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Excerpt from Handbook of Simplified Spelling: Written and Compiled Under the Direction of the Filology Committee of the Simplified Spelling Board Charles H. Grandgent, L. H. D., Calvin Thomas, LL. D Spelling was invented by man and, like other human inventions, is capable of development and improvement by man in the direction of simplicity, economy, and efficiency. Its true function is to represent as accurately as possible by means of simbols (letters) the sounds of the spoken (i.e. the living) language, and thus incidentally to record its history. Its province is not, as is often mistakenly supposed, to indicate the derivations of words from sources that ar inaccessible except to the learned, or to perpetuate the etimologic gesses of the partly learned. Anomalies of English Spelling English spelling, owing to the conditions that governd the growth of the English language, now presents many anomalies. The same letter, or combination of letters, often represents many different sounds; while the same sound is often represented by many different letters, or combinations of letters. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...it was first written, and is now, or may hereafter be, printed. It is, however, in considering its relation to education that the broadest and strongest, as wel as the most directly personal plea for a better mode of spelling can be made. Reason in Children Since the bulk of human knowledge is recorded in books, one of the first steps in the education of the child is to teach him to read. Told that each separate letter, or group of letters, printed in his primer or reader represents a spoken word, the child, being gifted with reason, expects to find an invariable relationship between the sound of any given word and the letters composing it. He soon discovers, to his dismay, that no such invariable relationship exists. Unreason in Spelling The child finds that some words speld alike ar pronounst differently, and that other words pronounst alike hav different spellings; that the same letter may hav different values in a single word, and that in a single word the same sound may be represented by different letters. One thing he quickly learns--that there is no way in which he may surely determin when, or why, a letter that has one value at one time has another at another time; no certain way to tel how to pronounce a word he has never heard, or how to spel a word he has never seen. Distrusts His Own Reason Confused and discouraged by the irregularities and contradictions in the spelling of so many of the words he most frequently meets, and humiliated by the "mistakes" he constantly makes when he attempts, to reason from the spelling of a familiar word to the spelling of an unfamiliar word--percieving, in fact, that the more he depends on reason, the more likely he is to go wrong--he comes to distrust his reason in all that concerns...