Page images
PDF
EPUB

hat, but before I had put it on my head, Mr. Johnson came into the room, and let the tongue remain on the palate on the t and d, at the end of the words hat and head, they want much of that articulation they would have if the tongue were smartly separated by a rebound, as it were, from the palate, and the mute e pronounced after them somewhat as if spelled in this man,ner: I took down my hat-te, but before I had put it on my head-de, Mr. Johnson came into the

room.

The same want of articulation may be perceived in the following sentence, if the tongue be suffered to remain too long on the palate, on the consonants at the end of the words in the following sentence: He received the whole of the rent, before he parted with the land. And the superior distinctuess of pronouncing it with the t and d, finished by a smart separation of the organs, and somewhat as if written, He receive-de the whole of the ren-te, before he partede with the lan-de. The judicious reader will observe that this rule must be followed with discretion, and that the final consonant must not be so pronounced as to form a distinct syllable; this would be to commit a greater errour than that which it was intended to prevent: but as it may with confidence be asserted, that audibility depends chiefly on articulation, so it may be affirmed that articulation depends much on the distinctness with which we hear the final consonants; and trifling therefore as these observations. may appear at first sight,—when we consider the importance of audibility, we shall not think any thing that conduces to such an object below our notice.

The rough and smooth Sound of R.

In sh

SCARCELY any letter is more difficult to pro- ! nounce with propriety than the r. What forms great part of the peculiarity of the Irish accent, as it is called, is the rough and harsh pronunciation of this letter; and the soft, smooth, or rather inarticulate sound of it, marks a striking singularity of what is called the cockney pronunciation, or the pronunciation of the common tecl people of London; so that the true sound of this letter seems to lie in the medium between these extremes.

But first it will be necessary to observe, what I have never found noticed by any of our orthoepists, that as the Greek and some other languages have a rough and a smooth, or a harsh and a soft r, so has the English, and that each of these are proper in certain situations. The rough r is formed by jarring the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, near the fore-teeth; the smooth r is a vibration of the lower part of the tongue, near the root, against the inward region of the palate, as close to each other as possible, without coming into contact. The first r is proper at the beginning of words, and the second at the end of words, or when succeeded by a consonant. In England, and particularly in London, the r in bar, bard, card, regard, &c. is pronounced so much in the throat as to be little more than the middle or Italian a, heard in father, as if written baa, baad, caad, regaad; while in Ireland the r, in these words, is pronounced with so strong a jar of the tongue against the fore-part of the palate, and accompanied with such an aspiration, or strong breathing at the beginning of the letter, as to pro

C

duce that harshness we call the Irish accent. But if this letter is too forcibly pronounced in Ireland, it is often too feebly sounded in England, and particularly in London, where it is sometimes entirely sunk; and it may, perhaps, be worthy of observation, that provided we avoid a too forcible pronunciation of the r, when it ends a word, or is followed by a consonant in the same syllable, we may give as much force as we please to this letter at the beginning of a word, without producing any harshness to the ear. Thus Rome, river, rage, may have the r as forcible as in Ireland; but bar, bard, card, regard, &c., must have it nearly as soft as in London. This letter, therefore, forms an exception to the foregoing rule.

His ing too much the Terminations tion, sion, &c.

THERE is a vicious manner of pronouncing these terminations, by giving them a sharp hiss, which crushes the consonants together, and totally excludes the vowels, as if the words nation, occasion, &c., were written na-shn, occa-zhn, &c. As words of these terminations are very numerous in the language, any improper mode of sounding them must tarnish the whole pronunciation, and therefore ought to be most carefully guarded against. These terminations, therefore, ought to be pronounced as distinctly as if written, nashun, occazhun, &c. The diphthong io, for want of the accent, is sunk into that sound which is annexed to the o in the last syllable of honour, favour, terrour, &c., which can be classed with nothing so much related to it as short u.

Pronouncing s indistinctly after st.

THE letter s after st, from the very difficulty of its pronunciation, is often sounded inarticulately. The inhabitants of London of the lower order cut the knot, and pronounce it in a distinct syllable, as if e were before it; but this is to be avoided as the greatest blemish in speaking: the three last letters in posts, fists, mists, &c., must all be distinctly heard in one syllable, and without either permitting the letters to coalesce, as if written pose, fiss, miss, &c., or suffering the ts to make a distinct syllable like the vulgar of London, as if written pos-tes, fis-tes, mis-tes, &c., but letting the t be heard, however feebly, yet distinctly, between the two hissing letters. For the acquiring of this sound, it will be proper to select nouns that end in st or ste; to form them into plurals, and pronounce them forcibly and distinctly every day. The same may be observed of the third person of verbs ending in sts or stes, as persists, wastes, pastes, &c.

Pronouncing w for v, and inversely.

THE pronunciation of v for w, and more frequently of w for v, among the inhabitants of London, and those not always of the lower order, is a blemish of the first magnitude. The difficulty of remedying this defect is the greater, as the cure of one of these mistakes has a tendency to promote the other.

Thus, if you are very careful to make a pupil pronounce real and vinegar, not as if written weal and winegar, you will find him very apt to pronounce wine and wind, as if written vine and vind. The only method of rectifying this habit

seems to be this. Let the pupil select from a dictionary, not only all the words that begin with, but as many as he can of those that have this letter in any other part. Let him be told to bite his under lip while he is sounding the in those words, and to practise this every day till he pronounces the v properly at first sight: then, and not till then, let him pursue the same method with the w; which he must be directed to pronounce by a pouting out of the lips, without suffering them to touch the teeth. Thus, by giving all the attention to only one of these letters at a time, and fixing by habit the true sound of that, we shall at last find both of them reduced to their proper pronunciation, in a shorter time than by endeavouring to rectify them both at once.

Not sounding h after w.

THE aspirate h is often sunk, particularly in the capital, where we do not find the least distinction of sound between while and wile, whet and wet, where and were, &c. Trifling as this difference may appear at first sight, it tends greatly to weaken and impoverish the pronunciation, as well as sometimes to confound words of a very different meaning. The best method to rectify this is, to collect all the words of this description from a dictionary, and write them down; and instead of the wh, to begin them with hoo in a distinct syllable, and so to pronounce them. Thus let while be written and sounded hoo-ile; whet, hoo-et; where, hoo-are; whip,hoo-ip; &c. This is no more, as Dr. Lowth observes, than placing the aspirate in its true position, before the w, as it is in the Saxon, which the words come from; where we may observe, that, though

« PreviousContinue »