[Sidenote: The use of phonetics in education.]
The phoneticians are doing useful work in supplying an educational
need. By the phonetic system any spoken language can now be learned
quickly and easily, just as by the _sol-fa_ system the teaching of
music was made easy and simple. If a clergyman who had no practical
knowledge of music were offered the post of minor canon in a
cathedral, he would find it very difficult to qualify himself
passably, whereas any village schoolboy could learn all the music
necessary for such an office, and learn that solidly too and soundly
and durably, in a few lessons, truly in a few hours, by the _sol-fa_
method. The principle is the same in music and in speech, namely to
have a distinct symbol for every separate sound; in music it is a
name, the idea of which quickly becomes indissociable from the note
of the scale which it indicates; in phonetics it is a written letter,
which differs from the units of our literary alphabet only in this,
that it has but one meaning and interpretation, and really is what all
letters were originally intended to be. When you see it you know what
it means.
[Sidenote: Its general adoption certain.]
The principle is but common sense, and practice confirms its validity.
I am persuaded that as soon as competition has exposed the advantages
which it ensures, not only in the saving of time, but in the rescuing
of English children from the blighting fog through which their tender
minds are now forced to struggle on the first threshold of life,[22]
then all spoken languages will be taught on that method. What now
chiefly hinders its immediate introduction is not so much the real
difficulty of providing a good simple system, as the false fear
that all our literature may take on the phonetic dress; and this
imagination is frightful enough to be a bugbear to reasonable people,
although, so far as one can see, there is no more danger of this
result than there is of all music appearing in sol-fa notation.
[Footnote 22: This is no exaggeration. Let a humane teacher think what
an infant's mind is, the delicate bud of intelligence opening on the
world, eager to adjust its awakening wonder to the realities of life,
absolutely simple, truthful, and receptive, reaching out its tender
faculties like the sensitive antennae of a new-born insect, that
feel forth upon the unknown with the faultless instinct of eternal
mind--one has only to imagine that condition to realize that the
most ingenious malignity could hardly contrive anything to offer it
so perplexing, cramping, and discouraging as the unintelligible and
unreasonable absurdities of English literary spelling. That it somehow
generally wrestles through is only a demonstration of the wrong that
is done to it; and I would say, better leave it alone to find its
own way, better teach it nothing at all, than worry it with the
incomprehensible, indefensible confusion of such nonsense.]
[Sidenote: Demand of the market.]
Now here is a promising field for adventure. Not only is the creation
of a new fount of type an elaborate and expensive process, but the
elaboration of a good system and its public recognition when produced
involve much time; so that any industrial company that is early in
the market with a complete apparatus and a sufficient reputation will
carry all before it, and be in a position to command and secure great
monetary profit.
There is no doubt that the field is now strongly held by the
Anglo-Prussian society which Mr. Jones represents.[23]
[Footnote 23: The peril that we are in of having Mr. Jones' degraded
pronunciation thus sprung upon us in England and taught in all our
schools is really threatening. Indeed, as things are, there is little
prospect of escaping from it, supposing the democracy should once
awake to the commercial and spiritual advantages of teaching language
phonetically: and that would seem to be only a question of time: the
demand may come at any moment, and a complete machinery which has
been skilfully prepared to meet the demand will offer practical
conveniences to outbalance every other consideration.
Even supposing the authorities in the Education Department
sufficiently alive to the situation which it is the purpose of this
section of my essay to bring to the fore, yet even then, were they all
unanimous, they could not give effect to their convictions, because--
They are forbidden to recommend or give preference to any particular
book. They may not order or prohibit the use of any book, however good
or bad they may know it to be, and they probably desire to avoid the
suspicion of favouring the authors of books that have the advantage of
national circulation.
