The Anti-Absurd or Phrenotypic Alphabet and Orthography

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THE

ANTI-ABSURD

Preface

To presume to convince the learned, or even the simple but self-confident common-sense man of the absurdities of the English alphabet and orthography, would be an avowal of complete ignorance. Such men have long before me known, such men have long before me declared the English Spelling Book an . This my humble preface is therefore not intended for them. Nor is it intended for idiots or Squeers-ridden slaves,—no; I do not undertake to convince the first, or inspire courage in the latter. This would be above my powers. This preface is intended for those who, although they have not at their disposal the sharp dissecting logic of an Aristotle, or the strong and invincible common sense of a Mohamet Ali, still are far from being idiots, or village A B C teachers' assistants. This preface is most humbly addressed to the generality of men.

I am asked why I call my Alphabet and Orthography "the Anti-absurd Alphabet," "the Anti-absurd Orthography?"—my answer is: I imitate the physicians, who very philosophically manufacture names for their remedies, by simply prefixing the little word "anti" to the names of the sufferings those remedies are intended to alleviate; thus they have anti-narcotics, anti-spasmodics, anti-epileptics, &c. &c. &c.

My Alphabet and Orthography appear to me likely to prove excellent, cheap, and palatable remedies against the evils contained in, and resulting from, the present absurd ones; and therefore I call them "the Anti-absurd Alphabet," "The Anti-absurd Orthography." I call them also "the Phrenotypic Alphabet and Ortho- graphy" on account of their being in accordance with the principles of the human memory discovered by myself, and designated Phrenotypics.

But where are the evils of the present system?——why is the system absurd? and how do I—a foreigner—a native of the outskirts of civilization—presume to call it so?—how do I dare to do such a thing in the very centre of learning—in the very face of Englishmen? Here are my arguments, my motives, my apologies.

In Poland we call a table, "table,"—a window, "window,"—a candle, "candle,"—and so on. Every individual object is represented by a written name, one name, and one name only. Every individual name stands in my country for one individual object; and there are no such things as things in common use without names. And so is every sound of our language represented on all occasions by one and the same letter, or one and the same combination of letters, without any exceptions whatever—every letter, or combination of letters, utters a sound, one sound and one only.—There are no such things as poor unhappy deaf and dumb letters; neither are there any letters allowed to vociferate for any body besides themselves. We could not easily be parotted and drilled into the cleverness of using promiscuously a farrago of names for one and the same thing; it would puzzle us to conceive, how——one name could stand distinctly for each of a multiplicity of things entirely different from one another; or how——two times two make, according to circumstances, more or less than four; and, at any rate, we could not possibly be persuaded to write and speak our language in accordance with regulations like those of the subjoined Dictionary.—Have the kindness to read it, and do judge for yourself.

A Specimen of a Philosophical Dictionary

The piece of furniture usually called table you should continue to call "table," with the following few restrictions:

1. You shall call it "broom" on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. N.B. The m to be silent.

2. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, you shall name it "window" (except the first Saturdays of January, April, June, September, and November, when it must be called, according to Statute I, "broom.") N.B. The oo to be sounded i.

The same piece of furniture you shall name "candle," according to the following exact philosophical rules:

(1) On Sundays, from 35' 49" after twelve till sun-set, call it clearly "candle," sounding the c as sh and the a as o (except on cloudy days, to be defined hereafter).

(2) You will occasionally call the four-legged furniture not exactly candle, but candle with the prefix "kabooo," and sometimes with the trifling addition of a few mute liquido-hard diphthongal consonants for instance, thus—"kaboo candle-shwyoukrt" (bearing always in mind the regulations above-mentioned).

Sometimes, though, you will call it simply "table," but this must be left to your tact and taste, which we hope and trust are very great, and will unavoidably become still greater, by bringing into operation the choicest qualities of your good-naturedness, whilst studying our Lexicon.

By the word broom, which under the above regulations reads and designates "table," we will also understand the objects stick, umbrella, man, and a few more; this is imperative, on account of the analogy that exists between these objects;we see often a man with a stick and umbrella, and something else; besides, they are all made of wood(man made of wood!!!)

