I need hardly tell
you that the fundamental idea of this is that all words should be spelt
as they are sounded, that the writing should, in every case, be
subordinated to the speaking. [Footnote: I do not know whether the
advocates of phonetic spelling have urged the authority and practice of
Augustus as being in their favour. Suetonius, among other amusing
gossip about this Emperor, records of him: Videtur eorum sequi
opinionem, qui perinde scribendum ac loquamur, existiment (_Octavius_.
c. 88).] This, namely that writing should in every case and at all
costs be subordinated to speaking, which is everywhere tacitly assumed
as not needing any proof, is the fallacy which runs through the whole
scheme. There is, indeed, no necessity at all for this. Every word, on
the contrary, has _two_ existences, as a spoken word and a written; and
you have no right to sacrifice one of these, or even to subordinate it
wholly, to the other. A word exists as truly for the eye as for the
ear; and in a highly advanced state of society, where reading is almost
as universal as speaking, quite as much for the one as for the other.
That in the _written_ word moreover is the permanence and continuity of
language and of learning, and that the connexion is most intimate of a
true orthography with all this, is affirmed in our words, 'letters,'
'literature,' 'unlettered,' as in other languages by words exactly
corresponding to these. [Footnote: As [Greek: grammata, agrammatos],
litterae, belles-lettres.
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