However that may be, it is a lamentable situation that our
high-salaried Board of Education, composed of the best trained
intelligence of the country, should not be allowed to exercise its
discretion efficiently. The people, no doubt, cannot be agreed as to
the principles on which they desire to be educated, whether political,
official, or religious, and they deprecate official control in such
matters. Every one objecting to some principle, they consent in
requiring that the central authority should have no principle at all;
but this lack of principle should not be extended to paralyse action
in questions that demand expert knowledge and judgement, such as
this question of phonetic teaching--and it shows that the public by
grudging authority to their own officers may only fall under a worse
tyranny, which they will suffer just because it has no authority.]
In the preceding section Mr. Jones' dictionary was taken as authority
for the actual condition of Southern English pronunciation. It must
now be considered in its other aspect, namely as the authoritative
phonetic interpretation of our speech; my contention being that it is
a wrong and mischievous interpretation.
It is difficult to keep these two questions quite apart. The first,
which was dealt with in Section 5, was that Southern English
is actively productive of homophones. This present Section 6 is
contending that the mischief is being encouraged and propagated by the
phoneticians, and Mr. Jones' books are taken as an example of their
method.
[Sidenote: Fault of Mr. Jones' method.]
The reason why the work of these phoneticians is so mischievous is
that they have chosen too low a standard of pronunciation.
The defence that they would make would be something like this.
They might argue with some confidence, and not without a good show of
reason, that the actual 'vernacular' talk of the people is the living
language of any country: they would allege that a spoken language is
always changing, and always will change; that the actual condition of
it is the only scientific, and indeed the only possible basis for any
system of tuition; and that it is better to be rather in advance of
change than behind it, since the changes proceed inevitably by laws
which education has no power to resist, nay, so inevitably that
science can in some measure foresee the future.
This would, I suppose, fairly represent Mr. Jones' contention. Indeed,
he plainly asserts that his work is merely a record of existing facts,
and he even says that he chose Southern English because it is most
familiar and observable, and therefore capable of providing him with
sufficient phenomena: and he might say that what I call 'low' in his
standard is only the record of a stage of progression which I happen
to dislike or have not nearly observed. And yet the argument is full
of fallacies: and the very position that he assumes appears to me to
be unsound. It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one
grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a
dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers
of it is surely a monstrous step. And in this particular instance the
matter is complicated by the fact that Southern English is not truly a
natural dialect; Mr. Jones himself denotes it as P.S.P.=Public School
Pronunciation, and that we know to be very largely a social convention
dependent on fashion and education, and inasmuch as it is a product
of fashion and education it is not bound by the theoretical laws
which Mr. Jones would attribute to it; while for the same reason it is
unfortunately susceptible of being affected by them, if they should be
taught with authority. These phoneticians would abuse a false position
which they have unwarrantably created. This Southern English, this
P.S.P., is a 'fashionable' speech, fashionable that is in two senses;
and Mr. Jones would fashion it.
[Sidenote: judged by practical effects.]
But I wish to put my case practically, and, rather than argue, I would
ask what are the results of learning English on Mr. Jones' system?
What would be the condition of a man who had learnt in this way?
[Sidenote: His three styles.]
I shall assume that the pupil has learnt his pronunciation from the
dictionary, the nature of which is now known to my readers: but they
should also know that Mr. Jones recognizes and teaches three different
styles, which he calls the A, B, and C styles, 'A, the pronunciation
suitable for recitation or reading in public; B, the pronunciation
used in careful conversation, or reading aloud in private; and C, the
pronunciation used in rapid conversation.'
In a polemic against Mr. Jones his adversary has therefore to combat a
dragon with three heads, and the heroic method would be to strike all
three of them off at one blow. To effect this it seems to me that one
has only to remark that a system which is forced to teach a dialect
[a dialect, observe, not a language] in three forms where one is
sufficient, is _ipso facto_ condemned. This objection I will establish
presently; at present I am content to confine my attention to one
head, for I maintain that in practice those who will take the trouble
to learn three forms of one speech must be a negligible number;
the practical pupils will generally be content to master one, and
that will, no doubt, be the highly recommended style B, and its
corresponding dictionary; they will rule out A and C as works
of supererogation; and indeed those would be needless if B were
satisfactory.