Window (which you recollect is consecrated to the four-legged furniture on certain days and under certain circumstances) will also mean ocean, pepper, and boot—namely,

1. Window means ocean when it is preceded by the third person of the plural of the pluperfect tense of the sub-conjunctive mood of the 739th conjugation of our popular grammars—(except when it is fol- lowed by a word beginning with m, p, r, a, s, f, or t). N.B. with the gravo-sharp accent on the sub-ante-penultima.

2. Window means "pepper" when it is preceded by words ending in the following liquido-mute, stomachical, aspirated, consonanto quasi-vowels—pp, rrr, zzz, xx, &c. &c.

This is decidedly a most tyranically ridiculous nonsense.

Any man who might choose to analyze this production, and shew us with precision where its nonsensical ridiculosities lie, would, in my humble opinion, undertake a very difficult task; and should he happen not to be a Kant, a Locke, or a Blair, he would most likely gratify us with the sight of a specimen of darkness to be met with nowhere but in the deepest recesses of the above unfathomable, bottomless philosophy. And should ever any one of those celebrated logicians expressly jump up from his grave, pen in hand, for the purpose of reviewing the above Philosophical Dictionary, he could after all achieve no more than arriving, by a very laborious, circuitous route, at the demonstration of a truth intuitively felt by every man in his senses. Such a review would in fact imply a downright insult to its readers; it would be supposing that they are possessed of so little of common sense, or so chicken-hearted, that they cannot feel such glaring absurdities, or, feeling them, have not the courage to act upon the dictates of so humble a faculty as common sense.

Every man short of an idiot, or a broken-hearted, enthralled, and obfuscated A B C teacher's assistant, ought to have the judgment and courage to call that production a "most ridiculously despotic nonsense," be the fame of its author ten times greater than that of a Walker, a Johnson, or a Sheridan.

All those, therefore, who are of opinion that the above production may fairly be called a most ridiculously despotic nonsense, will, I hope, not be in a hurry to pronounce a vote of unqualified condemnation against my epithets for the English Alphabet and Orthography, which do abound in absurdities not less disgusting than those of the above shall enumerate some of them.

There are two alphabets, namely, capitals and small letters, for what use I know not;——one sort of letters is quite sufficient for all necessary purposes. The Hebrew requires but one set of letters; short-hand writers have but one set of letters; speakers are perfectly understood without Capitals.——It is true

that this exuberance is common to the English with other languages, still it is an absurdity; it is doubling the labour of the student in his earliest attempts;——it necessitates a greater amount of capital for the carrying on of the trades of the type-founder and printer;——it requires an additional upper case, which is an inexhaustible source of intruders into the lower one, leading to annoying mistakes, disgusting corrections, and—"pie." The compositor has to learn two different arrangements of compartments of his cases, instead of one; his eyes have to become familiarized with two sets of inverted black-upon-black letters, when one is quite sufficient to try the patience of any one. This useless doubling of the shapes of types to be handled by compositors, prolongs their inaptitude to a fearfully longer period than necessary. But my principal grievance is, that the having two alphabets requires from the student, at the very outset of his undertaking, a doubly greater amount of labour than necessary.—Every body knows that "every beginning is difficult;—"no one will, therefore, deny that to double the difficulties of poor beginning students, to the annoyance of everybody, and without any good whatsoever, is acting against common-sense humanity, and is decidedly committing a gross

The 26 letters of the alphabet are named ai, bee, see, &c. Letters ought to lead us in the shortest and easiest possible manner, to the reading of the words composed of them. Let us see how these letters lead us through their names to the desired object. Suppose you had to spell the phrase—"the study of the English Alphabet is delightful." The names tee, aitch, ee, do not lead to "teeaitchee," a word composed of these names, no—this would be too much in accordance with common sense—this would be too easy; your teacher will first give a good cudgeling to your common sense, then make you repeat with him a million times—tee, aitch, ee—the; tee, aitch, ee—the; tee, aitch, ee—the, &c.—until you become as clever as himself. By a similarly degrading process, you shall learn that the names es—tee—you—dee—wy—are to be read "STUDY." O, ef, "ov." Tee, aitch, ee, again, to be read not "THE" but "THEE" on account of the next word beginning with a vowel,——ee, en, gee, el, eye, es, aitch, "ENGLISH." A, el, pee, aitch, a, bee, ee, tee, "ALPHABET,"——this is decidedly more than common sense can bear.——Eye, es, “IS;” dee, ee, el, eye, gee, aitch, tee, ef, you, el, "DELIGHTFUL"—

O tempora, O mores! O homines, O boves! or thus O times, O manners! O oxen, O spellers!

