spelling both logical and suited to our language has been the inadequacy of the Latin alphabet, which could not express sounds originating after the Latin period."

In the sixteenth century various expedients were suggested to remedy this poverty of symbols. About 1530, Geoffrey Tory, a printer, introduced the use of the cedilla, already known among the Italians and Spaniards, to indicate the sibilant sound of c; but it occurred to no one to employ a similar device to distinguish the two sounds of g. Geoffrey Tory also used the accent aigu (′), but without giving it exactly the value it has to-day; he made use of it solely to distinguish the e pronounced from the e mute. The accent grave, which distinguished the open e from the closed, was not introduced until much later. In 1562 Ramus succeeded in having the distinctions between i and j, between u and v, pass into common use.

He shows clearly that French spelling has suffered from some of the same unfortunate influences which have reduced English spelling to its lamentable condition:

In spite of its lack of uniformity, written French had had until then a phonetic tendency. Unfortunately, there was an antagonistic movement under the influence of humanism, which introduced into the notation of speech certain silent letters to indicate the derivation of words: they wrote aultre, advocat, doigt, droict, faict, poids, scavoir, soubs, subject, etc., in order to make the true or supposed etymology of these words visible. This was absurd; there was no need to put an l in autre to represent that in the Latin alter, which was already shown by the u (altre, autre). These 'superfluities,' so called by the Abbé d'Olivet, editor-in-chief of the third edition of the 'Dictionaire de l'Academie' (1740), in a great many cases, but not in all, have been expunged from the language.

Similar superfluities abound in English still, and they are still defended by arguments like those contained in the preface to the first dictionary of the French Academy (1694). "The Academy adheres to the old spellings accepted among men of letters, because they aid in showing the origin of the words. That is why the academy believes that it ought not to authorize the abridgments which certain individuals, chiefly printers, have made, because these omissions destroy every vestige of the analogy and relation between words that are derived from Latin, or from any other language. Thus the words corps and temps are given with a p, and the words teste, honneste with an s, to indicate that they come from the Latin tempus, corpus, testa, honestus" As M. Meyer asks, "What value can be given to a spelling founded on such fluctuating principles?" And he quotes Gaston Paris as saying that "the academy, deceived by superficial data, thought it was furthering scientific accuracy by adopting traditional spelling; in reality they followed routine and added to confusion." M. Meyer declares that "what should have been done, had the academy understood its mission, would have been to follow methodically the path taken, instinctively and without purpose, by the writers of the middle ages; a gradual modification of the system of representing sounds was