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Show Blew Mfifefetfi 13;' " r Fcnetic Key Alfabct i 24 Consonants 13 Vovels X Print Scrot Kama Asia Trbt Script Nam? Asia ! ) p pi pin, cup a 3. pJ am pntf ( .r) j M o Jr hi bin, cub a l a slrpart.ma j d f dl den, bed g se, late, may I ;F Ic ? come.back j s, sit, arrnjr 2 f gl sum,bas x ease, se m V i if fan, safe G odd, not V V CV van, save r 6 awed, naught ft ft eh thigh, bath u M P ton, (turn) "7) ft ft" e thy, bathe q 8r about, utter, na J S ?S sea!, race tion, china 3 Z X r2 real, raise- " open, tone, ehov 1 S ef aeSure,ruS'h " ful1; co"!d 3 e3 azure,rouSe 0 eho Q ff choke, rich 4 Duihoscs 3 y eJ joke, ridge ltHnl Scrfrl Nama As !n m mi em met, him 4 4 aisIe' p?nt' by n U en net, thin e ? oil, point, boy rj 'n- ey ink, thing f11 a cutt power, now 1 ? laid, deaf U ii U pure,. few r V- f? raid, dear- Suppibusntary Signs ' W ?t wet, quit j,m y ik ye yet, you m r7U 13 tlie h th '.M head, who A WorMpeM the commonest word of English, cr5 j ' y. V'V,.' 1 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON 0"m""3KMISM1;KU the days when ph 5 you started on the royal L, N n,iul ,0 learning by dill-A dill-A gent study In the front of 'fT 11,0 0,(1 lirst m!(lcr alKl i&brri'l then, at the coanaand of l' ,?"y 'i' ' 1 "teacher," you, In coni-' coni-' w 't'! i pany with . otl;er . neo-Jtry neo-Jtry 3 jihytcs in formal educa-3 educa-3 i'i'i S ' as offered In the old j il district school, chanted LiwwafarjJ In chorus "A-H-O-D-K-F" and so on through the alphabet until you ended Iriumphantly "X-Y-55 and so forth"? Hememher that queer little lit-tle wiggly symbol which stood for "and so forth" and how, when you grew a little older and knew what "so forth" meant, you wondered why It said "anil so forth" when there were just 20 letters in the alphabet and no more? Well, that "and so forth" is coming true If a certain Harvard graduate has his way about it. For Dr. Godfrey Dewey has a new system of A-H-C's which adds 15 letters to the present alphabet.' Of course, modern pedagogy peda-gogy has done away with the old-fashioned old-fashioned method of having the child commit the alphabet to memory before be-fore he begins to learn words, and tlie school's of today start the child immediately imme-diately upon the task of putting the letters together to form words instead in-stead of his learning them as Individual Individ-ual symbols In a certain sequence. This is considered a vast Improvement Improve-ment over the old-fashioned chanting procedure, but Doctor Dewey believes that eten it can be Improved upon and the speaking and writing of English Eng-lish simplified by enlarging the alphabet. alpha-bet. During all these years, says he, we have been trying to cram a cosmopolitan cos-mopolitan language, made up of different dif-ferent elements from many tongues, into 20 Latin symbols and he thinks that by using 41 symbols we' can straighten out the Mother Tongue and , avoid working some of our present 2G symbols overtime. Incidentally, be be- j lieves that he can save the nation a j billion dollars a year on its printing ! bill by eliminating the waste due to j the use of tlie present alphabet. I Doctor Dewey proposes to make these sweeping changes by a "Fonetie j Key Alfabct," consisting of 24 con- sonants, 13 vowels, four diflhongs and j a supplementary sign for the word j "the." That one word, incidentally, is 1he source of greatest waste in our language, says Doctor Dewey, who as secretary of the Simplified Spelling hoard, 'founded and endowed by tlie late Andrew Carnegie, has studied -the English language carefully for many years. He has found that in modern printed literature tlie word "the" appears ap-pears 7,310 times in every 100.000 words and that 7 per cent of all printed print-ed paper is covered with "the's." A sheer waste, he declares, and it can be remedied by using one symbol to take the place of this word made up of three symbols. The ten commonest words in our speech and writing, he also finds, are "I he," "of," "and," "to," "a," "in," "that," "it," "is," and "1," and these compose 2o per cent of the written language. Py condensing these words, j but more especially by condensing much longer words which are bur- ! ("cued with superfluous letters, lie es- ! timates that tlie total cost of writing ; and printing in this country, which j has been estimated at lyi.GOO.OOO.nOO (in be reduced one-sixth or to .VG'.iO,- OfuwxiO. j Doctor Dewey, basing his conclu- j si' ais upon eight years of research In ; the matter, declares that one-sixth of I the letters we use in writing words nre i rseless. And he believes that his i statement is based upon sufficient evi- ; ilcnee, for during the eight years he has j counted and tabulated 100,000 words j with all their sounds, syllables and letters. Our present system of spelling spell-ing is unwieldy, confusing, ..irregular and incomprehensible to the child or the foreigner who attempts It for the first time.. This is due mainly to the Inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation, even in such simple words as "gave" and "have." The best illustration of this inconsistency is In words containing "ough" which has eight different pronunciations, as illustrated iu the following rhyme: Through the rough cough and hiccough hic-cough olougli me through I ought to rub your horse'a hough for you. Each of these words, therefore, can be pronounced eight different wavs. Thus, according to the laws