more difficulty to the eye of the ordinary reader than the current variations in English pronunciation present to the ear of the ordinary listener.
An Invaluable Record
Such variations in spelling as would inevitably occur in the writing of persons of limited scooling, or as would be used by more highly educated persons who wisht to enforce their own methods of pronunciation, would automatically constitute an invaluable record of the variations in English speech in different localities and at successiv periods. In other words, the history of the growth and development of the living English tung would be preservd in the writings of those who spoke it—a result impossible of attainment, even by scolars, with the cristalized, conventionalized English spelling of the last two hundred years.
Talking "by Ear"
Since our current orthografy bears no real relation to the present pronunciation, but is at best an imperfect attempt to represent that of the Elizabethan period, English pronunciation has become almost entirely a matter of oral tradition—as unsafe a gide in regard to correctness in speech as it is in regard to correctness in history. We learn to talk, and continue to talk, entirely "by ear," and with the same tendency to uncertainty and variation as do those who play music by ear. The musician who wishes to play accurately, however, can correct his faulty memory or wrong impressions by reference to the printed score, which exactly represents to him the sounds recorded by the composer. No such convenient and infallible gide exists for those who wish to speak English accurately.
