Here the music of the rhythm and the harmony between sound and sense would be almost entirely lost in silent reading.
The voice, too, is often the surest and most effective means of conveying differences of meaning and feeling in both prose and poetry. The following words from Hervé Riel (pp. [241]-247) may be made to convey different meanings according to the intonation of the voice:
Burn the fleet and ruin France?
This may be read to express hesitation and deliberation, or, as is the evident intention, shewn by the context as well as by the punctuation, to express Hervé Riel's surprise and indignation that such a thought should be entertained.
Mechanical Side of Oral Reading
Now in what does oral reading consist? It consists, first of all, in recognizing the words, pronouncing them correctly, and articulating them distinctly. The pupil in the First Book, who is learning to read, is trying to master this side of reading, which is the mechanical side. He cannot be too careful as to the habits of speech he forms; for correct position of the organs of speech and proper control of the breath make for correct pronunciation and distinct articulation, which are two of the foundation stones of good reading.
By correct pronunciation, we mean the pronunciation approved by a standard dictionary. Elegance and refinement of speech depend largely on the correct pronunciation of the vowel sounds. The vowel a, which is sounded in seven different ways in the English language, presents the greatest difficulty. Many people recognize at most, only the sound of a in at, ate, all, far, and mortal respectively. They ignore the sound as in air, and the shorter quantity of the Italian a in ask, giving the sound of a in ate to the former and of a in at or a in all or a in far to the latter. Another difficulty is that of distinguishing the sound of oo in roof, food, etc., from the sound of oo in book and good, and from the sound of u in such words as pure and duke.
Pronunciation, when perfectly pure, should be free from what we call provincialisms; that is, from any peculiarity of tone, accent, or vowel sound, which would mark the speaker as coming from any particular locality. If our pronunciation is perfectly pure, it does not indicate, in the slightest degree, the part of the country in which we have lived.
Distinct articulation requires that each syllable should receive its full value, and that the end of a word should be enunciated as distinctly as the beginning. It depends largely on the way in which we utter the consonants, just as correct pronunciation depends on the enunciation of the vowels. Final consonants are easily slurred, especially in the case of words ending in two or more consonants, which present special difficulties of articulation. Such words are mends, seethes, thirsteth, breathed, etc. Sometimes, too, the careless reader fails to articulate two consonants separately when the first word ends with the consonant or consonant sound with which the second begins; for example, Sir Richard Grenville lay, Spanish ships; or when the first word ends with a consonant and the second begins with a vowel, as in eats apples, not at all, an ox, etc. On the other hand, too evident an effort to secure the proper enunciation of the sound elements should be avoided, since a stilted mode of utterance is thus produced.