Fallacy of Imitation The first of these is that pronunciation can be learnt by mere imitation. This is as if fencing could be learnt by looking on at other people fencing. The movements of the tongue in speaking are even quicker and more complicated than those of the foil in fencing, and are, besides, mostly concealed from sight. The complicated articulations which make up the sound of such a French word as ennui cannot be reproduced correctly by mere imitation except in the case of an exceptionally gifted learner. Even in the case of children learning the sounds of their own language, the process is a slow and tedious one, and the nearer the approach to maturity, the greater the difficulty of acquiring new sounds. Indeed, the untrained adult seems to be often absolutely incapable of imitating an unfamiliar sound or even an unfamiliar combination of familiar sounds. To the uneducated even unfamiliar syllables are a difficulty, as we see in 'familiarizations' such as sparrow-grass for asparagus.1 Even those who devote their lives to the study of languages generally fail to acquire a good pronunciation by imitation—perhaps after living ten or twenty years in the country and learning to write the language with perfect ease and accuracy. Fallacy of Minute Distinctions The second fallacy is that minute distinctions of sound can be disregarded-or, in other words, that a bad pronunciation does not matter. The answer to this is that significant distinctions cannot be disregarded with impunity. By significant sound-distinctions we mean those on which distinctions of meaning depend, such as between close and open e in French pécher, pêcher. We see from this example that significant sound-distinctions may be very minute or at least may appear so to an unaccustomed ear. To a native ear they always seem considerable. Thus to English people the distinction between the vowels of men and man, head and had, seems a very marked one, while to most foreigners it seems but a slight one: many Germans are apt to confound head, had, hat under the one pronunciation het. I knew a child who used to make giraffe, facsimile, chiffonier into edgiruff, face smile, and shove anear respectively. Nor can we tell à priori what sound-distinctions are significant in a language: a distinction that is significant in one language may exist as a distinction in another, but without being significant, or one of the sounds may be wanting altogether. Thus in ordinary Southern English we have no close e at all; while in the North of England they have the close sound in such words as name without its being distinctive, for it is simply a concomitant of the long or diphthongic sound of e. Experience shows that even the slightest distinctions of sound cannot be disregarded without the danger of unintelligibility. The friends of the late Gudbrand Vígfússon, the well-known Icelander, still remember how he used to complain that the country people round Oxford could hardly be made to understand him when he asked for eggs: 'I said ex-I ought to have said airx.' Here the remedy was almost worse than the disease; and yet what suggested eks to an English ear differed only from the correct pronunciation in having whisper instead of voice in the first as well as the second consonant ! Methods of Study: Organic and Acoustic The first business of phonetics is to describe the actions of the organs of speech by which sounds are produced, as when we describe the relative positions of tongue and palate by which (s) is produced. This is the organic side of phonetics. The acoustic investigation of speech-sounds, on the other hand, describes and classifies them according to their likeness to the ear, and explains how the acoustic effect of each sound is the necessary result of its organic formation, as when we call (s) a hiss-sound or sibilant, and explain why it has a higher pitch-a shriller hiss-than the allied hiss-consonant (f) in she. It is evident that both the organic and the acoustic sense must be cultivated: we must learn both to recognize each sound by ear and to recognize the organic positions by which it is produced, this recognition being effected by means of the accompanying muscular sensations. We all carry out these processes every day of our lives in speaking our own language. All, therefore, that we have to do in the case of familiar sounds is to develope this unconscious organic and acoustic sense into a conscious and analytic sense. Isolation of Sounds The first step is to learn to isolate the sounds and to keep them unchanged in all combinations and under all the varying conditions of quantity and stress (accent). Thus the learner may lengthen and isolate the vowels in pity, and observe the distinction between them and between the vowels of pit and peat. This method of isolation is a great help in learning foreign sounds. A teacher of French who has learnt to cut up such a word as ennui into (ãã, nyy, ii) will, without any knowledge of phonetics, be able to give his pupils a much better idea of the pronunciation of the word than by repeating it any number of times undivided. Analysis of the Formation of Sounds The next step is to learn to analyze the formation of the familiar sounds. This analysis must be practical as well as theoretical. It is no use being able to explain