Consult yourself, and if you find
A powerful impulse urge your mind,
Impartial judge within your breast
What subject you can manage best;
Whether your genius most inclines
To satire, praise, or hum'rous lines,
To elegies in mournful tone,
Or prologue sent from hand unknown.
Then, rising with Aurora's light,
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.
(Jonathan Swift, "On Poetry: A Rhapsody," published on December 31, 1733)

More by Jonathan Swift:

• A Modest Proposal
• A Meditation Upon a Broomstick
• Swift on Style

In response to our recent article on the alphabet ("From A to Z"), an astute reader observed that English spelling was overdue for reform:

It could be down to my lack of understanding of how the English language works, but if words were to be taken just on the basis of the way they sound, it seems English actually could benefit from introduction of marks of accents, or diacritics, [as in the] case of some alphabets; for example, car and cat, jar and rat, but and put, and most probably many more.

It seems that an investment of time and money officially would just not be out of place in order to systematically incorporate all the sounds and make it easier to pronounce such words rather than having to rely on rote learning.

Our friend isn't the first to point out the peculiarities of English spelling (see Gerard Nolst Trenité's poem "The Chaos") or the advantages of aligning spelling with pronunciation.

For centuries the hybrid orthography of English (largely the result of the collision of two distinct spelling systems--those of Old English and Norman French) has inspired countless reformers to concoct new phonologically based alphabets. Benjamin Franklin, for example, suggested replacing the letters c, j, q, w, x and y with two new vowels and four new consonants. George Bernard Shaw championed an alphabet made up of 40 letters. More recently, the Simplified Spelling Society has endorsed a system known as Cut Spelling, wich removs redundnt letrs.

Noah Webster's Spelling Campaign

So far, the only remotely influential exponent of spelling reform in English has been the American lexicographer Noah Webster. Four decades before publishing the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), Webster spelled out a plan to renovate American English:

The principal alterations, necessary to render our orthography sufficiently regular and easy, are these:

1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend. Would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embarrassment or expense? By no means. On the other hand, it would lessen the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the country, and almost prevent the possibility of changes.


2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel. This alteration could not occasion a moments trouble; at the same time it would prevent a doubt respecting the pronunciation; whereas the ea and ie having different sounds, may give a learner much difficulty. Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught. In this manner ch in Greek derivatives, should be changed into k; for the English ch has a soft sound, as in cherish; but k always a hard sound. Therefore character, chorus, cholic, architecture, should be written karacter, korus, kolic, arkitecture; and were they thus written, no person could mistake their true pronunciation.
   
   Thus ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh; machine, chaise, chevalier, should be written masheen, shaze, shevaleer; and pique, tour, oblique, should be written peek, toor, obleek.


3. A trifling alteration in a character, or the addition of a point would distinguish different sounds, without the substitution of a new character. Thus a very small stroke across th would distinguish its two sounds. A point over a vowel . . . might answer all the purposes of different letters. And for the dipthong [sic] ow, let the two letters be united by a small stroke, or both engraven on the same piece of metal, with the left hand line of the w united to the o.

These, with a few other inconsiderable alterations, would answer every purpose, and render the orthography sufficiently correct and regular.
(Noah Webster, "An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages and Practicability of Reforming the Mode of Spelling, and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to Pronunciation" in Dissertations on the English Language, 1789)

As you've probably noticed, only a small number of Webster's proposed spellings were ever adopted. Masheen and dawter quickly came to grief (never greef), but plow and draft have endured in American English. And it's true that most of the distinctive features of American spelling (such as the missing u in words like honor and favor) can be credited to the influence of Webster's best-selling Grammatical Institute of the English Language (popularly known as the "Blue-Backed Speller").

Kash for Konsonants?

But let's return to our reader's recommendation that "time and money" be "officially" invested in spelling reform. Before you scoff, consider that over the past century government-supported reforms of this kind have been carried out successfully in Germany, Austria, the old Soviet Union, the Netherlands, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and elsewhere.

Now, with the global expansion of English as a lingua franca and unemployment in double digits, has the time for spelling reform come round at last? Are we ready to put the legion of laid-off journalists and phoneticians back to work sounding out alternative spelling schemes? Do we have the collective will to implement a system in which the digraph ou represents just one sound, not six or seven (young, though, through, thought, out, enough, lough)? Can we at last overcome our sentimental attachment to what Mark Twain called our "rotten spelling" and that "foolish" and "drunken old alphabet"?

