How to Master English Regular and Irregular Words!

In this post, I’m going to cast the light a little bit about the mastery of irregular words in English. Here, then, we have the real reason for a long study of principles, analogies, and classifications.  They help us to remember. If I come to the word _colonnade_ in reading, I observe at once that the double _n_ is an irregularity.  It catches my eye immediately.

"Ah!" I reflect almost in the fraction of a second as I read in continuous flow, "here is another of those exceptions."  Building on what I already know perfectly well, I master this word with the very slightest effort.  If we can build up a system which will serve the memory by way of association, so that the slight effort that can be given in ordinary reading will serve to fix a word more or less fully, we can soon acquire a marvelous power in the accurate spelling of words.

Again: In a spelling-book before me I see lists of words ending in (se, ize) and (se) all mixed together with no distinction.  The arrangement suggests memorizing every word in the language ending with either of these terminations, and until we have memorized any particular word we have no means of knowing what the termination is. 
  If, however, we are taught that (ze) is the common ending, that (se) s the ending of only thirty-one words, and (se)of only three or four, we reduce our task enormously and aid the memory in acquiring the few exceptions.  When we come to _franchise_ in reading we reflect rapidly, "Another of those verbs in ise” or to _paralyze, _ "One of those very few verbs in (yse)!"  We give no thought whatever to all the verbs ending in (ize) and so saves so much energy for other acquirement.

If we can say, "This is a violation of such and such a rule," or "This is a strange irregularity," or "This belongs to the class of words which substitutes _ea_ for the long sound of _e,_ or for the short sound of _e_."

We have an association of the unknown with the known that is the most powerful possible aid to the memory.  The system may fail in and of itself, but it more than serves its purpose thus indirectly in aiding the memory. We have not spoken of the association of word forms with sounds, the grouping of the letters of words into syllables, and the aid that a careful pronunciation gives the memory by way of association; for while this is the most powerful aid of all, it does not need explanation.

The Mastery of Regular Words.

We have spoken of the mastery of irregular words, and in the last paragraph but one we have referred to the aid which general principles give the memory by way of association in acquiring the exceptions to the rules. We will now consider the great class of words formed according to fixed principles.

Of course these laws and rules are little more than a string of analogies which we observe in our study of the language.  The language was not and never will be built to fit these rules.  The usage of the people is the only authority.  Even clear logic goes down before usage. Languages grow like mushrooms, or lilies, or bears, or human bodies. Like these they have occult and profound laws which we can never hope to penetrate, ---which are known only to the creator of all things existent.  But as in botany and zoology and physiology we may observe and classify our observations, so we may observe a language, classify our observations, and create an empirical science of word-formation. Possibly in time it will become a science something more than empirical.

The laws we are able at this time to state with much definiteness are few (doubling consonants, dropping silent e's, changing y's to i's, accenting the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables, lengthening and shortening vowels).  In addition we may classify exceptions, for the sole purpose of aiding the memory.

Ignorance of these principles and classifications, and knowledge of the causes and sources of the irregularities, should be pronounced criminal in a teacher; and failure to teach them, more than criminal in a spelling-book.  It is true that most spelling-books do give them in one form or another, but invariably without due emphasis or special drill, a lack which renders them worthless.  Pupils and students should be drilled upon them till they are as familiar as the multiplication table.

We know how most persons stumble over the pronunciation of names in the Bible and in classic authors.  They are equally nonplussed when called upon to write words with which they are no more familiar.  They cannot even pronounce simple English names like _Cody,_ which they call "Coddy," in analogy with _body,_ because they do not know that in a word of two syllables a single vowel followed by a single consonant is regularly long when accented.  At the same time they will spell the word in all kinds of queer ways, which are in analogy only with exceptions, not with regular formations.  Unless a person knows what the regular principles are, he cannot know how a word should regularly be spelled.

A strange word is spelled quite regularly nine times out of ten, and if one does not know exactly how to spell a word, it is much more to his credit to spell it in a regular way than in an irregular way.

The truth is, the only possible key we can have to those thousands of strange words and proper names which we meet only once or twice in a lifetime, is the system of principles formulated by philologists, if for no other reason, we should master it that we may come as near as possible to spelling proper names correctly.