[44] I have sometimes made the introduction longer, sometimes shorter than here indicated; some teachers make it more complete, so that they get a whole system of sounds tabulated before they pass on to the reading.
[45] But stopped consonants, like p, t, k, are exceptions to these instructions to isolate the sounds—every phonetician knows the reason why. They should be uttered with a vowel before and one after, e.g. ata.
[46] With the exception of the vowels [a·] in alms, [ɔ·] in war, and [ə·] in sir.
[47] This method of procedure follows in the main the suggestions of Klinghardt.
[48] If the teacher does not care to prepare such charts himself, he can use Viëtor’s Lauttafeln.
[49] Besides, the different systems of modern phoneticians all resemble each other very much—far more than did the earlier arbitrary methods of designating the pronunciation (for instance, Walker’s, Flügel’s, Toussaint-Langenscheidt’s, Tanger’s, etc.). Any one who has learned Sweet’s phonetical transcription can easily read Passy’s or my own, and vice versâ; the differences are hardly worth speaking of.
[50] I remember a lady’s dismay when a Frenchman used the combination [stane] in a sentence; she could not understand the sentence until I repeated it, inserting [sɛtane]. “O well,” she rejoined, “if he had only said [sɛtane]; we always said it that way in school.” (Cette année.)
[51] The use of the French or German names of the letters of the alphabet when words are being spelled in English is merely affectation, and deserves only a shrug of the shoulders, especially since, as a rule, it is not consistently carried through, but is applied only to some few letters, y being called [igræk] or ypsilon, ch, [seaʃ] or [tseha], according to circumstances, and this in the midst of other letters which are allowed to retain their English names with diphthongs and everything. It is quite a different thing when the teaching is wholly conducted in the foreign language; then it is necessary to practise the foreign names of the letters, but then it must be carried through consistently.
[52] Wer jemals in der schule die lautschrift als hilfsmittel zur erzielung einer besseren aussprache benutzt hat, der weiss, welcher nutzen aus ihr entspringt; der weiss aber auch, dass der schaden, welchen sie bezüglich der orthographie anrichten kann, sich nur auf wenige wochen erstreckt und äusserst gering ist, jedenfalls viel geringer als der schaden, welchen eine schlechte aussprache in der orthographie anrichtet. H. P. Junker, Die neueren sprachen, v. 99.
[53] See especially Murray, Bradley, and Craigie’s New English Dictionary, A. Schröer’s edition of Grieb’s Englisch-deutsches wörterbuch, and Rangel-Nielsen’s Fransk-danske ordbog. I am myself transcribing the English words in Brynildsen’s Engelsk-dansk-norske ordbog, two-thirds of which have already appeared. Edgren’s French Dictionary should perhaps also be mentioned, but I have never seen it myself.