changes rapidly and unsystematically. Where nearly all who speak the
language also read and write it, as in our own country, the written
tongue, even in its highest literary forms, is apt to be much more
familiar and colloquial, but at the same time the written and the spoken
tongue keep closer together. Still, they never accurately correspond. When
a man "talks like a book," or in other words, uses such language that it
could be printed word for word and appear in good literary form, we
recognize that he is not talking ordinary colloquial English--not using
the normal spoken language. On the other hand, when the speech of a
southern negro or a down-east Yankee is set down in print, as it so often
is in the modern "dialect story," we recognize at once that although for
the occasion this is written language, it is not normal literary English.
It is most desirable that the two forms of speech shall closely
correspond, for then the written speech gets life from the spoken and the
spoken has the written for its governor and controller; but it is also
desirable that each should retain more or less individuality, and
fortunately it is almost impossible that they should not do so.

We must not forget, therefore, that our written speech is not merely a way
of setting down our spoken speech in print. This is exactly what our
friends the spelling reformers appear to have forgotten. The name that
they have given to what they propose to do, indicates this clearly. When a
word as written and as spoken have drifted apart, it is usually the spoken
word that has changed. Reform, therefore, would be accomplished by
restoring the old spoken form. Instead of this, it is proposed to change
the written form. In other words, the two languages are to be forced
together by altering that one of them that is by its essence the most
immutable. Where the written word has been corrupted as in spelling
"guild" for "gild," the adoption of the simpler spelling is a reform;
otherwise, not.