American Language Supplement 2 (61 page)

Davis’s scheme greatly resembles that of Hayes, but it is less a formal and complete plan than a call for action. Not disheartened by the collapse of the Simplified Spelling Board, he argues that it is high time to make another attack upon “the pathetic unreasonableness, the archaic anarchy, the Gothic gargoyles of our present set-up,” and he believes that the language pedagogues of the nation are bound in honor to make it. He advises them to begin by bedevilling the Legislatures of their respective States. “Get some solon,” he says,

Davis suggests that the short or unstressed vowels be left as they are, and that the long ones, when stressed, be indicated either by adding
e
to them or by putting lines above them. He proposes to omit silent vowels, to indicate the
a
of
father
by
ä, aa
or
ah
, to reduce
the variant spellings of
mood, do
and
prove
to one
oo
, to choose either the
ou
of
pout
or the
ow
of
cow
to represent the diphthong of both, and to settle on
ur, er
or
ir
to represent the sound in
turn, her
and
sir
. He is willing to let one letter serve for the
u
of
unit
and
duty
, but is uncertain what it should be. He asks for help with the
a
of
father
, and is stumped by the problem of distinguishing between the
u
of
tub
and that of
push
. When he comes to the consonants, he proposes to omit all that are silent, as in
thumb, yacht, psalm
and
wrong
.
¹
He favors changing the hard
c
to
k
before
e
and
i
, but leaving it elsewhere; in his next paragraph he proposes to leave it before
e
and
i
when it has the
s
-sound, and to use
s
elsewhere. For the
th
in
breath
he suggests
th
, and for that in
breathe, dh
. To distinguish between the
ng
of
singer
and that of
finger
he apparently favors making the latter
ng
, but is willing to keep plain
ng
in both cases and endure the present confusion. Again, he proposes turning the
x
of
extra
into
ks
and that of
exist
into
gz
, but does not object seriously to keeping the present
x
in both.
²

Beside such all-out reformers there are many who are willing to go a longer or shorter distance along the way, usually in the wake of the Simplified Spelling Board. The case of the Chicago
Tribune
up to the end of 1935 was reported in AL4.
³
Since then it has done some dizzy wobbling. Early in 1936 it reiterated its devotion to the new spellings it had introduced in 1934,
e.g., fantom, harken, aile, bailif, burocracy, herse, hefer, lether
and
yern
, but warned its readers that it would have to proceed slowly. Then, on March 26, 1939, it announced surprisingly that it was abandoning its programme and promised to sin no more. It went on:

But while this sad editorial was on the press there was another shift of mind in the
Tribune
office, and in later editions its title was changed from “Lacky, Pass the Hemloc” to “Not Yet the Hemloc,” and a paragraph announcing that the eighty-odd words on its list of 1931 were being abandoned was omitted. A week later followed the announcement of a compromise with death. Some of the more alarming of the spellings on the 1934 list,
e.g., aile, bailif, hammoc, jaz, hefer, lether, rifraf
and
yern
, were definitely doomed to the bone-yard, but forty-four were to be given a further trial. They included
agast, analog, bagatel, burocracy, cotilio, definitly, demagog, etiquet, genuinly, sherif, tarif, trafic
and
warant
. “Experience has shown,” said the
Tribune
, “that spellings like
crum, lether, herse
and
quil
have made little or no progress in the last five years. Our own writers and compositors have not become fully accustomed to these forms.… Perhaps the dropping of one of the
f
’s in
sherif
and
tarif
is a little too sensible to be adopted generally, but we’re going to give them a longer trial, and see what happens.”
²
In 1946 it tried another nibble by adding
frate
to its list, and soon afterward it followed with
telegraf
and
geografy
. It also declared for
tho, thru
and
altho
. On August 7
³
it reported that it was “still too early to say how well or ill they have been received,” but that it hoped that its readers, “including the editors of other publications, will come to accept the changes.”
⁴
Alas, the only other paper to show any sign of emulation was the
Tribune’s
daughter, the New York
Daily News
. But the
Daily News
has gone little beyond
nite, alright, foto, fotog
and
fotographer
, in all of which the influence of
Variety
seems to be quite as palpable as that of the
Tribune
. For some reason unknown, it boggles at
fotografer
.
⁵

