I think--continuing to use our
laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational
one at hand, to be had for the taking.

It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten
spelling--if I may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it
will take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new Simplified
Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be any better
off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the
privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: ANYBODY can change the
spelling that wants to.

BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PHONOGRAPHIC SPELLING; THERE ISN'T ANY WAY. It
will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you
have to change the sound first.

Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy
guild that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old
alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they
get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will
be only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift
him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but
to take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's
wholesome and undiseased alphabet.

One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified
word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron
of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable.

The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled
to the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but--if I may be
allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 7)

To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
offends the eye, and also takes the EXPRESSION out of the words.

La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!

It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked
the thrill all out of it.

But a written character with which we are NOT ACQUAINTED does not
offend us--Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others--they have an
interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of
hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery
hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a
printed page of shorthand without be