“It’s not if you win or lose, but how you spell the words.” — Merriam-Webster.com
The English words that most Americans use have evolved over the past 400 or so years, with many of their spellings having changed a little bit — or, in some cases, a whole lot.
During our country’s early years, the spellings of many words underwent changes. For example, words such as “pathetick, connexion” and “dout” all became the words with which we are familiar today. So did “shew,” but instead of morphing into “shoe,” it transformed into “show.”
Beginning around the early 1800s, no less a word wonk than Noah Webster took a swing at changing the way we spell some common words — meeting with mixed results in the process. According to Merriam-Webster.com, some of Webster’s “wins” included changing the spelling of “mould” (which he called “incorrect orthography”) to “mold.”
The lexicographer also succeeded in changing “draught” (which rhymes with “raft”) to “draft,” and “gaol” to the more common spelling of “jail.” Another win for Webster was his success in changing Samuel Johnson’s spelling of “centre” from 50 years earlier into “center.”
On the other hand, Noah Webster failed in his attempt to change the spelling of “ache” (which he called an “orthographic affront to susurrus words as: mustache, cache and panache”) to “ake.” He also couldn’t convince people that “soop” was better than the French-inspired “soup.”
A couple other notable fails for Webster were his tries to change “women” to “wimmin,” (leaving us with the only word in which an “o” sounds like an “i”), and to go with “tung” as opposed to “tongue,” which Merriam-Webster says “. . . has unreasonable vowel representation and two useless letters at the end. Don’t blame us.”
It turns out that Noah Webster was in good company when it came to wanting to change the way some of our words are spelled. Benjamin Franklin wanted to change the spelling of our collection of 26 words to “alfabet,” and writer George Bernard Shaw lobbied for “dont,” without the apostrophe (works for me).
Even library decimal system creator Melvil Dewey, possibly during his salad days, thought that the spelling of “vejetabl” was fine. (Dewey had already shortened his first name from “Melville,” and toyed with the idea of spelling his surname “Dui.”)
“Languaj” was offered up by Christopher Upward (1938-2002), who, it turns out, had more than a passing interest in the way words were spelled. In fact, Upward took such an interest in the subject that, in 1992, he even penned a book about it with the catchy title, “Cut Spelling: A Handbook to the Simplification of Written English by Omission of Redundant Letters.” As the book’s title states, the goal of “Cut Spelling” was to reduce redundant letters and substitute letters to improve a written word’s correspondence with the spoken word.
Upward was a member of the Simplified Spelling Society, which was founded in England in 1908, and is the source of the 1996 quote, “Al languajs chanje in th corse of time.” I agree that they do. But I wonder why the writer of the quote went with “of” instead of the more phonetic “ov.”
Next time we’ll take a look at some other efforts to change the way we spell words, beginning with one that took place during the Civil War.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”
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