S. P. E
Tract No. III
A FEW PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
By Logan Pearsall Smith
MDCCCCXX
EDITORIAL
CO-OPERATION OF MEMBERS, ETC.
REPORT TO EASTER, 1920
A FEW PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
The principles of the Society for Pure English were stated in generalterms in its preliminary pamphlet; since, however, many questions havebeen asked about the application of these principles, a few suggestionsabout special points may be found useful. The Society does not attempt todictate to its members; it does, however, put forward its suggestions asworthy of serious consideration; and, since they have received theapproval of the best scientific judgement, it is hoped that they will begenerally acceptable.
Some of them, when blankly stated, may seem trivial and unimportant; butwe neither expect nor desire to make any sudden and revolutionary changes.A language is an established means of communication, sanctioned by thegeneral consent, and cannot be transformed at will. Language is, however,of itself always changing, and if there is hesitation between currentusages, then choice becomes possible, and individuals may intervene withgood effect; for only by their preferences can the points in dispute befinally settled. It is important, therefore, that these preferences shouldbe guided by right knowledge, and it is this right knowledge which theSociety makes it its aim to provide. While, therefore, any particularruling may seem unimportant, the principle on which that ruling is basedis not so; and its application in any special case will help to give itauthority and force. The effect of even a small number of successfulinterventions will be to confirm right habits of choice, which may then,as new opportunities arise, be applied to further cases. Among the casesof linguistic usage which are varying and unfixed at the present time, andin which therefore a deliberate choice is possible, the following may bementioned:
I. The Naturalization of Foreign Words.
There is no point on which usage is more uncertain and fluctuating than inregard to the words which we are always borrowing from foreign languages.Expression generally lags behind thought, and we are now more than everhandicapped by the lack of convenient terms to describe the newdiscoveries, and new ways of thinking and feeling by which our lives areenriched and made interesting. It has been our national custom in the pastto eke out our native resources by borrowing from other languages,especially from French, any words which we found ready to our needs; anduntil recent times, these words were soon made current and convenient bybeing assimilated and given English shapes and sounds. We still borrow asfreely as ever; but half the benefit of this borrowing is lost to us,owing to our modern and pedantic attempts to preserve the foreign soundsand shapes of imported words, which make their current use unnecessarilydifficult. Owing to our false taste in this matter many words which havebeen long naturalized in the language are being now put back into theirforeign forms, and our speech is being thus gradually impoverished. Thisprocess of de-assimilation generally begins with the restoration offoreign accents to such words as have them in French; thus‘role’ is nowwritten ‘rôle’*; ‘debris’, ‘débris’; ‘detour’, ‘détour’; ‘depot’,‘dépôt’; and the old words long established in our language, ‘levee’, ‘naivety’, now appear as ‘levée’, and ‘naïveté’. The next step is toitalicize these words, th