Probably not. But let's hear your thoughts on the subject of spelling reform. Just klik on th koments butn belo.

More About English Spelling:

• Writers on English Spelling
• The Story Behind the Spell Checker Poem
• The 200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words in English

Image: Noah Webster (1758-1843)

Last week's episode of the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm opened with a shot of Larry David, his cousin Andy, and Larry's father, Nat David, standing in front of Adele David's tombstone, which read:

Born
Sept 18, 1920

Past Away
Oct 21, 2001

Larry: "Past away"? P-a-s-t? Dad, you spelled "passed" wrong. It's not spelled p-a-s-t. "Passed away": p-a-s-s-e-d.
Nat: I know how to spell it. It's $50 a letter.
Larry: You spelled it wrong on purpose to save $100?
Nat: Yes. Why not? It's the same meaning. Everyone knows what it means.
Andy: It's not the same meaning.
Larry: You saved $100? Well, I would have paid for it. Are you kidding?
Nat: Well, I didn't ask you because I didn't want to bother you. That was the whole idea.
Andy: That's not the nicest way to honor your wife.
Larry: I'm sorry. I have to change this. You got the name of the stonemason?
Nat: Yes, I have the name of the stonemason.
Larry: I'm gonna change this. I'm gonna spell it the right way.
(Episode 67, "The Black Swan," first broadcast on November 1, 2009)

By the end of the episode--after Larry has quarreled with a waiter, killed a black swan, and insulted the stonemason--the marker has been corrected, though with language that can't be repeated with children in the room.

Now here's the funny thing. Though the distinction that Larry draws between the homophones passed and past is correct in our own time, a century or two back Nat could have gotten away with his miserly misspelling. Both words are derived from the verb pass, and at one time past was commonly used for the past tense and the past participle. The editors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) offer several examples:

• I did not tell you how I past my time yesterday.
  (Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 25 Jan. 1711)


• . . . he was much offended . . . that he past the latter part of his life in a state of hostility.
  (Samuel Johnson, Preface to Johnosn's edition of Shakespeare, 1765)


• I know what has past between you.
  (Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, 1773)


• He past; a son of nobler tone.
  (Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850)

Nowadays past has lost its status as a verb form (it's busy enough serving as a noun, adjective, adverb, and preposition), leaving passed to fill the role of past tense. But who knows? Perhaps this, too, shall pass.

More About Commonly Confused Words:

• Glossary of Usage
• Review Quiz: Commonly Confused Words
• Quiz on 20 Commonly Confused Words

Image: Larry David, co-creator. producer, and star of the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm © 2009 Home Box Office, Inc.

British novelist Henry Fielding used the construction in A Journey From This World to the Next (1749):

At seven years old I was carried into France . . . , where I lived with a person of quality, who was an acquaintance of my father's.

A century later it showed up in Anne Brontë's second (and final) novel:

Shortly after, they both came up, and she introduced him as Mr. Huntingdon, the son of a late friend of my uncle's.
(The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848)

American writer Stephen Crane slipped it into a short story:

"Oh, just a toy of the child's," explained the mother. "She's grown so fond of it, she loves it so."
("The Stove," in Whilomville Stories, 1900)

And contemporary author Bil Wright doubled up on the construction in a novel published just last year:

He'd already proved he was a liar. And he had a girlfriend even though he wasn't divorced. No, not a monster. But definitely an enemy of my mother's and mine.
(When the Black Girl Sings, Simon and Schuster, 2008)

The combination of the preposition of and a possessive form (either a noun ending in -'s or a possessive pronoun) is called the double genitive. And it's been around for centuries.

But watch out. If you stare at it too long, you may convince yourself that you've found a mistake. That's what happened to one of the original language mavens, James Buchanan. Back in 1767, he tried to outlaw the double genitive:

Of being the sign of the Genitive Case, we cannot put it before a Noun with ('s) for this is making two Genitives.
(A Regular English Syntax)

As we're reminded by the editors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, "The 18th-century grammarians simply had a horror of anything double, because such constructions did not occur in Latin."

Despite its apparent redundancy, the double genitive is a well-established idiom--a functional part of the language dating back to Middle English. But if the construction continues to trouble you, simply follow the example of grammarians Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum and call it something else: "The oblique genitive construction is commonly referred to as the 'double genitive.' . . . [H]owever, we do not regard of as a genitive case marker, and hence there is only one genitive here, not two" (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2002).

More Double Troubles:

• Double Negatives
• Double Comparatives
• Double Superlatives

Image: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (Cambridge University Press, 2002)