ed person goes through to speak the language of the educated,
although the unsatisfactory result is sufficiently conspicuous. But we
can trace the operation of a similar cause in the hesitancy of the
educated man himself when he attempts to speak in public and is
embarrassed by the search for the set of words most suited for dignified
purposes.

Most of those who regarded English as the coming world-language admitted
that it would require improvement for general use. The extensive and
fundamental character of the necessary changes is not, however,
realized. The difficulties of English are of four kinds: (1) its special
sounds, very troublesome for foreigners to learn to pronounce, and the
uncertainty of its accentuation; (2) its illogical and chaotic spelling,
inevitably leading to confusions in pronunciation; (3) the grammatical
irregularities in its verbs and plural nouns; and (4) the great number
of widely different words which are almost or quite similar in
pronunciation. A vast number of absurd pitfalls are thus prepared for
the unwary user of English. He must remember that the plural of "mouse"
is "mice," but that the plural of "house" is not "hice," that he may
speak of his two "sons," but not of his two "childs"; he will
indistinguishably refer to "sheeps" and "ships"; and like the preacher a
little unfamiliar with English who had chosen a well-known text to
preach on, he will not remember whether "plough" is pronounced "pluff"
or "plo,"[240] and even a phonetic spelling system would render still more
confusing the confusion between such a series of words as "hair,"
"hare," "heir," "are," "ere" and "eyre." Many of these irregularities
are deeply rooted in the structure of the language; it would be an
extremely difficult as well as extensive task to remove them, and when
the task was achieved the language would have lost much of its character
and savour; it would clash painfully with literary English.

Thus even if we admitted that English ought to be the international
language of the future, the result is not so satisfactory from a British
point of view as is usually taken for granted. All other civilized
nations would be bilingual; they would possess the key not only to their
own literature, but to a great foreign literature with all the new
horizons that a foreign literature opens out. The English-speaking
countries alone would be furnished with only one language, and would
have no stimulus to acquire any oth