INTRODUCTION

TO THE

PHONIC ANALYSIS.

No one will deny that a ready and exact enunciation is a pre-requisite to good reading. Persuaded that such promptness and accuracy can be best attained by a thorough drill on what are called the vocal elements, the following Lessons —for some time tested in the Illinois State Normal University -are presented for use in other schools.

Every intelligent and unprejudiced mind will welcome any means by which loose and pernicious habits of enunciation may be cast off, and correct ones formed in their stead. This is not an easy task. The pupil of fifteen or eighteen years of age, who has been accustomed to say givun for giv'n, kitch'n for kitchen, and smort for smart, will not be likely, by a single effort, to set his speech right. By well directed and persevering effort he can do it: with proper guidance and encouragement he will do it.

Most who thus mar the English are unconscious of their defects. They have either never observed a different style of pronunciation-possibly have heard no other-or they have accounted whatever differences they have noticed in others as peculiarities, worthy only of a smile or a jest. If the ear, because of dullness, has failed to report the actual diversity, it must be quickened; if the judgment and taste are false, they are to be corrected: in both cases, the organs, untrained to the just utterance of the language, are to be exercised on elements, combinations, syllables, words, and

collocations of words, until they become loyal to well-spoken English.

Nor is it to those alone whose enunciation or pronunciation is excessively bad, that this drill is of use. To the thousands who speak and read with passable accuracy, the study and drill upon vocal elements is not less useful. These are often ready to seize upon the leading principles, as well as the grosser facts, pertaining to the science of Orthoëpy, and they find ample compensation for their labor, in the generalizations suggested by a few weeks' practice in phonetic analysis.

SUGGESTIONS.

1. This drill, to be of real use, must be thorough. THE TEACHER MUST MASTER IT FIRST. Let him, at least, be sure of this,—that, before calling upon a pupil to utter a given element, he is prepared to utter it himself.

2. The teacher may need to exercise some care and patience, before each pupil is prevailed on to abandon the habit of saying "em for the first sound in the word make, and "kay" for the last sound. The aim has been to make the "Lessons" explicit on this point.

3. ALLOW NO FEEBLE WORK. In recitation, the pupil should stand erect, have the lungs well supplied with air, and utter each element forcibly. Repetition is all-important; but repetition with inaccuracy is almost an unmixed evil. Before, as well as after, analyzing a word, the pupil should pronounce it with all the clearness and precision he can command. If it be a polysyllable, still more repetition is recommended; thus,-"melody; měl melō melō | di di | melody."

4. The manner of beginning with a class, and especially where the exercise is a novelty, must be left to the judgment of the teacher. A concert exercise may be judicious, as tending to remove the feeling of awkwardness and to beget confidence. After a lesson or two, however, there should be

already established in every pupil's mind a feeling of personal accountability for the work assigned; and concert drill should thereafter occupy none of the time needful to the teacher in determining the degree of thoroughness with which each pupil has prepared his lesson.

5. Phonic writing is a valuable aid to both teacher and pupil. When a vocal element is recognized by the ear, there are striking advantages in having a character by which uniformly to represent it: First, the pupil's progress is accelerated by his being compelled to submit each doubtful sound of every word assigned, to a discriminating study, in order properly to represent it on the paper to be passed in for the teacher's inspection; and, secondly, a class may be set to write a lesson "by sound," whether at school or at their homes, thus enabling the teacher to get more work done, and, by means of the thoroughness of this mode of examination, to acquaint himself with the care and proficiency of each member of his class.

6. To use the characters proposed involves a mastery of nearly the entire Pronouncing Key of Webster's Dictionary -in itself a very valuable acquisition. We use Webster's rather than Pitman's or any other strictly phonetic notation, because we suppose that fewer teachers will be repelled by whatever of novelty and uncouthness it may present to the common eye; and Webster's rather than Worcester's, because we have reason to think that more teachers are already somewhat familiar with the former than with the latter.

7. No good teacher will omit to give explicit directions in regard to the paper which is to be passed in to him. The following points are certainly worthy of attention: 1. The form and size of the paper. 2. The place for the pupil's name. 3. The arrangement of words-whether in horizontal line, or in column. 4. Neatness.

8. While marking the errors found in a written classexercise, the teacher will do well to make a list of such as are most frequent or most important, in order that to these may call the attention of the entire class. After reasonable time has been allowed, every pupil will be called on to state how each word that he finds marked by the teacher Ishould have been written.

he

REMARKS UPON THE CHART.-The foregoing Chart is not strictly phonetic. T, c, s, h, and have each at least two offices. The imperfection thus existing is fairly shown by giving, as we ought to do in phonetic writing, to each of the letters, t and h, in the word nevertheless, its appropriate value, nev-ert-he-less; or how shall it be known whether b-r-e-a-t-h-e-d is to be pronounced breathed or breat-hed. This evident ambiguity may be removed by separating every word not a monosyllable into its syllabic elements. To avoid this labor, as well as the writing of digraphs (double forms), single characters may be substituted.

This suggestion is acted upon in Lesson X., where ç is placed for ch. Substitutes for th, th, sh, and zh can readily be devised, thus lessening the time and space required for the phonetic writing.

Though the compound elements oi and ou are not correctly represented by the component parts of these digraphs, yet, as it is found that no ambiguity can arise from the use of these forms, when once the power of each is known, they have been suffered to stand.

ERRATUM. The principal statement made in the fourth paragraph of Lesson XXI. is not without exceptions, chiefly derivatives from words ending in r or re; thus, pouring, paring, parent, deploring, etc., haver preceded by a long Vowel.