Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/264

250 pily," it says, "we have no English Academy to guard the purity and integrity of the language. Everything is left to the sense and loyalty of decently cultivated people." But even the Triad admits that American usage, in some instances, is "correct." It is, however, belligerently faithful to the -our-ending. "If it is correct or tolerable in English," it argues somewhat lamely, "to write labor for labour, why not boddy for body, steddy for steady, and yot for yacht?" Meanwhile, as in Canada, the daily papers slide into the Yankee orbit.

The current movement toward a general reform of English-American spelling is of American origin, and its chief supporters are Americans today. Its actual father was Webster, for it was the long controversy over his simplified spellings that brought the dons of the American Philological Association to a serious investigation of the subject. In 1875 they appointed a committee to inquire into the possibility of reform, and in 1876 this committee reported favorably. During the same year there was an International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography at Philadelphia, with several delegates from England present, and out of it grew the Spelling Reform Association. In 1878 a committee of American philologists began preparing a list of proposed new spellings, and two years later the Philological Society of England joined in the work. In 1883 a joint manifesto was issued, recommending various general simplifications. Among those enlisted in the movement were Charles Darwin, Lord