theoretically and to hear the distinction between a breath consonant such as (f) and the corresponding voice consonant (v), unless we are able to feel the difference. Let the beginner learn to isolate and lengthen the (f) in life and the corresponding (v) in liver till he can feel that while (f) is articulated in one place only, (v) is articulated in two places-not only between lip and teeth, but also in the throat. If he presses his first two fingers on the 'Adam's apple,' he will feel the vibration which produces the effect of voice in (v), which vibration is absent from (f). If he closes both ears, he will hear the voice-vibration very distinctly. Deducing Unfamiliar from Familiar Sounds The great test of the practical command of such a distinction as breath and voice is the power it gives of deducing unfamiliar from familiar sounds. Repeat (vvff) several times in succession, and try to carry out a similar change with the voiceconsonant (1), and the result will be the Welsh (14) in llan. Again, to get the German or Scotch (x) in loch it is only necessary to exaggerate and isolate the 'off-glide' of the (k) of the English lock. Often, indeed, mere isolation is enough to deduce an apparently unfamiliar sound. Thus the peculiar obscure a and peculiar (s)-sound in Portuguese, as in amamos, are simply the first element of the diphthong in English how and the second element of the English (t) in chin, which is distinct from the () in fish, being really a sound intermediate between and (s). It is interesting to observe that hearing such an unfamiliar sound as (14) is a hindrance rather than a help to the beginner, who, hearing a sound which is partly a hiss and partly an (1), tries to do justice to the acoustic effect by sounding separately the familiar English hiss (p) in think and an ordinary voice (1), so that he makes (lhan) into (plæn). This is an additional argument against the imitation fallacy. But, as already remarked, the acoustic sense must be thoroughly trained, for in many cases the acoustic does help the organic analysis. 'Listen before you imitate' is one of the axioms of practical phonetics. Relation of Native Sounds to Sounds in General Before beginning the study of foreign sounds, it is important to get a clear idea of the relations of our own sound-system to that of sounds in general, and especially to learn to realize what is anomalous and peculiar in our own sound-system. Thus, when the English learner has once learnt to regard his (ei) and (ou) in such words as name and so as abnormal varieties of monophthongic close (ee, oo), he will find that much of the difficulty of pronouncing such languages as French and German will disappear; he will no longer have the mortification of betraying his nationality the moment he utters the German word so. Indeed, speakers of the broad London dialect in which (ei) and (ou) are exaggerated in the direction of (əi) and (au) often become unintelligible in speaking foreign languages. Two young Englishmen abroad once entered into conversation with a French curé, and one of them had occasion to use the word beaucoup; the Frenchman was heard repeating to himself (bauky) and asking himself what it meant. Each language has its own 'organic basis,' and the organic bases of French and English are as distinct as they can well be. Hence the importance of a clear conception of the character of each basis, and their relations to one another. CHAPTER III PHONETIC NOTATION NEXT to analysis, the most important problem of practical phonetics is that of sound-notation, or spelling by sound. The first and most obvious advantage of a phonetic notation is that the learner who has once mastered the elementary sounds of the language, together with the elementary symbols of the notation he employs, is able to read off any phonetically written text with certainty, without having to burden his memory with rules of pronunciation. To such a student the distinction, for instance, between close and open e and o in Italian offers no difficulties: he learns from the beginning to pronounce each word with the correct vowel. Another advantage of a phonetic notation is that as the learner sees the words written in a representation of their actual spoken form, he is able to recognize them when he hears them with comparative ease-or, at any rate, he is better prepared to recognize them. Most English people, when they first go to France, are unable to understand a word of the language when spoken, however well they may be able to read it. This is simply because the unphonetic French spelling they are used to represents not the spoken French of to-day, but the French that was spoken in the sixteenth century-being a very bad representation even of that. But if a foreigner has learnt to decipher such written forms as (aksebo) or (a k se bo!), (kɛksɛksa, kjɛski), he would certainly be better prepared to understand them when spoken than if he had first to translate them in his mind into (aa kǝ sǝ ei bou) or something of that kind. Phonetic notation helps the ear in many ways. The spoken word is fleeting, the written word is permanent. However often the learner has the elements of such a word as ennui repeated to him, it is still a help to have the impressions of his ear confirmed by association with the written symbols of such a 9 |