—'You said you had no difference between r and l, but I suppose you have almost all sounds of our tongue.'
—'No,' I answered, 'we have not. We have, for instance, no sound of f or v. In some parts of the country people pronounce ha, hi, he, ho like fa, fi, fe, fo, but it is considered bad dialect. The want of v and f in our letters is a point of great difficulty in transcribing foreign words into our writing, but we employ a new method for doing so. On the other hand, our h is pronounced very acutely. You say you have h mute and h aspirate, but in practice I never see, or rather hear, any aspiration at all. Hence, Count "Hisamatsu," our actual military attaché, is always called by the French, as he complains, "Isamatsu," which is not his Japanese name at all. This fact reminds me of a similar matter concerning our own Tokio. The genuine Tokio people generally pronounce Hi as shi. It is curious, but it is a fact. This often causes comical mistakes to be made by servant-girls who are told by their mistresses to pronounce it correctly, for they often mix up and use hi in place of shi and vice versa. Mind! Tokio is the capital of Japan, but its language is not the purest of the Japanese language. The same holds good in London. It is rather strange for us to notice that in London the h is so commonly misused. I once went to a master, or rather mistress, as she was a woman, of elocution, or at least she advertised herself as such, and she told me that one must be very careful not to be corrupted by the London patois, and that one must not say "am and hegg" for "ham and egg," but while she was telling me those things she herself was making an awful mangling of the h. No wonder! She was a pure Londoner. I went to her no more.'
—'That's too awful! She could not have been a well-educated woman, or you are telling us an exaggerated story.'
—'Maybe she was not well educated,' said I, 'but my story is a plain, naked fact. It is very difficult, I think, to get rid of colloquial corruption when once thoroughly imbued with it, even with all the aids of education. I can relate an incident bearing on the point. There is, in Japan, far away from Tokio, a district where people in common parlance can make no difference between shi and su. Once I went to that district and gave a lecture to a large gathering of students belonging to the higher schools of the district. Seven or eight of the most capable students took down my speech, and a complete draft of it was made by them, the defective parts having been supplied by one from the other. It was published in the local papers. It was most perfect, as though taken by shorthand, except in one respect, and it was that shi and su had been intermingled, as though I had spoken in the local dialect. It seems that not only are they unable to distinguish the difference when they themselves speak, but also when they hear other people speak. It is a great drawback to the development of the district. The local authorities hire teachers from other districts and try to correct this defect, but with little success. The function of our ears is strange. Sounds which are quite distinct to some people are quite indistinct to others. Our music has not so high a variation of tune as the Western music, but it has sufficient variation to please our ears; but the Occidentals compare our music to the beating of a drum by a child—no tune and no variation, the reason being, I think, because our tunes and variations are quite inaudible to the Western ear. From the same point of view, crows or cows, and, indeed, all living animals have their own language, only our ears cannot distinguish the difference of their words one from another.'
—'Another pleasantry, I perceive,' remarked a lady. 'But tell me, baron, how do you pronounce the name of your great statesman, "Ito"? Is it pronounced like a-i-t-o-, that is to say, i in the English way of pronouncing Ireland?'
—'No,' I said, 'like a-i-t-o- without a, that is to say, i in your own French way of pronouncing Ireland. I will once for all give you a good clue how to pronounce Japanese names, which you must come across very often nowadays in the newspapers. I is pronounced always like i in your il or English ill. Our E is always like e in French "état" or "été." G is always hard gutteral, that is to say, ga like g in "Gambetta," ge like ge in English "get," and ge in German, and your gue. Gi like gi in the English "gift," and your gui in "Guillaume," and, therefore, you must pronounce General "Nogi" like General "Nogui" in the French way, and not like "Noji" or "Nozi" as you generally do. Our go is always go, in English "got," unless the o is a long one as in Tôgô, and our gu is always like a simple g in Gladstone and Grant.'
—'But how do you then account for u?' interposed she.
—'Our u preceded by a consonant,' I answered, 'is generally sounded very, very slightly—almost inaudibly, in fact—so much so that you need take no notice of it. Therefore ku, su, mu, etc., are like simple k, s, m, etc. There is another secret in pronouncing our names, and it is this: when a consonant is followed by a vowel, pronounce it always together with the vowel. Thus yoritomo should be pronounced yo-ri-to-mo, and not yor-i-tom-o, and pronounce it without putting any accent: if you follow this rule, you will get nearer to the right pronunciation.'
There was among those present the daughter of Prince Ichijo, naval attaché to the Japanese Legation. She was addressed by a person present as Miss Ichijo. This appears to have struck a lady present, who was at a little distance from her. She said to me: