en livid de{th}s d{i}send,
when er{th}kw{e}ks swol{o}, or when tempests sw{i}p
tounz tu wun gr{e}v, h{o}l n{e}conz tu {dh}e d{i}p".

{Sidenote: _Losses of Phonetic Spelling_}

The scheme would not then fulfil its promises. Its vaunted gains, when
we come to look closely at them, disappear. And now for its losses.
There are in every language a vast number of words, which the ear does
not distinguish from one another, but which are at once distinguishable
to the eye by the spelling. I will only instance a few which are the
same parts of speech; thus 'sun' and 'son'; 'virge' ('virga', now
obsolete) and 'verge'; 'reign', 'rain', and 'rein'; 'hair' and 'hare';
'plate' and 'plait'; 'moat' and 'mote'; 'pear' and 'pair'; 'pain' and
'pane'; 'raise' and 'raze'; 'air' and 'heir'; 'ark' and 'arc'; 'mite'
and 'might'; 'pour' and 'pore'; 'veil' and 'vale'; 'knight' and 'night';
'knave' and 'nave'; 'pier' and 'peer'; 'rite' and 'right'; 'site' and
'sight'; 'aisle' and 'isle'; 'concent' and 'consent'; 'signet' and
'cygnet'. Now, of course, it is a real disadvantage, and may be the
cause of serious confusion, that there should be words in spoken
languages of entirely different origin and meaning which yet cannot in
sound be differenced from one another. The phonographers simply propose
to extend this disadvantage already cleaving to our spoken languages, to
the written languages as well. It is fault enough in the French
language, that 'mere' a mother, 'mer' the sea, 'maire' a mayor of a
town, should have no perceptible difference between them in the spoken
tongue; or again that in some there should be nothing to distinguish
'sans', 'sang', 'sent', 'sens', 's'en', 'cent'; nor yet between 'ver',
'vert', 'verre' and 'vers'. Surely it is not very wise to propose
gratuitously to extend the same fault to the written languages as well.

This loss in so many instances of the power to discriminate between
words, which however liable to confusion now in our spoken language, are
liable to none in our written, would be serious enough; but far more
serious than this would be the loss which would constantly ensue, of all
which visibly connects a word with the past, which tells its history,
and indicates the quarter from which it has been derived. In how many
English words a letter silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent to the
eye--the _g_ for instance in 'deign', 'feign', 'reign', 'impugn',
telling as it does of 'dignor', 'fingo', 'regno',