How to teach a foreign language

by Otto Jespersen

The children always “follow” the teacher so well in these phonetical exercises that it is rather necessary to put a damper on their eagerness to try to produce the sounds than to spur them on. Or, in other words, the teacher has but to organize their natural impulse to imitate the sounds by saying to them, when they begin to whistle and hum: “You may say the sounds yourselves directly, just wait a moment,” and thereupon, after the explanation has been given, by allowing them ample opportunity to pronounce the sounds, both in chorus and singly. Then, both during recess and at home, they will revel to their hearts’ content in the new sounds, and the whole new and amusing world that has been opened to them.

After the introductory course which I have just sketched,[44] I immediately begin with texts in the foreign language. If the teacher will at this point read one or two pages aloud rapidly (or give a little talk) in as characteristically a French or German manner as possible, this is a very good way to give the pupils a preliminary notion of the foreignness of the new language. This impression may be further emphasized by means of a little trick which I may recommend. The teacher practises an English sentence pronounced as a Frenchman (or German respectively) would pronounce it, with French vowels, French accent, etc. He may refer to this sentence now and then in speaking of the single sounds, and it will serve to warn the students against the kind of mistakes that they themselves are to avoid. Then I take up the new sounds in the more accidental order in which they occur in the selection for reading; I repeat every word, together with its meaning, write it down on the blackboard in phonetical transcription, and explain every symbol as it occurs, at the same time articulating the corresponding sound isolated (this is of great importance! also the consonants alone without any vowel, either before or after), and drawing it out very long.[45]

In not a few cases, the pupils will be able to imitate the sound with sufficient exactness, when it has been produced isolated; at all events, they do it far better than when they only hear it among other sounds. But in many other cases their imitation is not successful, or, at least, it is not sure enough to be quite satisfactory; then it is necessary to resort to phonetics for help, on the basis of the introductory course.

Of course, it is not easy for a Dane to give detailed directions for phonetical instruction, as it is to be conducted when an English teacher is teaching English children French or German. Therefore, the following section is necessarily shorter than the corresponding section in the Danish original, where I could treat the subject exhaustively on the basis of my personal experience, as to how good results are to be obtained. But some few remarks may perhaps serve to point out the right way, and any teacher who has thoroughly mastered the first principles of phonetics theoretically, and especially practically, will himself be able to supplement my suggestions.

In the very first French or German sentence in the reader will probably be found one of the sounds [y] (Fr. sur, Ger. über), or [ø] (Fr. veut, Ger. höhe). It is best for these two sounds to be practised together, and, in the beginning, in their long form. As experience shows, it is not sufficient for the teacher merely to say these sounds; they generally cause English people much trouble, and all imitations based on the diphthong in Eng. few, etc., ought to be strictly discountenanced from the very first lesson. That it is not impossible to learn the correct sounds was brought home to me in a striking manner a few years ago. These sounds are also found in Danish; an English lady who had been in Denmark for some years had not been able, in spite of unceasing efforts, to learn them by imitation. Then I made a bet that I could teach her them in less than ten minutes, and I won the bet through five minutes’ theoretical explanation of rounded and unrounded vowels, and two minutes’ practical exercises. The directions were about as follows: say [u·] (or [uw]) in too very loudly, and hold it as long as you can without taking breath. Once more: observe in the hand-mirror the position of the lips. Then say tea [ti·, tij] in the same way; draw the vowel out until you can hold it no longer; continue all the time to observe the position of the lips in the mirror. Now [u···] again; then [i···]. The lips are rounded for some vowels, slit-shaped for others. Try to pout them rather more than you do usually. Pronounce [u···] a couple of times with the lips as rounded and close to each other as possible, and concentrate your attention on the lips. Then say [i···] a couple of times, paying attention to the position of the tongue; you will feel that the sides of the tongue touch the roof of the mouth or the teeth. Now look in the mirror; say [i···] again, and now suddenly, taking care to keep the tongue in the same position, let your lips take the rounded, pouted position they had before. It may be that the pupil is still unable to produce any [y], because, despite the teacher’s warning, he involuntarily shifts his tongue-position back again to the familiar position. In that case, however, the teacher must not be discouraged, but pass on to the second part of the experiment, which is surer, and which might therefore have been taken first: place your lips in this pouted position, without producing any sound, look in the mirror, and be very careful that the position of the lips remains unchanged, and then try to say [i···]. If the tongue is placed in the correct [i···]-position, the result cannot be anything but an [y]. This sound is retained and repeated until the pupil is perfectly sure of both the articulation and acoustic effect. Then the sound [ø] may be taken up. It may be produced with [y] as a starting-point, the lower jaw being lowered so that both the underlip and the tongue follow it, while the teacher takes care to stop the downward movement in the right place. The result may be controlled by starting with [e] and rounding the lips, that is, by going through a process corresponding to the transition from [i···] to [y···].