[Sidenote: In deliberate repititions.]
So, then, we are asking what is the condition of a man who has learned
the dictionary standard?
(1) In common talk if we speak so indistinctly as not to be
understood, we repeat our sentence with a more careful articulation.
As Sweet used to say, the only security against the decay of language
through careless articulation into absolute unintelligibility is the
personal inconvenience of having to repeat your words when you are
indistinctly heard. 'What' leaps out from the dictionary with a shout
to the rescue of all his fellows. And when you have experienced
this warcry 'what? what?' oftener than you like, you will raise the
standard of your pronunciation (just as you would raise your voice to
a deaf listener) merely to save yourself trouble, even though you were
insensible to the shame of the affront.
[Sidenote: In asseveration.]
And this more careful articulation obtains also in all _asseveration_.
A speaker who wishes to provoke attention to any particular statement
or sentiment will speak the words by which he would convey it more
slowly and with more careful articulation than the rest of his
utterance.
Under both these common conditions the man who has learned only the
vernacular of Mr. Jones' phonetics has no resource but to emphasize
with all their full horrors words like _seprit_, _sin'kerpate_,
_din'ersty_, _ernoin't_, _mis'ernthrope_, _sym'perthy_,
_mel'ernkerly_, _mel'erdy_, _serspe'ct_, _erno'y_, &c.[24], which
when spoken indistinctly in careless talk may pass muster, but when
accurately articulated are not only vulgar and absurd, but often
unrecognizable.
[Footnote 24: Writing _er_, always unaccented, for [e].]
[Sidenote: In public speaking.]
(2) Again, public speakers use a pronunciation very different from
that in the dictionary, and Mr. Jones admits this and would teach
it _sepritly_ as 'style A'. But it is wrong to suppose that its
characteristics are a mere fashion or a pedantic regard for things
obsolete, or a nice rhetorical grace, though Mr. Jones will have it
to be mostly artificial, 'due to well-established, though perhaps
somewhat arbitrary rules laid down by teachers of elocution'. The
basis of it is the need of being heard and understood, together with
the experience that style B will not answer that purpose. The main
service, no doubt, of a teacher of elocution is to instruct in the
management of the voice (clergyman's sore throat is a recognized
disease of men who use their voice wrongly); but a right pronunciation
is almost equally necessary and important.
Now if public speakers really have to learn something different from
their habitual pronunciation, Mr. Jones is right in making a separate
style of it, and he is also justified in the degraded forms of his
style B, for those are what these speakers have to unlearn; nor is any
fault to be found with his diligent and admirable analysis.
These two practical considerations expose the situation sufficiently:
we may now face the triple-tongued dragon and exhibit how a single
whiff of common sense will tumble all his three heads in the dust.
[Sidenote: The natural right method.]
The insideoutness, topsy-turviness, and preposterousness of Mr. Jones'
method is incredible. In the natural order of things, children would
be taught a careful 'high standard' articulation as a part of their
elemental training, when in their pliant age they are mastering the
co-ordinations which are so difficult to acquire later. Then when they
have been educated to speak correctly, their variation from that full
pronunciation is a natural carelessness, and has the grace of all
natural behaviour, and it naturally obeys whatever laws have been
correctly propounded by phoneticians; since it is itself the phenomena
from which those laws are deduced. This carelessness or ease of speech
will vary naturally _in all degrees_ according to occasion, and being
dependent on mood and temper will never go wrong. It is warm and alive
with expression of character, and may pass quite unselfconsciously
from the grace of negligence to the grace of correctness, for it has
correctness at command, having learned it, and its carelessness has
not been doctored and bandaged; and this ease of unselfconsciousness
is one of the essentials of human intercourse: a man talking fluently
does not consider what words he will use, he does not often remember
exactly what words he has used, nor will he know at all how he
pronounces them; his speech flows from him as his blood flows when his
flesh is wounded.