A represents four sounds as different from one another as black from white, yellow, or green; witness—ape, arm, apple, all. It is besides a co-representative in the firms ae, ai, ao, au, aw, ay, aye, &c. witness Michaelmas, captain, Britain, gaol, taught, bawl, aye, &c., &c.

I shall never forget what happened to me about seven years ago, when after having just won a wager by committing to memory about two thousand English words during the

three hours that separate Calais from Dover, I thought I had a right to make myself a little, be it ever so little, understood in English. I commenced with the waiter, whilst dining at the "White Hart" Hotel, overlooking the port of Dover. I called for salad, by saying "," with the accent on the first syllable, to which the waiter answered by moving his head in the usual negativing manner. I felt dissatisfied, on account of my finding "salad" in the bill of fare. A few minutes afterwards the waiter brought a huge dish full of excellent salad, which he unhappily placed on the other end of the table. Not supposing that he intended to insult me, by denying what he had in such plenty, I thought I must have spoken too softly, wherefore I raised my voice and uttered again , upon which the whole of my fellow-passengers rushed to the windows, staring alternatively at the waiter and myself. I guessed that my was the cause of some misunderstanding, and I hit therefore upon the plan of pointing to the printed item in the bill, and also to the corresponding green eatable itself on the table. This, my pantomime, produced a burst of laughter, happily stopped by one of the company, who explained to me, in French, that they thought that the ship had "sailed" off without disembarking their luggage; and he most kindly informed me that although the English letter A is always called ai, it must sometimes be pronounced eh. Thus comforted, I ventured to inquire the distance between Dover and London, by pointing to these words upon the map, and sounding with an interrogative inflexion of the voice "fair," which I thought to be the known-to-me written word "far." Most probably I was understood to inquire about something fair, or a fair at either town. They looked upon me with pity, whilst my countrymen sneered at my pretension to speak English after three hours' study. I wrote down on a slate "how far;" to which the waiter answered, through the same medium, "seventy four miles;" which I understood, and triumphantly translated to my fellow-countrymen, whilst to my astonishment, the waiter read the word far as "FAHR," or rather "FAH.” By this I guessed that the A has a third sound;——but this is not all. I called for salt by saying SAILTE; next, SEHLT; next, SAHLT, I tried all the three known-to-me sounds of the A, but in vain. I was compelled to recur again to the troublesome medium of writing. "Oh, you meant salt!" was his answer. What, exclaimed I in my mind, the letter A is to be sounded in four different ways! I doubted the matter until I arrived in London, when I was informed, to my great discomfiture, that the A has four sounds, and must, in compensation, be kept silent altogether in an endless number of cases. I was advised to study Walker, (which name by the by must not be read "Wail-ker," as one might naturally be inclined to suppose.) Well, I bought the book, and had the audacity to study it under feelings which I cannot better express than by stating that they were similar to those which every common-sense man must experience whilst reading the above

B is often mute, and to no purpose; witness lamb, dumb, &c.

C is a highly absurd letter; it is called see, and figures as s, k, sh, and perhaps as some- thing else;——it would not do to have a distinct character for each of these sounds—no—that would be peculating against the very essence of English spelling—absurdity.

D represents d, t, and j.

E is a truly English letter: under the title of ee, it enjoys the privilege of representing an infinite variety of sounds, according to its own wishes, and is very often mute, representing nobody and nothing.

F is called ef, but, in the word "of" which meets the eye at every moment of our exstence, is to be pronounced v; thus write of, read ov. Besides, the sound f is also represented by gh, as in laugh.

