The French division into syllables (il a =i | la, chaque écolier = ʃa | ke | kɔ | lje, | etc.) is best learned by pure imitation, likewise the distribution of stress (accent); by reciting or reading connectedly to the pupils and by always requiring them to say the whole sentence together without any pause, the teacher can counteract their tendency to pronounce each word separately in that monotone which is intolerable. Thus il a été ici is said all together in one with the vowels gliding over into each other, a + é sounding somewhat similar to [ai] in lie, and é + i to [ei] in lay.
German sounds are somewhat easier for Englishmen than French sounds, but yet there are several points to be noticed. In the case of some sounds, any skilled teacher will be able to follow the suggestions given for French, mutatis mutandis; in the case of others, like the two ch- sounds, he must in an analogous manner adapt his theoretical knowledge in phonetics to the practical needs of teaching.
Some people have found it inconsistent that I have no partiality for didactic theorizing in questions of grammar, but myself employ theoretical explanations in questions of phonetics. The explanation is not far to seek. Theoretical grammar, as it is generally studied, is more abstract, it is difficult, it is very comprehensive, and still it does not lead to the desired goal, which is grammatical correctness; the theory of sound which we want introduced is more concrete and it is easy, it is more limited, and it actually leads to the desired goal, which is a good pronunciation. This last assertion is proved by the experiences of numerous teachers in various lands.
Of late years, it has become more and more usual in schools to use a sound-chart in connection with the instruction in languages. On this chart, all the sounds of the language which is being studied are arranged in systematic order, and are indicated with such large letters that they can be seen by the whole class; various finesses are often used, as for instance to give the voiced and voiceless sounds different colours.[48] I myself have not used this contrivance, but I have heard from several foreign teachers, and now from a couple of Danish teachers too, that they are very well satisfied with it. The teacher points to a letter and gets either the whole class or one of the pupils to say the corresponding sound; or the teacher may let A mention some sound or other, and B, who is standing at the blackboard, shows that he has caught it by repeating it and at the same time pointing at the symbol; or if C makes a mistake in the pronunciation of a word which he is reading (or saying) D is to point, first to the symbol for the wrong sound, and then to the right one, etc. In this way, much writing on the blackboard, which would otherwise be necessary, is saved; and besides, it may be of great benefit for the pupils always to have all the sounds in a connected system before their eyes (even if the teacher of course never intends to examine them in the whole phonetical system of the language as such).
The elements of phonetical transcription are learned, as we have seen, together with the corresponding sounds themselves. Now what is the use of the phonetical transcription itself? It seems to be commonly supposed that its votaries claim by its help to have “given the pupils a better comprehension of the single sounds and to have taught them more easily to produce them;” its opponents attack this assertion and strike it down with true Quixotic zeal without stopping to think that it has never been set up by the advocates of phonetical transcription at all. These advocates themselves know as well as anyone what is but natural, namely, that a boy does not of his own accord pronounce a French nasal correctly merely because he has been shown the symbol [ɔ̃]. The pronunciation of the single sounds must be learned in other ways, as has been shown above, and for that purpose alone, all writing could very well be entirely dispensed with without resulting in any essential change in the character of the instruction. When, however, we use phonetical transcription already at the first stage, it is partly on account of the excellent help which it will afford later for quite a different purpose, which I shall come to immediately, partly because it really is of some help in the teaching of the sound-formation proper. It saves the teacher a great deal of repetition, since instead of always saying the sound himself, he can point to the symbol and get one of the clever pupils to say it for the others; it makes the pupils see more clearly how many different sounds there are for them to pay attention to (while in exclusively oral instruction, perhaps one pupil will be inclined to hear [ɑ̃] and [ɛ̃] as one sound, another pupil, [ɑ̃] and [ɔ̃] as one sound); finally, the homogeneousness of the symbols will help the pupils more easily to comprehend the nature of the sounds themselves; when they have learned to pronounce [ɔ̃], they will get the run of all the other nasal vowels more quickly when they see the same flourish over them all; the double parallelism in the four symbols
| s | ʃ |
| z | ʒ |
will aid them in learning the corresponding relations between the sounds themselves.
However, in order to understand the greatest and the proper value of phonetical transcription, it is necessary to have well in mind the fact that there are two essentially different kinds of mistakes in pronunciation—
A. Mistakes in the formation of the sounds, and
B. Mistakes in the employment of the sounds.