[Sidenote: What Mr. Jones would substitute.]
What would Mr. Jones' system substitute for this natural grace? In
place of a wide scale of unconscious variation he provides his
pupils with 'three styles', three different fixed grades of
pronunciation,[25] which they must apply consciously as suits the
occasion. At dinner you might be called on to talk to a bishop across
the table in your best style B, or to an archbishop even in your A1,
when you were talking to your neighbours in your best C.--Nature would
no doubt assert herself and secure a fair blend; but none the less,
the three styles are plainly alternatives and to some extent mutually
exclusive, whereas natural varieties are harmoniously interwoven and
essentially one.
[Footnote 25: Of course Mr. Jones knows that these are not and
cannot be fixed. He must often bewail in secret the exigencies of his
'styles'.]
Argumentative analogies are commonly chosen because they are specious
rather than just; but there is one here which I cannot forbear. If a
system like Mr. Jones' were adopted in teaching children to write, we
should begin by collecting and comparing all the careless and hasty
handwritings of the middle class and deduce from them the prevalent
forms of the letters in that state of degradation. From this we should
construct in our 'style B' the alphabet which we should contend to
be the genuine natural product of inevitable law, and hallowed by
'general use', and this we should give to our children to copy and
learn, relegating the more carefully formed writing to a 'style A,
taught by writing masters', explaining that its 'peculiarities' were
'modifications produced involuntarily as the result of writing more
slowly or endeavouring to write more distinctly', &c.[26]
[Footnote 26: _Phonetic Transcriptions of English_, by D. Jones, 1907,
Introd., p. v, 'The peculiarities of Style A as compared with Style
B are especially marked. These differences are partly natural, i.e.
modifications produced involuntarily as the result of speaking
more slowly or of endeavouring to speak more distinctly, and partly
artificial, i.e. modifications due to the well-established though
perhaps somewhat arbitrary rules laid down by teachers of elocution,'
&c., and Mr. Jones is quite right in complaining that his pupils make
fools of themselves when they try to speak slower.]
I believe that there has never been in Europe a fluent script so
beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of
to-day. But their æsthetic mastery has come from loving study of the
forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant
practice in their harmonious adaptation.
Finally, it may be worth while to raise the question how it can be
that a man of Mr. Jones' extreme competence in his science should
commit himself to a position that appears so false and mischievous.
[Sidenote: Reason of present discredit of phonetics.]
The unpopularity of phonetics is not wholly undeserved: from its early
elements, the comfortably broad distinctions of convincing importance,
it has progressed to a stage of almost infinite differentiations
and subtleties; and when machinery was called in to dispose of
controversy, a new and unsuspected mass of baffling detail was
revealed.
The subject cannot be treated parenthetically, nor am I capable of
summarizing it; but it seems clear that the complexity of the science
has driven off public sympathy and dashed the confidence of scholars,
withdrawing thereby some of the wholesome checks that common sense
might else have imposed on its practical exponents. The experts thus
left to themselves in despair of any satisfactory solution, are likely
enough to adopt the simplifications most agreeable to their present
ideas, and measure the utility of such simplifications by the
accidental conveniences of their own science, independently of other
considerations.
[Sidenote: The practical difficulty.]
The main practical difficulty which they have to meet in providing
a reasonably satisfactory phonetic script or type for the English
language is this, that the symbols of their alphabet must not greatly
exceed in number those of the literary alphabet, whereas the sounds
that they have to indicate do greatly exceed.
This discrepancy might be overcome by the use of what are called
'diacritical' marks, but here the universal prejudice against accents
in English is forbidding, and it is true that even if printers did not
rebel against them, they are yet distasteful and deterrent to readers
out of all proportion to their complexity.
