And as for that hobgoblin called phonetical transcription—well, it is no “new alphabet,” not even as new as the Gothic (German) letters are, and much less so than the Greek alphabet, with which the pupils are burdened (without their being of the slightest use[38]), to say nothing of the new names for the letters. In learning Greek the pupils have to operate with thirty odd new symbols; in our phonetical transcription for school use, we do not need more than from five to eight new symbols for each language; otherwise it consists of the ordinary letters, and every letter in it retains one of its familiar values, which is used consistently everywhere, the new symbols being mostly modifications of the known letters; ʃ reminds us of s, ʒ of z, ɛ and ə of e, ŋ of n. The whole thing is no worse than that.

If you refer to your experience in opposition to these new ways of teaching, you only invite the answer: Yes, your experience shows how a poor pronunciation may be learned!

Why must we learn how to pronounce the foreign languages at all? Well, in the first place, it must be because there is the possibility that we may meet natives some time later. Otherwise we might, perhaps, be satisfied with reading the foreign words according to English principles of pronunciation, French pain like English “pain,” Werther as “worth her,” etc. I have known old parsons who have taught themselves English so as to be able to read novels, and who read English with Danish vowels, pronounced the k in knight, etc. For a superficial “getting the gist” of shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls, this is sufficient perhaps, but I maintain that for a penetrating, delicate comprehension of real works of literature this manner of reading is not enough. Language cannot be separated from sound, and that is the sum of the matter; only he who hears the foreign language within himself in exactly or approximately the same way as a native hears it can really appreciate and enjoy not only poetry, where phonetic effects must needs always play an important part, but also all the higher forms of prose. Then there is the mnemonic benefit of a correct pronunciation. It helps the pupil to keep foreign languages distinct from each other; for instance, he will never be misled to think that jeune means “pretty” on account of its resemblance to schön, and he will not be apt to confuse French joli, journée, nouvelle with English jolly, journey, novel. In the second place, Madvig is right—and this applies to the living languages too—when he writes: “Finally there is scarcely any doubt that progress in the dead languages would become more rapid if, so far as possible, for instance, through reading and pronouncing distinctly and through memorizing new expressions, the language came not only through the eye, but more through the ear than it does in most places now.”

Our pronunciation according to the old school is extremely poor, indeed, much more frightful than most people imagine. It has among others these two disadvantages, that we do not understand the natives, and that we are not understood by them.

The very first lesson in a foreign language ought to be devoted to initiating the pupils into the world of sounds; if the class has already had such an elementary course in sounds, either in connection with the study of their mother tongue (something we ought to come to in the course of time at any rate), or in connection with another foreign language, it can of course be made briefer; it is scarcely safe to omit it entirely. The conversation may be formed as simply as the following one, where all scientific terms are avoided; not even the word “organ” is necessary. (Of course the answers will not always be as prompt and decided as here, and much will need to be repeated several times with different pupils.)

Teacher: John, can you say papa? Papa.—How do you go about it? Say it once more.—Papa. First, I open my mouth, and then I open it once again.—Yes, and in the meantime you must, of course, have closed it. Look at me, all of you, and see if I too go about it in that way—Papa. What did I do, William?—First you opened your mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.—What did I close it with?—With the lips.—Now, when I say op, ap, ep, what do I do?—Close the lips every time, and then open them again.—Then I do that every time I say p. Robert, can you find any other sounds where I also close my lips? No.—Try the word mama.—Yes, in m.—Now, say baby and bib.—Also in b.—Good; then we have three sounds now where the lips are closed, p, b, m. Let us write them in a row on the blackboard. Is it necessary to close the lips in all sounds?—No.—What is your name?—John Gordon Hunter.—All of you look at him while he says it. John Gordon Hunter.—Did he close his lips at all? No.—Then all the sounds which are in the whole of his name must be said with other parts of the mouth than the lips. What else have we that we use to speak with?—The tongue.—Now, when we say n, for instance, John, Anna, what do we do?—Close with the tongue behind the teeth.—What part of the tongue?—The point.—Now try t in atta.—There we also close with the point of the tongue behind the teeth. And d in adda.—Likewise.—Then we use the point of the tongue for t, d, n. Let us write them down under p, b, m. Now k in akka?—Look into my mouth. What do I do?—You close with the tongue farther back in the mouth.—Yes, we call that the back of the tongue. Howard, look into Edward’s mouth while he says akka. Now g in agga (the sound g, of course, not the name dʒi· of the letter). Then we can write them down in a third row. p, b, m were what kind of sounds?—Lip-sounds.—And t, d, n, were what kind? Point-of-the-tongue sounds.—And the third row?—Back-of-the-tongue sounds.—Yes, we might also say simply point-sounds and back-sounds. [Here some one will ask]: Why are there not three there?—Yes, there are three sounds there too, but we have no letter for the third. Say tinker, and then tin-kettle. Is there no difference? Yes, in tin-kettle we have a pure n, but not in tinker; here we have another sound before k.—Now try finger.—There we have the same before g.—And in singer?—The same without a real g.—Look into my mouth when I say (s)inger [without s]. We can make a letter for this new sound by writing an n, with the last stroke lengthened below the line and slightly curled, as in g: ŋ.—James, come up here and write down the four words as they sound, making use of the new letter.—(He writes first tin-kettle).—No, do you hear more than one t? and can you hear any e after l?—No.—What then? tinketl. (It is not worth while at this stage to require greater phonetical exactness than tinketl, tiŋker, fiŋger, siŋer, passing over the fact that the final er in the words does not really sound like e + r). You see, if you were a Frenchman trying to learn English, you would not know that n in tin-kettle and in the other words were different sounds, and that the e was silent, and you would pronounce the words incorrectly; but if the one were written tinketl and the other tiŋker, it would be much easier for you to learn how to pronounce them. And then take fringe; it looks as if it were simply finger with the r in another place, and yet it is quite a different sound, so we see that the two letters ng may stand for three entirely different sounds. We also write knight, and say “nait”; we write busy and say “bizi.” Can you find any other words which we spell differently from the way in which we pronounce them? [Various examples are found and analyzed.] When we write the words exactly as they sound, we call it phonetical transcription. Now, in the beginning, we shall write all French words phonetically, so that you can more easily learn how to pronounce them. But you saw in the case of tinker that we occasionally need a new symbol in this transcription, which we do not use otherwise. You will learn a few more of them in the course of time.... Then we have seen that in order to say different sounds, we can use the lips and the point of the tongue and the back of the tongue. Is there nothing else that we need to speak with?—The nose? Yes, that is all right in a way, but—can you move your nose? Look at my nose; do I move it when I speak?—No.—But is it not possible to use it without moving it? Now, see if I use my nose when I say a···· [very long drawn out].[39] Now, I suddenly hold my nose with two fingers, and press the nostrils together. Does that make the sound different?—No.—But now I say m in the same way m···· and pinch the nostrils together in the same way. Did anything happen?—Yes, there was no sound.—Now you can try it yourselves. First you, George; say a···, and then the boy next to you can suddenly pinch your nose together with two fingers. And then say m···, and let Fred pinch your nose again. Can you say m while your nostrils are closed?—No, at any rate the sound soon disappears. All of you try it; say a· just as long as I do, and pinch the nose together several times with your fingers whenever you see me do it; and now likewise with m. That is because the air has to escape through the nose in order that the sound m may be made. It is the soft palate that you use in order to open the inner entrance to the nose, so that the air can escape through the nostrils. You can feel the palate behind the teeth, there it is hard; but if you pass your fingers farther back, you will soon feel that it becomes soft and flexible. See how it can go up and down in my mouth. Look in the mirror[40], and see how your own palate is. First try breathing in and out silently, and then say a; then you will see how your soft palate suddenly jumps up; that is because it has to close the entrance to the nose, so that no air can get out that way. But when you say m it remains hanging down, so that the air can come out through the nose, the passage through the mouth being closed by the lips. [At this point, you might make a rough sketch on the blackboard, showing a cross-section through the mouth, with the soft palate in the two positions.] In producing n and ŋ, you have the same position of the soft palate as in the case of m. [Try to pinch the nose together.]

