No Ghoti Today

Not long ago Dr. Mont Follick, Labor member for Loughborough, interested his fellow M.P.s by demonstrating from the floor of the House a rotating toothbrush of his own invention. Last week Dr. Follick nearly won a victory for another invention, a system of simplified spelling.

The son of a Cardiff draper, Dr. Follick was born in Wales where every schoolboy is expected to learn the spelling of such names as Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery-chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. At 17, he left Wales for Australia. Perhaps Down Under he heard about the New Zealand hilltop called Taumatawhakatangihangako-auauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu. He developed an English alphabet containing no C, Q or X.

Last week for nearly five hours the House of Commons debated the pros & cons of his bill to make simplified spelling compulsory in all British schools, films and copyrighted literature. No foreigner, the bill provided, would be naturalized until he had mastered the new spelling. "Fourteen million schoolchildren," pleaded Dr. Follick, "are wasting their time over [the old] spelling." (One hundred fifty "fed-up" schoolboys wrote in to cry "hear, hear!") A simpler English comprehensible to foreigners, he went on, would be of inestimable value to international relations. Tory M.P. Christopher Hollis made a shrewd comment on this motion. Said Hollis: "I do not think we should like Mr. Molotov any better if we understood everything he said."

Tory M.P. and Punch Editor Sir Alan (A. P.) Herbert wanted to know how Follick's phonetics would cope with the word water. "I think," said Herbert, "the Hon. Member for Loughborough proposes to spell it 'uoorter.' Some cockneys leave out the T and call it 'wa'er.' Americans say 'watter,' but how do the Scotsmen say it?" Glasgow's John Rankin volunteered: "We pronounce it whuskey."

When the final vote was taken, the bill was defeated by a narrow margin of 87 to 84. "It's a great moral victory," said Dr. Follick. "We shall go on."

"Formers," proclaimed the Daily Express, "ar welcum to Docter Folics nu Inglish. WE PREFER IT AS IT IS." But the Evening Standard felt constrained to point out that "spelling reform is supported by many of the leading intelligence of the country." One of these, of course, was G. B. Shaw, who long ago had pointed out that under the present system the word "fish" might just as well be spelled GHOTI; GH as in enough, O as in women, TI as in nation. GH-O-TI = fish.

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