G, H, I, &c., to the end of the alphabet, are nothing but a forest of deep-rooted high-grown, stupifying absurdities. Each letter represents a variety of sounds; each sound has a variety of representatives; whilst others, like ch, sh, &c. require the co-operation of two letters:2All this, according to certain rules, regulations, exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions, which one may learn if he can, from the 172 large 8vo partly Bourgeois and partly Nonpareil columns of Walker's five hundred and sixty principles—yes, five hundred and sixty-five hundred and sixty principles!!! They are enunciated in a style more or less chiming with that of the above "Philosophical Dictionary," and contain about 300 pliant, ambiguous, often unintelligible, and I am sorry to say, wantonly intrusive, useless, contemptible, would-be-technical terms.—Here are some of them extracted from Walker, as they happened to meet my eye in a few of his 172 columns of 560 principles of the 'science' of spelling the English language. "Sound simple, mixed, vowels, vocal sounds, effusion of breath, diphthongs and tripthongs, vowels short, shortened and squeezed, semi-consonants, pure vowels, contracting the mouth so as to make the lips nearly touch one another, double vowel, a sound between a vowel and a consonant, conformation and no motion of the organs, compound or impure vowels, dipthongs and tripthongs 33 in number, mutes, semivowels, liquids, sharp, flat, aspirated, hard, mixed, hissing, buzzing, labials, gutturals, nasals, (why not æsophagal, stomachical?) greater or less expansion of the internal parts of the mouth, strong and grave expression of the mouth open nearly in a circular form—as it were—if we are allowed to use the expression—a certain species of accent, quantity, syllabification, double accent, ultimo, penultimo, anti-penultimo."——Next come irregular sounds—(all those hitherto mentioned, you remember, were perfectly regular,) &c. &c.

The very existence of Pronouncing Dic- tionaries is an absurdity; it proves that the alphabet is not sufficient for the reading and writing of the language—for the paltry piece of knowledge—the reading and writing of one's own language. The German, the Pole, the Russian, need no such dictionaries; they are not to be met with in their markets, either as home or as imported articles; the want of them is felt by nobody, and it would be a very foolish spec. indeed, to attempt to manufacture for them any thing of the kind. But in learned England, the markets, the shops, the stalls, new, old, and second-hand, are studded on all sides with an infinite variety of orthographic and pronouncing dictionaries, as if some direful plague had deprived her inhabitants of the power of spelling without such expensive and disgusting aids.

The Mischievou Results

of the above absurdities may be described in a few words—thus: they are so many difficulties and stumbling-blocks on the road to knowledge, and therefore retard and often stop the progress of beneficial improvements—social, moral, religious and political—improvements which never fail coming into existence—which increase and multiply in the exact ratio of the bulk of knowledge possessed by men. These few lines contain, certainly, a sufficient number of topics to expatiate upon from this 18th of June till next Christmas, for any one who has sufficient talent and leisure to do so; but the simple enumeration of a few principal stubborn facts will perhaps do as well-here they are:

It is a matter of fact, that there are millions of inhabitants of these islands who can neither read nor write.——To what is this to be ascribed?——is it to a reluctance or want of desire on their part to have any thing to do with letters? No!—this cannot possibly be supposed; every Englishman is perfectly aware that the more he knows, the more he is enabled to get of the good things of this world. The idea contained in the laconic expression, "Knowledge is power," is

as familiar to the peasant as to the scholar, although he may dress this idea in different words; he meets every day with circumstances reminding him incessantly of the inferiority of his position, mainly attributable to his ignorance of the first rudiments of education; and still there are millions of Englishmen ignorant of the reading of their own language!——Is it perhaps from a want of books or teachers? No!—there is not in the world a country where there are so many books and teachers as in England—every wall is a book—every street corner is a library, an almost gratuitous library; every man is allowed to be a school-master—thousands are compelled to turn schoolmasters, and be very humble, and exceedingly cheap. The amount of instruction to be got in England for one shilling in books and teachers could not be purchased elsewhere for ten. Look to the numerous public charity schools—look to the exertions of the innumerable political, religious, or philanthropic knowledge-spreading societies—look to the general tendency towards intellectual improvement—look to the never-sleeping press—look to the cheap and given-away-for-nothing periodical press—and tell me the reason why—tell me how it is—that the lower classes of this country are generally ignorant, mostly beneath correct reading, and very rarely enlightened to the pitch of a comfortable and correct writing of their own language!!!

