FINAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE ON A UNIVERSAL SYSTEM

OF KEY NOTATION1

To the Department of Superintendence, National Education Association:

Your committee, appointed in 1903 to invite and join with like committees from the Modern Language Association and the American Philological Association to prepare and recommend a key alphabet for uniform use in indicating pronunciation in all our cyclopedias, dictionaries, gazetteers, text and reference books, begs leave to submit this special report at this time with the privilege of adding a supplementary report at the next meeting of the department.

We regret to be obliged to report that as yet the efforts made in accordance with your instruction in response to our report of February 25, 1909, to secure if possible the agreement of the other two societies to a compromise on the few remaining points of difference then existing between us, have not been successful. But all three committees are in such entire accord on so large a portion of the key, and your committee are so fully convinced as to the forms in the disputed cases which will most satisfactorily meet the practical, immediate demand for such a key, that it seems clearly best to lose no more time in seeking for complete harmony, so much to be desired, but that we should at once recommend for your adoption the key which in our judgment is the best solution, all things considered, of this perplexing problem possible at this time.

The key which we here submit for your approval is substantially the one contained in the Report of the Joint Subcommittee, which was distributed to the members of the Department at the Milwaukee meeting in 1905. This key was quite satisfactory to your committee, as we reported at that time. It had the cordial indorsement, indeed, it was the product, of the representatives on the joint committee of the other two societies, men of the highest standing and influence as experts in their field. But when it came up for approval in their societies changes were made which we could not indorse or advise you to indorse. On these disputed points the key we now recommend is exactly the same as in the Report of the Joint Subcommittee handed to you in 1905. However, during the subsequent years of effort to compromise on these points of disagreement, above referred to, your committee has become satisfied that the practical adoption and use of this key would be greatly facilitated by making four changes, adopting digraphs composed of present letters instead of the more ideal and logical single signs which the Joint Subcommittee, tho not without some hesitation and debate, decided to recommend. The practical advantage to be gained by these concessions so clearly outweighs the loss in theoretical consistency, in our judgment, that we do not hesitate to approve them, particularly as all the experts who prepared the alphabet in the first instance concur with us.

The key here submitted adopts the alphabet, so far as that alphabet went, recommended by the American Philological Association in 1877, under the lead of those eminent philologists Professors Whitney, March, and Haldeman, which has already gained some

For record of appointment and work of this committee see Boston Volume of Proceedings (1903), pp. 140-41; St. Louis Volume (1904), pp. 39, 175-76; Volume for 1905, p. 158; Los Angeles (1907) Year. book, p. 60; Proceedings of 1909, p. 163, and Boston (1910) Yearbook, p. 55.

headway as a pronouncing key, and which we deem it important to adhere to. Nothing could be more fatal to the success of a uniform key alphabet than to have the expert recommendations of one generation overturn or discredit those of a previous generation. In this matter steadiness and stability are of prime importance.

The other items completing this key alphabet, including the four concessions above referred to, have been adopted with the full and careful consideration and approval of several of the most eminent scholars and workers in the field of linguistic science, and they indorse this eclectic key as being the most happy combination of the scholarly and the practical which it is possible for patience and compromise to evolve from the mass of mere personal opinion or prejudice that embarrasses this subject.

The limits of this special report permit of no explanation in detail further than to say that this key provides a separate sign for each of our forty-four generally accepted sounds, not one of the signs being a distinctively new letter or having a foreign look. Excepting the last two supplementary letters, the added letters are so formed as to obviate criticism on the part of the type-maker and the practical printer, as well as to be easy to write and to connect with preceding and following letters.

The experts agree that the discrimination of sounds in this alphabet is sufficiently delicate and precise for all practical purposes. It should be noted that the last three letters are required only, and will be used only, by the lexicographers in order that they may carry out their too realistic theory that it is the dictionary's function to record the facts not merely of our precise, formal, more or less ideal speech, as approved by educated and cultured people regardless of their speech habits, but the literal facts of our ordinary rapid, or careless, or incidental colloquial utterance in which precision and distinctness are not thought of. It is important for the practical educator to realize that the sounds which these last three letters are intended to stand for are so confessedly lacking in distinctive character and quality that they cannot be clearly identified or be named. No experts attempt it. They merely describe these sounds as "obscure," or "weak," or "neutral," "tending toward i in pin" or "toward e in set," "intermediate between a in art and a in am," etc. Of course, such indefinite, indeterminate sounds, no matter how often they occur in our colloquial and hasty speech, cannot be taught to beginners in reading or be used in oral or syllabic spelling; nor is it necessary, and certainly it is not desirable, that they should be, even if it were possible. This alphabet without these last three letters is complete and fully adequate for common everyday use and for the ordinary needs of the learner and the teacher. In such use these three letters are needless and should be wholly ignored.