of mathematics, mathe-matics, eight times SxSxS.xSxSxSxS equals 10,777,210 different pronunciations pronuncia-tions of the entire sentence. And only one of that number will be right! Or take the word "foolish." He can show 613,075 different ways of spelling it, since the sound "f has seven different differ-ent ways of spelling; the so.und "oo," 20; the sound "1," 11; the sound "i" 29; and the sound "sh," 11. One way in which this word could be spelled and yet pronounced as it is would be "pphoughtliapshe" (as in the words "sapphire," "through," "hustle," "marriage" "mar-riage" and "pshaw"). Under Doctor Dewey's system in the "Fonetic Key Alfabet," there is a symbol for each sound. In the majority major-ity of cases these symbols look exactly exact-ly like the letters of the present alphabet al-phabet or are so similar to them that it is easy to distinguish them. Capitals Cap-itals have been dispensed with, since they waste time. Instead, in printing, the first letter of every sentence would be set in bold face type and would be blacker than the others. In writing, a little cross is placed above and to the left of tlie letter to indicate in-dicate that it is the beginning of a sentence or Is a capital letter. The pronouns would be entirely changed and if you (only we should say "yu") wanted to refer to yourself, instead of the present capita! "I" you would write a small letter "a" with a dot over It (see first character in 4 dif-thongs dif-thongs in the alfabet shown above). In the present way of spelling one hundred average words contain 4I!S letters. Under Doctor Dewey's plan 100 words can be printed with Utio letters. let-ters. So by removing many of the superfluous letters and syllables in our present words, such as the "ough" and the final "e" on a large number of words a great saving in time and effort could be effected. In fact, there are three positive benefits claimed by the originator of the Fonetic Key Alfabet Al-fabet if his plan is adopted. They are 83 follows : 1. An initial saving of $000,000,000 and a corresponding saving in the time of tills nation. Working hours of printers will be shortened. Typists nnd stenographers will have less w rk to do and less stationery will be required re-quired for business correspondence. 2. A saving, of one and one-half years for each child. It is estimated that adoption of the Alfabet would save the country annually $220,000,000 in the first four grades alone. Books would be . thinner and children could progress faster with the English language simplified for them If they did not have to waste time and effort figuring out queerly spelled words. 3. The Alfabet would enable foreigners for-eigners to learn English more easily nnd would help break down the prejudices which prevent the adoption of English as a universal language. Radio has brought the need of such a universal language to the attention of the whole world. English, because of its cosmopolitan vocabulary and grammatical simplicity, Is well fitted for destiny as the universal language. But its spelling needs to be straightened straight-ened out. It is as a teaching system that I Doctor Dewey hopes to have the new I Alfabet adopted. He believes that it I will prove its value there and that fact will lead to its general adoption. To test his theory that a child can learn the new system easily, he taught It to bis daughter at the age of seven. After five hours' study she could use the -new Alfabet correctly in writing a letter to her mother. Doctor Dewey realizes that general adoption of the system would necessitate new printing type, but he is firmly convinced con-vinced that the eventual saving would make up for the Immediate cost. He estimates that it -can become universally univer-sally established within three generations genera-tions and of general public use In dne. Already it has passed one barrier, in that a typewriter with the new phonetic pho-netic type has been made by one of the oldest typewriting manufacturing companies and is available for public use. Although Doctor Dewey is. secretary of the Simplified Spelling board, the new Alfabet is not connected with the new simplified spelling, except that it, too, is a part of a growing movement to write as we speak. His Alfabet is based upon a similar one often referred re-ferred to as the National Education Association Alfabet, used as key one of the New Standard dictionary. This Alfabet recognizes 48 different sounds, but Doctor Dewey has reduced that number to 41. "Only one sound for each sign and only one sign for each sound" Is the slogan through which he hopes to make the new Alfabet popular. The new Alfabet Is not only a hobby with him. It Is an ideal and something of an inheritance. His father, fa-ther, Melvil Dewey, was one of the founders of an International conference confer-ence for the amendment of English orthography 50 years ago. As a boy-Doctor boy-Doctor Dewey was a natural speller and champion in many a school spelling spell-ing bee. He has been studying shorthand short-hand for 30 years and during the last six or eight years has been concen trating on the new Alfabet for general use. He was graduated from Harvard in 1009 and returned for a master of education degree in 1021, receiving his doctor of education degree last year. In 1023 he published a book "The Relative Frequency of English Speech Sounds" which was a rorerun-ner rorerun-ner of the new Alfabet which he has evolved from his years of study. |