Forlong - Rivers of Life

Preface. xxxvii
or etymological use of our present hap-hazard system. The Philological Society of
London and many abroad have definitely committed themselves to lines of improve-
ment, and more action would have followed but for the too radical changes which
the more earnest spelling reformers advocated. Moderate men desired that we should
advance only a little quicker and more regularly than in the past, for it appears that the
progress has been such that the 1st Chapter of Genesis, as written one hundred years
ago, has one hundred and twenty mistakes according to the present orthography. It
seemed sufficient that sound and simplicity should lead to a general shortening of
words, as by avoidance of double letters and all or most unsounded ones; also that
when moderately correct sound could be assured, the spelling should revert to the
most ancient language in which the word or root appeared. Thus, that in Europe we
should pass over the Latin c, s, &c., where they had substituted thcse for the Greek k,
s, &c., and .refuse a soft ch for a k or c. and a ck where k was sufficient. At the same
time it was felt imperative above all things that no changes should be made in a
work of this sufficiently difficult kind which would draw off the reader’s attention
from the subject in hand, or even distract his eye or ear; whilst as one ever a warm
advocate of spelling reform, the author felt bound to aid, however slightly, in what he
hopes will yet be one of the greatest revolutions of the next generation—a gradual but
general reformation of all the orthographies of Europe. He has no desire, however,
to bury his own hooks and all the literature of the past which a too radical change in
the forms of letters would infallibly do, were the rising genemtion to be exclusively
or genernally instructed in a system of fonetiks, or were our words even altered to the
orthography of a Chaucer.
We can best aid substantial reform by quickening natural laws as in encouraging
fonetik growth and decay where these simplify orthography, and by writing all
infrequent words according to the accepted principles of the moderate reformers. Of
course our Brahman friend is horrified when he hears or reads of Maina a month,
for his Mahîna, and would even prefer another h or n, but India now practically
refuses to recognize the three syllables and calls their use pedantry.
In work a very slight endeavour has latterly been made to move in the direction
of the London Philological Code of “General Principles,” but with too little effoct
owing largely to the persistency of friendly reviewers and our printers who have not
only often ruthlessly swept out the improved spelling, but seemed to rebel against the
different modes in which we on principle often spell the same names of gods and
heros; the object being to accustom the enquirer into old faiths to recognize the same