Each individual of the (suppose) 25 millions of the population is allowed by law, and encouraged by society, to learn to read and write. In Russia there is not above one million of the natives allowed to think of reading and writing; consequently there ought to be here, on this account alone, more reading indivi- duals than in Russia in the proportion of twenty-five to one: and when we take into consideration that Russia, besides other items of inferiority, has very bad roads, a poor press, and a very few teachers, we shall be inclined to expect the above relation to be not only twenty-five to one, but fifty to one, or more. Well, is this the case?——Far from it. If we were to take at random 10,000 Englishmen and 10,000 Russians, from amongst those allowed to read, we should find (I speak from my own nearly half a century of observations) quite the reverse of what we had a right to expect—the bulk of Russian reading would far, far outweigh the English. Not to mention other countries of Europe, particularly Prussia,—the contrast would be still more glaringly against England. In England, and in England only, there are millions of free men incapable of signing their names, incapable of spelling their Prayer-books.—Read this, if you please:—

| 62,477 | | Persons taken into custody by the Metropolitan Police in 1843.

16,918 | Neither read nor write.

39,067 | Read and write imperfectly.

6,492 | Read and write well.

This means, 62,477 persons are taken at random from among the population of the metropolis of the United Kingdom, Anno Domini 1843; scarcely one out of ten of them read and write well; every fourth individual is an Englishman, incapable of signing his name.—Every fourth individual is an Englishman, incapable of reading his Prayer-book.

The most zealous and able propagators of the Gospel are decidedly Englishmen; but cannot, ought not the Gospel to be made more accessible? Can you ever do too much for such a purpose? ought you not to do what can so easily be done—namely, to have the Gospel written in a manner to be read even by the least instructed? You have the Gospel in all languages—but you can scarcely say you have it in English—it is not legible for the million!!!—Millions of

Every parent would be glad to have his children educated, every grown-up ignoramus would gladly undertake to study reading and writing, if to their anxious inquiry—how long time it would take to go through them hard things?—we could, as we soon shall, answer—a few days or weeks. Not so when they hear the bitter, the chilling, the freezing truth———Disappointed, they give up, they are compelled to give up—the hope of becoming acquainted with a so dearly- to-be-bought science;—they are compelled to decline the innumerable invitations to partake gratuitously in the pleasures of knowledge.——It is all very well for you, say they, to show us your dazzling valuables, through your grated windows and key-holes—to invite us most kindly to share them with you—whilst the whole time you take good care to keep the letters—those intricate patent door-keys to knowledge—tight and everlastingly within your fists. Yes! they suspect—and they have plausible reasons to suspect, even the most sincere, disinterested, generous propagators and patrons of intellectual improvement; these are not proof against real or affected suspicion; they remain vulnerable to the shafts of their enemies, and instead of feelings of due gratitude; they are made to find those of undeserved hatred and revenge. These things have been, are, and will con- tinue to be in existence until there is an end put to old Master Spelling Book's

Many persons pride themselves on writing in an extremely rapid-looking, great-man-like, a-la-Buonaparte hand. I do not seek invidiously to paralyze the spirit of invention, or to appear to throw cold water upon the plan, when I state that this is no new invention, nor even a modern puff of an old contrivance. In all ages, we find that there were men who had hit upon the plan of concealing their failings through the medium of a similar or equally facile shift. I ascribe this to "necessity being the mother of invention;" men feel the necessity of avoiding being held up as ignorant of the deep and important science of orthography; and therefore means are invented for the purpose. Many a correspondence has been stopped—many a business miscarried—many an assembly dissolved, and the success of many a battle jeopardized, by imitating Buonaparte in his illegibility of writing. But why need we wander out into such distant spheres? Let any one simply answer, from his own experience, how often he has been put out of temper by the receipt of letters containing such

