"Je suis femme!" he yells.
This staggers the waiter.
It is time to inquire of him if he speaks English.
"Can you speak English?"
"Oh yes, sir."
Our traveler is all right again, but he thinks that those confounded French people have a queer manner of pronouncing their own language.
With the exception of our nasal sounds, which I know are stumbling-blocks to Englishmen—who will always insist on calling our great music composer and pianist Saint-Saëns, "Sang Songs"—I never could understand that the difficulty of our pronunciation was insuperable. Our vowels are bold, well-marked, always sounded the same, and, except u, like the English vowels, or so nearly like them that they can not prevent an Englishman from understanding French and speaking it.
The greatest mistake he makes is in not bearing in mind that the accent should always be laid on the last syllable, or on the last but one if the word ends in e mute. How much easier this is to remember than the place of the English accented syllable, which varies constantly! In admirable, you have it on the first; in admire, on the second; in admiration, on the third. On the contrary, no difficulty about the pronunciation of the three French words, admirable, admirer, and admiration; the tonic accent falls on the last sound syllable in every case.