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TH U RSD AY, DECEMBER 27, 1945. W r i t e s F o r th to W a r A n e w A g a in s t O u r ‘ W a s t e i u V A lp h a b e t Shaw Wants Government Group of Economists, Statisticians to Reform It Phonetically as a Saving of Time and M on ey By Wireless to Tux Nxw York T imxs. LONDON, Dec. 26—George Ber etc., etc. They have never knocked nard Shaw has picked up his pen into our heads the simple fact again on behalf of his old love and that a letter save'd in spelling is appealed to the Government to ap saved not once but millions of point a committee of economists times every day. This same is true and statisticians to create a new of the digits of our arithmetical phonetic English alphabet with no tables. "France might owe its present more than one sign for each desperate economic predicament' sound. Using as an example of wasted largely to its having chosen as its effort the final "b” in the word rules a certain intensely myopic •'bomb,” Mr. Shaw said in a long president named PolncarS who be letter published in The Times of gan counting in twopences the London today that "the extra sign francs he had borrowed in tenis entirely senseless and not only penses. His brother, a mathema wastes the writer’s time but sug tician, should have taught him gests an absurd mispronunciation better.” Mr. Shaw said that he appeared of the word exactly as if the word to be the "only phonetician, econ ’gun’ were to be spelt ‘gung’ * * Mr. Shaw said that he could write omist and man of letters who real "bomb” eighteen times in one min izes how much money there is in ute and “ bom” twenty-four times a British alphabet with which and that the figures for the time every sound in our speech can be lost in writing the word with four written with one graphic and easily written symbol without even letters were "astronomical.” "And yet our phoenticians have crosses or dots.” He said that, made nothing of this,” Mr. Shaw "if the Phoenician alphabet were continued. “They have wasted a only turned upside down and en century raising an empty laugh larged by seventeen letters from over our spelling of ‘cough,’ the Greek alphabet, it would soon ‘laugh,’ ‘enough,’ ‘though,’ etc., pay for the war.” G.B.S. Now Offers His Fortune For a 42-Letter Alphabet LONDON, March 30 (U .P.).ja common word with six letters George Bernard Shaw, in a let-i instead of two as the time lost ter to the London Times today,!is only a fraction of a second offered to leave his fortune— "if But multiply that fraction of a war taxation leaves me anything second by the number of times to bequeath”— for the establish the word has to be written in ment of a 42-letter English al the British Empire and North America every hour, every day, phabet. “ We have no English alphabet,” every month, every year, every Shaw wrote. "W e make shift with century and the cost grows . . . a Phoenician one, but it has only to billions of pounds. "T he fact that R&ssia, with | 26 letters representing 26 speech sounds. English speech has 42 its 35-letter alphabet, can spell j sounds which must be spellable my name with two letters instead before the language can be writ of four may conceivably make it impossible for us to compete! ten or read intelligibly. "It may seem only a laugh economically in the world withj Russia,”/ have to spell R ussia’V j I ing matter that we J 3 6 FOR ALL-W Owen, Blind Ex-Senat6r/S(fys It Simplifies Language Study Sj*cia.l to T hk New York T im es . W ants Longer A lp h ab e t: Shaw Says Shorter Spelling Of 'Phone' W ill Pay for War LONDON. June 12 (Reuter) ,*common word would pay for the George Bernard Shaw, in a letter World War in a few months.^ If in the Times, advocated simpll we h a d ,a British alphabet of 42 lied and shorter spelling of the letters instead of persisting in word "telephone.” He referred to using that prehistoric one of 26 ;"old fashioned people” who are letters, we could spell phone with letters instead of five and concerned when they see the name three the much commoner word ‘though of an instrument spelled with four with two letters instead of srx. letters— "fon e”— instead of five. That saving would pay for half a Tire letter added, "the saving of dozen wars if we could find noth-1 i _ _ u ni»ni< 4r\ rrusnrl i t ftTl. ■ a single letter in spelling of thatJing better to spend it on. WASHINGTON, Jan. 8— Former 1 Senator Robert Latham Owen of Oklahoma has created a global al phabet to simplify international communication and has presented it to President Roosevelt for con sideration. In a letter to the President, Mr. Owen, who is blind, said that the global alphabet of thirty-three let ters would enable learning of all languages by pronunciation and hence in only a fraction of the time required to learn them by their individual alphabets and spelling systems. "As our Commander in Chief you have the power and the opportun ity of rendering the world, through this mechanism, a service of in calculable value,” the letter de clared. “ I beg of you to request the Secretary of State to make a report to you on this plan, or with your approval to take such action as the public interest may justify. Professor Pei and his associates have just published the book ‘Languages for War and Peace,’ including all the leading languages. He has prepared textbooks for teaching eleven foreign languages to be almost immediately available which can be put in the global al phabet.” One hundred and fifty copies of the global alphabet have been sent to State- Department officers and foreign service members abroad.
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