Now we have seen how we use the nose and the mouth when we speak, but are they the only things that are necessary in speaking? [If the pupils cannot think of “voice” of their own accord, the teacher may put them on the track by saying: when someone speaks (or sings) very well, we say that he has a good...]—Voice.—Where is the voice?—In the vocal chords.—And where are they?—In Adam’s apple.—[Here it might be a good thing not to despise the anecdote about the apple which stuck in Adam’s throat.] Now we also call that the larynx. In there, there are two vocal chords stretched parallel to each other, and when they vibrate a tone is produced, and that is what we call voice. It is just as when a string of a violin is brought into vibration and gives forth a tone; or a bell or a wine-glass, which is made to quiver violently. Now do we always use the voice when we speak? You do not know; well, then we can experiment. [Whisper a sentence.] Did I use my voice then?—No.—Now try first to say an a··· quite loudly and forcibly (or sing it), and take firm hold of Adam’s apple with your thumb and forefinger; then you will feel it quiver. Have you never tried to touch a piano with your finger tips while someone was playing on it? Then you will have felt the same kind of delicate, rapid, quivering movements as you feel on touching the larynx while the voice is in activity. In both cases you can feel those movements with your fingers which you hear with your ear as a tone. But now whisper an a··· and feel your larynx; do you feel anything?—No, there are no vibrations.—And try to say s··· [by no means the name of the letter, es, but the hissing sound itself.] Is there voice in that? Do you feel any vibration?—No.—Then s is a voiceless sound, but a is a voiced sound. Now, try m··· [not em!] Is it voiced? and n···? Notice that you can sing the voiced sounds [test several of them], but not the voiceless sounds.[41] That f··· is voiceless, and that v··· (with strong buzzing!) is voiced, is easily discovered. In the same way, we have for every voiceless sound a corresponding voiced sound. Say s···, and now produce the corresponding voiced sound with the buzzing element. They are the sounds we have in so and zoo, seal and zebra. We have also a third corresponding pair ʃ and ʒ; ʃ is the sound in shilling, shall, etc.; ʒ is the sound in measure, pleasure, etc. Then we may write down:

fsʃvoiceless
vzʒvoiced.

Now pronounce each sound in chorus as I point to the letter, and continue drawing it out until I take the chalk away from the letter.[42] Thereupon the pupils may be tested singly, the teacher skipping from one sound to the other. Exercises may also be given with the consonants between two vowels: afffa, avvva, asssa, azzza; afa, ava, asa, aza.

Now the pupils have already had a little course in elementary phonetics; it interests them and contains nothing that they cannot understand, and nothing that is not useful for them. Nor does it ever really frighten the children; but the very thought of it has actually frightened a number of older teachers, who apparently live in holy terror of trespassing beyond the lines laid out for them in their childhood, and who unfailingly think that everything new must be just as useless, dry and pedantical as most of what they learned in their own schooldays, so they are not inclined to have the bother of making themselves familiar with anything new.[43] In the Danish original of this book, I reprinted as a curiosity a description of the activity of the organs of speech in the production of speech-sounds, which a boy 14 years old, who had never been told anything about the formation of sounds, had written all by himself, without the least instruction or help of any kind (which can easily be seen, among other things, from the fact that he sticks to and analyzes the names of the letters); it shows that this dreaded phonetical science is not so terribly far beyond the horizon of ordinary children after all.