This key discards all diacritic marks but one, the macron, which has one invariable use, viz.: to indicate the long sound of whatever letter it is used with.

In the main this key alphabet conforms to international usage. For the pupil who should become accustomed to it the task of learning to pronounce Latin and German and most other European languages would be a comparatively small matter. The foreigner among us would find great help in a re-spelling of our words in this alphabet. It would furnish the primary teacher who wishes to use the phonetic method in teaching beginners to read, an authorized and complete alphabet, simple and easy for the children to learn to use, a tool never furnished to her before.

In order to have this key find its way into general use, there must, of course, be a call for it. Publishers must discover that the teachers of the country, those who come most directly in contact with the children, and who realize most fully the embarrassments and difficulties attending the use of the present diverse and complicated systems of key notation, desire and would appreciate the adoption of a simple uniform key system in all our books, and especially in our schoolbooks. Publishers cannot be expected to introduce such an improvement without feeling sure that there is a demand for it sufficient to justify the expense and risk involved in adopting it. It is for the teachers of the country to say whether such a call for a uniform key alphabet shall be clearly heard, and whether

the royal seal of the National Education Association shall be placed upon the alphabet here recommended so that it shall always remain common property, perfectly open and free for use by all who will, and leaving no ground for business jealousy to make changes in it or refuse to adopt it on the claim that some rival publisher by earlier use has preempted it and thus put his private stamp upon it.

Any request for information in regard to this alphabet or its use, and any suggestion that may add to the value and helpfulness of our forthcoming final report will be welcomed and carefully considered. The capitals and script forms will appear in that report. BOSTON, MASS.

July 6, 1910

To the Department of Superintendence, National Education Association:

Last summer at Boston at our request the Board of Directors of the National Education Association permitted your committee to file with the general secretary a special report containing the key alphabet on which we had agreed, and instructed him to print and send it to all active members as soon as practicable, which was done. Also several periodicals published the alphabet. That was an advance portion of our final report and is to be taken in connection with this portion as constituting that report and will be so printed.

The mass of educated people, when they think of the matter, are agreed that one standard key to pronunciation should be used in all our books. Convenience and economy long since established a standard uniform gauge for our railroad tracks, a standard uniform keyboard for our typewriting and typesetting machines, a standard thread for our bolts, pipes, etc. In a matter so important to the comfort and convenience of so many of us, particularly teachers and children, as the quick and correct apprehension of the signs of pronunciation, diversity in those signs as used in any of our books should no more be tolerated than would diversity in any of the products above referred to. Today any nut which you may chance to pick up will fit any bolt that you may find of the same diameter. A typist is at home on the universal keyboard of any of the standard typewriters, and the typesetting machines are adopting the same keyboard. In the same way the public good demands uniformity in our system of indicating pronunciation, so that when we have mastered the key in one book we shall know it in all books, whether dictionaries, cyclopedias, spelling books, reading books, or what not, and no matter who made them.

Professor George Hempl, of Leland Stanford University, formerly of Michigan University, one of the foremost linguistic scholars and dictionary workers of the world, very cogently put the case thus in discussing this very alphabet at the Louisville meeting of this Department in February, 1906:

The movement [to adopt a uniform key notation] originated in the minds of members of this Association, and in response to a great need felt by all practical teachers. No one or two dictionaries now hold the field and wield authority. The growth of scholarship and the development of the English-speaking world have demanded and made possible the preparation and sale of many good dictionaries. These have different systems of indicating pronunciation. When it is necessary to look up a word and compare authorities, the searcher is at once confronted by the task of deciphering and interpreting the various letters and diacritic marks employed, and these are so different and so differently used in the various dictionaries that it is often almost impossible to find out and remember what the authorities have to say on the subject. If teachers and other adult users of dictionaries find this process beset with difficulty, what must it be to the children in our schools? How serious this matter is and how real the trouble, one may estimate when he learns that practical dictionary workers, the men who make dictionaries and are daily employed upon them and who are supposed to know the different systems thoroly, constantly find themselves misinterpreting and confusing the signs employed.

Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia University, chairman of the joint subcommittee which prepared the report and the alphabet distributed to you at our Milwaukee meeting in February, 1905, thus stated the situation:

We need, the world needs, now, without further waiting, an adequate, simple, precise, unambiguous, and generally accepted notation for the sounds of the English language; a notation that we can teach to the young in school, thereby training their vocal organs and leading them to pronounce the language more accurately and more intelligently; a notation that will at the same time facilitate our learning of foreign languages and the learning of English by foreigners; a notation, finally, that will enable the educated adult to consult whatever good dictionary comes to hand and find out how the word is pronounced without referring to a special and peculiar "key to pronunciation."

It is highly improbable that uniformity in our system of indicating pronunciation would ever come about by the spontaneous agreement of rival publishers. Here is a practical key, based on the essential principle, one letter one sound, the product of the foremost language students of our country, and pronounced by leading expert lexicographers to be without an equal in scholarly and working qualities. This alphabet cannot be copyrighted or claimed by any publisher and therefore will be absolutely free to all. If it receives the indorsement of this body, representing the working, controlling, practical force in the field of education, your committee believes that it will be adopted in due time by all of our publishers of dictionaries, gazetteers, cyclopedias, and textbooks. Indeed, upon the appearance of our special report of last July, the publishers of one of our leading dictionaries, then in the process of revision, who had devised an entirely new pronouncing key of their own, the types for which had all been cast, threw away this new type and the pages already set, and started in anew, using this alphabet as their key to indicate pronunciation. This in itself is a good start for this alphabetic key.

The attention of your committee as practical men thru these years of labor was concentrated on the practical features of the alphabet we were working for; i.e., on the specific signs for the forty-four distinct and recognized elementary sounds of our speech. In the July installment of this report, in order to meet the desire of experts, special letters were submitted at the end of our recommended alphabet to represent the weak or obscure vowel sounds; but it does not seem wise to recommend alone these special letters for ordinary use in re-spelling to show pronunciation. These weak sounds are so indefinite and elusive that they do not need to be taught as separate sounds, for if the beginning learner is trained to place accent and emphasis properly the weakening of the unstressed vowel will follow naturally, if not inevitably. If there is occasion to indicate these neutral sounds, it may be done as well and as simply and clearly by placing the circumflex beneath the letter the sound of which is obscured, the ends of the circumflex turned down to indicate a weakening tending toward u in but, and turned up to indicate a weakening tending toward i in pit. This device was introduced by Professor March many years ago and has been in constant use. Its distinctive and obvious merit is that it does not conceal the proper and correct spelling of a word by substituting a sign of indefiniteness in place of the regular and proper letter. The adding of this alternative mode of indicating the neutral vowel, leaving each user to make his own choice, will satisfy both those who wish to use special symbols, and likewise those, possibly the larger number, who would avoid adding to this simple alphabet extra or superfluous letters.

Your committee recommends for your adoption the following:

PHONETIC KEY ALPHABET

N.B.-The name of a vowel is its sound uttered distinctly. The systematic name of an explosive consonant and of h, y, and w is its sound followed by i; of any other consonant, its sound preceded by e. In the case of five consonants, however, the common names are submitted as optional.

In the digraphs ch, sh, th, th the component letters should not be thought of or named. They are tied together expressly to indicate that the combinations are to be recognized invariably as single characters, as units, a habit more easily acquired by children brought up on the new alphabet than by adults obsessed by the old. The character ch, for instance, is not to be thought of or called ch, but as a single sign named chi. So of the others. In the script digraphs there is the same need of the ligature; but it would necessitate an additional stroke of the pen and is therefore omitted, the letters being clearly joined at the base.

Philologists agree that it is best to use the same letter for a short vowel and its long in ordinary print, distinguishing them by a diacritic only when it is especially necessary to indicate precision.

The capital letters for ch, sh, th, th serve well in the ordinary initial position. But when the entire word is to be printed in capitals it is probable that digraphs consisting wholly of upper case forms will be preferred, like our present Æ and E.