Inglish orthograffy is a wierd cemetary of sibboleths. Foreigners are harrased by it. Natives to the maner borne are embarassed. So it is a releif for the beleagered batalions of mispellers that the Dictionary of Perfect Spelling is being relunched. This referance book annoints the 27 differant pronounciations of “-ough-”, adambrates riming break with freak, persues the racket over racquets, and accomodates the jungle of miniscule diferances in the endings -ible and -able. But how will it help those who commit the commen errer of spelling “nollij”, sick, to look it up? Spelling the unspellible is no longer seen as a moral virtue. Children have more relavent lessons than spelling B’s. The high-tech solution is Spellcheck. But this is a false friend, unable to liase with poetry or the unexpected. The scholer’s solutian is T he Oxford English Dictionary. But this is definately unhelpful, since it lists the varient cacograffies. Radicles would call the hole mess off, and supercede it with fonetic spelling.
But who’s fonetics should it accomodate? How can we alianate all previous litererture from Shakspeere to Jane Austin? Speling is the archeology of language. Our spelling of “wine” and “pillow” records that the Saxons had adopted these Latin words before they invaded Britton and inwented the letter V. Eschschol(t)zia, the yellow California poppie, is a compliment to a member of the Romanzoff expedition of 1821. And they spelt his name wrong, anyway. Fuschia, anyone?
More than two centuries of sub-editors are turning in there graves over this editoriel. Times readers, being wizzerd spellers, will have spoted all 56 mispellings. Or is it a round Hinds?