The learner should (1) hear the sound (elemental—a vowel, say) from the lips of the teacher, and actually perceive just what that sound is—i.e., he must really hear it; (2) observe the shape of the resonance-chambers; (3) try to produce the same shape of his own, and under the guidance of his ear and his eye (watching the mouth of the teacher) so utter the sound correctly. This sound should be fixed in the mind, and the ear trained by comparing it with other sounds, as the wise teacher will do, and require imitations. Any language can be pronounced correctly in a short time, if this method be followed. It is, indeed, the only one that rests on science and common sense. The student when away from the teacher, after he has once learned to form the vowels correctly, should practise with a hand-glass before him for some time, at least.
The learning of a new language is the acquiring of a new mouth, or, at all events, entirely new methods of using the old one. In reality, however, this is not so fully the case as it at first seems. In all the languages one wishes to acquire, the same vowels occur, and for the learner it is often a question of lower or higher pitch, or greater or less breadth, though all this involves the formation of new habits and the fighting of old ones, and often in the case of the adult the struggle is a long-continued and severe one. Some nations speak at a lower pitch than others, and if a foreigner enunciate ever so well, yet at the pitch of his own and not that of the new language, his utterance may seem foreign. The Germans speak at a much lower pitch than Americans, and their tongue, even when grammatically spoken by the latter, is apt to have a sort of foreign flavor. It slightly disturbs the listener, who is not accustomed to hear his mother-tongue transposed into another key, so to speak.
We have known a learner to derive great benefit from having it pointed out to him that certain of his vowel sounds would at once cease to be incorrect if their pitch were altered. Of course, in doing this, there were at once many changes made in the resonance-chambers, in order to get the changed pitch. Pitch, accent, and duration of the sound throw much light on the subject of dialect, as a little analysis of Irish or Scotch will show.
Consonants are, as we have already said, noisy nuisances for the singer, but indispensable for word-formation, and so for human intercourse. Each has also its own pitch, and investigators have come to a measurable degree of agreement on this subject.
To illustrate: Madame Seiler found that r and s are separated from each other by an interval of many octaves:
, r;
, s. The latter, s, cannot be sounded without more or less of a hissing sound, suggesting escape of air, which is very unpleasant to the ear, and, unfortunately, these hissing sounds are very common in English, so that the speaker or singer is called upon to use all his art to overcome this disagreeable effect. This is also prominent in whispering—i.e., the escape of breath, with its corresponding effect on the ear. Whispering is effected chiefly, if not solely, by the resonance-chambers, the vocal bands taking only the slightest part, if any at all.
The physiologist Brücke, treating of the utterance of consonants, considered that they were formed by the more or less complete closure of certain doors in the course of the outgoing blast of air, and we have already referred to a consonant as an unpleasant interrupter, musically considered. Perhaps we should be disposed to compare them to the people that talk during the performance at a concert, did we not wish to avoid bringing such useful members of the speech community into undeserved disrepute.