One of the most unbecoming mistakes which Englishmen make in their pronunciation of foreign languages is their diphthongizing of long vowels, since long vowels,[46] in ordinary English, are pronounced with an upward glide, so that the jaw and the tongue are raised higher in the last part of the vowels in see, two, hay, know, for instance, than in the first part. In vulgar London pronunciation, this English peculiarity is carried further, the beginning of the sound being lowered, at all events in the last two sounds mentioned, so that lace sounds like lice, and pay like pie. But even if the best pronunciation does not go to this extreme, yet the glide is there, and this glide is for the native Frenchman or German one of the most striking faults in the Englishman’s pronunciation of the respective languages, so the Englishman had best be on his guard in this particular. If the teacher, after a little theoretical explanation, says the English [ei] and the German [e] alternately a number of times, even the dullest pupils cannot help but get their ears trained to detect this difference, but long and patient training is certainly necessary, both with the class in chorus and with the pupils singly, before this deeply rooted tendency to diphthongize can be checked.

Another difficulty is met with in the short (narrow) vowels. French été must be pronounced with two short closed e’s; Englishmen have a tendency to pronounce two long or half-long glide-sounds, which begin with a greater distance between the jaws than they ought to, and close with a smaller distance between the jaws than the genuine French sounds have. Anyone who has become accustomed to the undiphthongized long [e], however, can use this as a starting-point for learning the correct short sound, the best way being the frequent repetition of tétété··· Likewise the short sounds in fini, dodo, froufrou, etc.

Nor do the French nasal vowels occur in English; in phonetical transcription, they are indicated by means of ~ over the vowel-symbol, for instance [ɔ̃] in son, etc. Here the teacher must immediately make every effort to check the tendency to say [ɔŋ] as in Eng. long, and my experience with Danish pupils has been that it is not sufficient for this purpose merely to let the pupils repeat the sound after me. It is necessary to make it perfectly clear to them wherein the difference consists. First the teacher draws out his [ɔ̃] and establishes (by means of questions) that it is only one sound, the same from first to last. Then one of the pupils is to try to draw out the sound [ɔŋ], and it thus becomes clear that it is only the last of the two sounds that is prolonged. On the basis of what has been previously learned (p. [149]), the teacher shows the difference of effect caused in closing the nostrils with the fingers, and explains that it is due to the fact that in [ɔŋ] we have first a sound where the air escapes only through the mouth, then another sound where the air only passes out through the nose; but in [ɔ̃], both passages are open at the same time. If a pencil is laid in the mouth so that it rests on the tongue (tolerably far back), it will remain lying quietly when [ɔ̃] is pronounced, but not in the case of [ɔŋ]. In connection with [ɔ̃], the pupils may practise the [ɑ̃] sound in tant, [ɛ̃] or, more correctly, [æ̃], the sound in teint and the rounded sound in [œ̃], un. The sound [ɥ] in tuer [tɥe], lui [lɥi] is easily learned with sufficient exactness as a [y] which is quickly passed over so that the main stress is allowed to fall on the following sound, the relation between [w] and being brought in by way of comparison.

With respect to the consonants, care must be taken to pronounce [t, d, n] in such a way that the point of the tongue touches the upper teeth; it must, at all events, not be held as far back as in English; the same applies to [l], where this difference is still more important; the hollow sound of the English l is also to be avoided by keeping the whole tongue more flat and not hollowing it out like a spoon. The voiceless sounds [r̥] and [l̥] in [fənɛ·tr̥] fenêtre and [tabl̥] table can easily be deduced from what has been learned about the voice (p. [150]–[151]); it is necessary to guard against making [r̥] into the vowel found at the end of English words like mister, etc. The pupils will easily understand that with the correct unvoiced pronunciation, these sounds are apt to disappear in rapid speech. Finally we take up the sound ɲ in [kãpaɲ] campagne; it is explained as lying between [nj] and [ŋ]; it is best pronounced with the point of the tongue resting in the lower part of the mouth behind the lower teeth, but in using the word “best” I intend to hint that it is not strictly necessary to require this method of formation; there are also Frenchmen who (at all events before a vowel) pronounce it like English [nj] in onion.

With respect to [p, t, k], it is well known that in French they have not the aspiration that they have in English; since the difference is not so great, however, the English sounds may perhaps be used unchanged in the beginning. Then if one of the pupils notices the difference, which he perhaps will express by saying that the teacher pronounces when there stands [p] in the book, or possibly by merely trying to imitate the teacher’s sound by means of his own English , his attention may be called to the little breath which there always is between the opening of the English [p] and the vowel itself; this is not found in French, where the vowel after [p, t, k] comes exactly at the same moment as the opening takes place (either by the lips or the tongue), and therefore they sound to us like [b, d, g] (capitaine as if it were gabidɛn). Try a [p] without a vowel after it, first with a strong breath (somewhat like when you pooh-pooh something, but without any voice), then without any breath like a man puffing at his pipe (about the same sound as when soap bubbles burst); and then try to place a vowel after it[47]; it must come immediately, just as quickly as the movements of a soldier after the drill-master’s command. Then [t] and [k] may be taken up in the same manner.