The smaller the number of individuals capable of writing and reading, the less must be the amount of correspondence, and consequently the less the number of letters passing through the Post Office. Those who can neither read nor write will not always take the trouble to invite others to read

or write for them. The delight afforded to others in correspondence with friends, as well as the advantages which it gives in the transaction of business, is out of their reach, unless through the always inconvenient and humiliating—often injurious, and frequently dangerous necessity, of opening their sentiments to strangers often treacherous strangers. A good many prefer renouncing the pleasures of communicating by letter, to the chance of exposing themselves to such humiliation and danger. I have no data for ascertaining the exact amount in pence thus lost to the Post Office from this inability of correspondence, but it must indeed be very considerable. I shall not perhaps err if I say about a fifth part of the population are thus lost as customers to the letter box. Besides, probably half of those who are now by some means or other correspondents, neglect their availabilities to a great extent, on account of the difficulties which they experience in performing this business in a manner which should be proof against the sneering criticism of those whom they consider better versed in the incomprehensible, unfathomable science of correct spelling. If I were to take an example from myself, I must in candour, and notwithstanding the shame attached to such an avowal, acknowledge the stubborn fact (give it any name you please—ascribe it to what ever cause you like), that after upwards of seven years of a studious residence in the metropolis, I often waive writing letters. I confess this openly, for the benefit of thousands who are similarly placed with myself, who have not their "Johnson constantly on their writing-desk, or who are not disposed to submit to such a drudgery as correct English orthography, not having been drilled to it from their infancy. I, from this cause, often forego writing, and thus I rob the Post Office revenue of, I venture to say, an average of two-pence per day; which sum is no saving to me, for I expend it in any way but that conducive to my comfort. I cannot tell how I expend it, but I am bound to say that it is spent unproductively. Indeed I often soothe my torturing conscience of not writing or answering letters, by throwing pence from Waterloo Bridge into the Thames; or employing them in some other manner equally beneficial to myself and to society. Now I may fairly suppose that there are about fifty thousand foreigners similarly circumstanced; and taking the average value of their avoided correspondence at two-pence daily for each individual, we have a direct loss to the Post Office of one hundred thousand pence, or about £400 per day; or about £120,000 per year. This may be an exaggerated statement. I will, therefore, reduce it to 28. in the pound, which will give an annual sum of £12,000 robbed from the crown of Mr. Rowland Hill, and thrown into the Thames, or wasted in some equally ridiculous manner. Let Englishmen make a similar estimate, and reduce to pounds, shillings and pence, the amount of what they in a similar manner rob from the budget of the Post Office, and the well earned glory of Mr. Hill, and expend in an equally profitless manner. Still I will hazard, without fear of contradiction, the statement, that it is not less than a million—a million sterling——diverted from channels in which it would procure the most pleasing, social, intellectual and profitable intercourse, to waste itself in nothingness. For myself, I declare that the amount of two-pence per day, or £2 per annum, is the minimum which I destroy,—wantonly doing good to nobody, and feeling the stigma attached to the revolting crime of diminishing the budget of my second FATHERLAND.

It is an acknowledged fact, that Englishmen by no means rate in the first rank as linguists,—that is to say, that they display no great facility, comparatively speaking, for the acquisition of foreign languages. There are certainly, in England, linguists as great and profound as those of any other country; but these are exceptions, for the generality of Englishmen experience more difficulties in the study of languages than any other nation. I state this as a fact known to many, and observed by myself, during a long series of years spent in travelling in different countries. Why, we may naturally ask, is it so? Is it on account of their having no peculiar phrenological organ for it?——On the contrary, we may expect that Englishmen should, by virtue of their descent, possess such an organ in a superior degree, on account of their being an amalgam of specimens of all the various inhabitants of the world. Neither is it owing to a want of inducement to stimulate them to the attainment of foreign languages. Their extended intellectual, political, and commercial intercourse, indicate the reverse. On the other hand, I see that the Poles and the Russians are the best linguists: this leads me to suspect that the cause is to be found in the nature of the alphabets and orthographies of these nations. I have already, I think, satisfactorily shown the gross absurdity of the English reading and writing elements. I will now mention in contrast with this, that the alphabet approaching most nearly perfection is the Russian. Next in perfection is the Polish, which is succeeded by the German; and then follows in succession the Italian, which begins to savour something of absurdity—surpassed, however, in this respect by those of France and the Peninsula; whilst the English may fairly boast of being on the apex, out-topped only by the Mussulmans and the Chinese in this monomaniacal absurdity. It is therefore easy to understand why high-spirited, free, ingenious, and intelligent Englishmen require just as many years for the study of their language, as it will take weeks for the stupid Russians to acquire theirs. It is easy to trace from this circum- stance the extreme difficulty of the Englishman, and the contrasting facility of the Russian, in the study of foreign languages.