Orders of the Day — Spelling Reform Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 11 March 1949.

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Photo of Professor Douglas Savory Professor Douglas Savory , Queen's University of Belfast 12:00, 11 March 1949

I cannot tell you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, how deeply I regret the decision of the Minister of Education. The very strong case put forward by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Follick) was supported by the overwhelming arguments of the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman)—a very chip of the old block; and what a great name when one thinks of his grandfather and what he conferred upon this country—one of the greatest benefactors that Great Britain has ever seen.

When I heard the Minister of Education put forward arguments which had been answered again and again, I could not help regretting that he had lost a golden opportunity of carrying out a really great reform. The young Spaniard who is learning his mother tongue, once he knows the signfication of each letter and what sound each letter indicates, can read and write the language with the utmost facility, and I strongly believe the calculations that have been made that the Spanish child has a gain over the unfortunate English child condemned to the torture of this illogical spelling of at least two years.

Take, for instance, German. In my own life time, I have had to learn three German spellings. As a boy I had to learn "thun," "that" "gethan"; now I have to write "tun," "tat" "getan" so that the spelling has been reformed and simplified, and the German child has an enormous advantage over the poor English child.

The right hon. Gentleman has used the argument of etymology. I want to be perfectly fair and frank with the House, and I admit that when we write the word "would" with the letter "1" it is etymologically connected with the word "will." Except for that very slight benefit, is it right to say to every poor child, "You have to write the word 'would' with an '1,' otherwise you will be punished." The child does not understand it, and his whole intelligence is dulled by the imposition of this unfortunate system. When the right hon. Gentleman talks about using compulsion and issuing decrees, has he forgotten this fact, that we are today suffering from the compulsion imposed upon us by Dr. Johnson in his dictionary of 1755. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be living in "Miss Pinkerton's Academy" and to be a "Becky Sharp." He has admiration for Dr. Johnson and his dictionary, but Dr. Johnson was totally ignorant of the history of the language. He had no phonetic training, and he was not able to carry out any scientific reform.

What he did was simply this. He saw that various printers were adopting different spellings, and he adopted the one which he thought the most logical. In many cases he was entirely mistaken with regard to his choice, because he had not studied, what is absolutely essential for this purpose, the history of the language. The hon. Member for Southampton (Mr. Morley) suggested a very moderate reform in writing the past participle in such words as "dipped" and "dressed" with a "t" instead of "ed." I think that it is only fair to recall that that was the spelling adopted by Tennyson. Tennyson wrote "dropped" as "dropt" and in doing that Tennyson was carrying on the noble tradition of Shakespeare and of Dryden, who wrote "confessed" as "confest." Why should we not spell "surprised" with a "z," as we do "prize"? What harm would there be?