Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/545

Rh to preserve the connection between spoken and written language. Pronunciation, like vocabulary, alters, insensibly from generation to generation; the written words ought to record each change as it occurs." Asserting that it is impossible now to inaugurate suddenly a complete series of changes which might readily have been adopted had they been introduced gradually as need arose, M. Meyer tells us that his committee retained existing conventions in so far as they are not in conflict with other conventions no less worthy of consideration, and it denied any wish to establish a phonetic system of spelling. It limited its work to the correction of the most striking irregularities of the present spelling of French. Here again the attitude of this commission of French scholars is seen to be in absolute accord with that taken in America by the Simplified Spelling Board. And the reasons given for action are also almost identical:

With the contention that certain useless silent letters ought to be retained, because they reveal the derivation, M. Meyer has the impatience of a scholar; and he points out how the existence of these needless letters is dangerous to accuracy of pronunciation:

We write prompt, promptitude, dompter (although there was no p in the Latin domitare), indomptable. The Academy says plainly that in the words indomptable and prompt the p is silent. Nevertheless, we hear constantly the pronunciation dompter, promptitude, because the school masters who teach French to children, not having the Academy dictionary always at hand, are naturally inclined to pronounce words as they are written. The same cause of error exists in other languages. In English the g in recognize is pronounced, but formerly it was not even written; the g is a pedantic addition which has ended by making its way into the spoken usage. Fault and author are pronounced as they are written; formerly they were both written and pronounced faut and autor.

Littré noticed how intimately pronunciation was allied to spelling. They are two forces, he says, which react continually upon each other. When there is no extensive teaching of grammar, and the language is learned orally rather than by the eye, then pronunciation modifies spelling, which follows it closely. When, on the contrary, books play a large part in teaching the mother tongue, spelling influences pronunciation: the tendency is to pronounce all the letters, and traditional pronunciation succumbs in many places to the visible symbols. There are to-day frequent examples of this.

As might be expected, French teachers find the same fault with their illogical spelling that teachers of English find with ours, which is actually far more illogical than theirs and far more irregular. M. Meyer raises their objections with much sympathy:

Although it is to be regretted that children must make such prolonged efforts to learn to write in conformity with obsolete rules a language which they often speak very correctly otherwise, still the misfortune would not be without some compensation if these efforts contributed to the development of their reasoning powers; but they do not. Learning spelling is above all a