Dr. Louise Pound long ago suggested that the spelling reform movement in the United States, if it had very little effect upon standard spelling, may have at least fanned the craze for whimsical spellings which still rages, especially among advertisement writers. An early stage of the craze was visible in the name of the
Ku Klux Klan
, organized in 1865, but the original Klan did not use all the strange nomenclature that marked its successor of 1920,
e.g., klavern, kleagle, klonvocation, kloran, klaliff
and
kludd
. Dr. Pound recalled that Walt Whitman was curiously attracted to
k
, and cited his
Kanada
and
Kanadian
.
¹
In two previous papers
²
she had listed a large number of unorthodox spellings in American trade-names,
e.g., holsum
(bread),
nuklene
(shoe whitening),
porosknit
(underwear),
fits-u, keen-kutter
(cutlery),
kiddie-klothes, kum-a-part
(cuff buttons),
klearflax
(linen rugs),
klenzo
(tooth paste),
az-nu
(automobile enamel),
kutzit
(soap),
slipova
(children’s garments),
kroflite
(golf balls),
da-nite
(bed),
evertite
(bags and purses),
sunbrite
(cleanser),
eatmor
(chocolates),
kantleek
(hot-water bottle),
veribest
(canned goods),
quick-shyn
(shoe polish),
neu-tone
(paint) and
cof gums
(medicated gum-drops). One of the first of the long series was
uneeda
, introduced as the name of a cracker in 1898. Thirty-one years later, writing in
American Speech
,
¹
Donald M. Alexander listed many more substitutions of
u
for
you, e.g., u-put-it-on
(weather strip),
wear-u-well
(clothing),
u-otto-buy
(used cars),
u-bet-u
(candy),
u-serve
(canned goods),
protectu
(a device for protecting checks),
while-u-wait, drive-ur-self
(cars for hire)
²
and
u-do-it
(graining compound), and argued that
U
in the second person is just as respectable as
I
in the first, which did not come in until after 1400. He reported that the roadside maps in Wayne county, Mich., indicated the passing automobilist’s position by arrows bearing the legend
U Are Here
.

Meanwhile,
Variety
and its imitators continue to generate and disseminate a large number of simplified spellings of their own,
e.g., laff
(laugh);
³
ayem
(
A.M
.);
nabe
as an abbreviation of
neighborhood
, extended to a neighborhood movie parlor;
whodunit
(who done it?), a mystery story or film;
burlesk
and
vodvil
.
⁴
Hollywood seems to have been responsible for the reduction of
and
to
’n
, as in
sit ’n eat, park ’n dine
and
dunk ’n dine
,
⁵
and perhaps also for
cash ’n carry, prun
(prune),
hiway, pare
(pear) and
traler
(trailer).
⁶
The substitution of
x
for
cks
is apparently of respectable age in the United States.
Sox
for
socks
has become almost universal, as in White
Sox
,
⁷
and Maury Maverick tells me that
sax
for
sacks
and
tax
for
tacks
are widely used among lumbermen.
Slax
for
slacks
was reported by one of the scouts of
American Speech
in 1936, when it was still a novelty,
⁸
but Louise Pound reported
trunx, chix
and
inx
in 1925.
⁹
Variety
uses
crix
as an abbreviation of
critics
, and
drinx
is reported from England.
¹⁰
Variety
always reduces
show
to
sho
, and is fond of
shobiz
.
¹¹
Shocard
is in common use.
Donut
is now so widely
accepted that there is a
Donut
Institute and in 1942 it proclaimed a National
Donut
Week beginning October 25, the twenty-fifth anniversary “of the making of the first
donut
by Salvation Army lassies in France in World War I.”
¹
The Jones Metabolism Equipment Company of Chicago uses
graf
in advertising the Jones Motor-Basal Metabolism Unit;
²
in Baltimore, in 1945, a drug-store was announcing
McNificent
food,
³
and at Essex, Md., there is (or was in 1946), a
Raynbo
Inn. Perhaps such whimsical forms as
izzatso, nuf sed, betcha, damfino
and
helluva
are too painfully familiar to need mention. To the same class probably belongs
Wanna Noit
, the name of “an extension culture club in a Western town.”
⁴
Ho-made
was first found in the Middle West in 1927
⁵
and has since made considerable progress. Now and then there is a nostalgic return to Bach. In 1946 the
New Yorker
reported
⁶
that the
Kwik
Products Company, of West Twenty-Eighth street, was also listed in the Manhattan Telephone Directory as the
Quick
Products Company.
⁷

The collapse of the Simplified Spelling Board has put an end to organized and large scale agitation for spelling reform in the Republic, but at the same stroke it has helped to revive and restimulate the same great moral movement in England. This needs a little explaining. As I have hitherto noted, the angel of the Board, from its organization in 1906 until his death in 1919, was Andrew Carnegie. He started off by allowing it $15,000 a year but soon raised this subsidy to $25,000, and during his thirteen angelic years it saw, altogether, the color of $283,000 of his money. When it was found that he had forgotten it in his will the Board began to droop, but not long afterward it felt the kiss of fresh hope, for news seeped in that a rich British shipbuilder, Sir George Burton Hunter, had become violently interested in Simplified Spelling, and was resolved to promote it through the English speaking world.
⁸
Sir George began by
appointing “a personal secretary, Mr. T. R. Barber, to look after this side of his work,”
¹
and presently the Simplified Spelling Society, the English opposite number to the American Simplified Spelling Board, was pleasantly in funds, and full of new zeal. On August 18, 1922, he set up a trust fund for its benefit, running for ten years, and when the ten years expired they were extended to sixteen. The terms of the trust provided that at the end of that time the trustees should divide the capital between the Society and “any other society or societies, association or associations” then “in existence or hereafter to come into existence” that had precisely the same objects. This trust finally expired in 1938, and meanwhile Sir George had died in 1937, at the age of ninety-two.