[Sidenote: The result of Mr. Jones' solution.]
[Sidenote: The true condition of modified vowels, &c.]
Mr. Jones no doubt allowed himself as much liberty as he could venture
on, but to what has this paucity and choice of symbols led him? It
has led him to assert and teach that an unaccented vowel in English
retains no trace of its proper quality[27]: that is, that you cannot,
or at least do not, modify an unaccented vowel; you either pronounce
_a_, _e_, _o_, _u_, distinctly, or you must substitute an alien
sound, generally 'er', or in some consonantal positions a short
'i'. Thus we have _parersite_, _oblerquy_, _ikse'pt_, _ikspre'ss_,
_iqua'ter_, _peri'sherner_, _perli'ce_, _spe'sherlize_, _pin'erkl_,
_Mes'esperta'mier_, &c., and one of his examples, which he advances
with the confidence of complete satisfaction, is the name _Margate_,
which he asserts is pronounced _Margit_,[28] that is, with a short
_i_. The vowel is no doubt short, and its shortness is enforced by its
being closed by a _t_: but it is not a short _i_, it is an extremely
hastened and therefore disguised form of the original and proper
diphthong _ei_ (heard in _bait_ and _gate_); and the true way to write
it phonetically would be _ei_, with some diacritical sign to show that
it was obscured. There is no long vowel or diphthong in English which
cannot in some positions be pronounced short; and when hurried over
between accents it is easy to see that there is nothing, except
an obstacle of consonants, which can prevent the shortening of any
syllable; for long and short are relative, and when you are speaking
very slowly 'short' sounds actually occupy as much time as 'long'
sounds do when you are speaking quickly. You have therefore only to
suppose a speed of utterance somewhat out of scale; and this is just
what happens. In the second syllable of _Margate_ the diphthong is
hastened and obscured, but a trace of its quality remains, and will
more distinctly appear as you speak the word slower. And so in the
case of unaccented short vowels that are hurried over between the
accents in talking, they are disguised and lose quality, but in good
speakers a trace of the original sound will remain (as in _parasite_
and _obloquy_), where, on the ground of indistinctness, Mr. Jones
introduces the symbol of an _alien unrelated_ sound, a sound, that is,
which is _distinctly wrong instead of being indistinctly right_: and
this fault vitiates all his books. Economy of symbols has led him to
perversity of pronunciation.[29]
[Footnote 27: I do not deny that he allows some exceptions: and these,
few as they are, concede the principle for which I contend.]
[Footnote 28: His own words are, 'Thus Margate trippers now generally
speak of Ma:geit instead of Ma:git: teachers in London
elementary schools now often say eksept for iksept 'except',
ekstr[e][o]:din[er]ri for ikstr[o]dnri 'extraordinary', often for
[o]:fn 'often'. We feel that such artificialities cannot but impair
the beauty of the language.' Dictionary, 1st edition, Preface, p.v.]
[Footnote 29: In the first edition of the Dictionary [1913] [e] has
only one interpretation, the illustration being the _a_ of _about_.
In the _Phonetic Transcriptions_ [1907] it was the _er_ of _over_,
but in the new Dictionary [1917] [e] has three interpretations with
the following explanation: '[e] varies noticeably according to its
position in the word and in the sentence. In final positions it is
often replaced (_sic_) by "[Greek: L]" [=_u_ of _up_], in other
positions its quality varies considerably according to the nature of
the surrounding sounds; the variations extend from almost "[Greek:
L]" to the half-close mixed position. Three different values may
be heard in the words _china_, _cathedral_: in the latter word the
second "[e]" has a lower and more retracted tongue-position than the
first [e].'
The value of [e] when Mr. Jones first substituted it for a disguised
unaccented vowel, was that the speaker might know what sound he had to
produce. It was wrong, but it was definite. Mr. Jones would now make
it less wrong by making it less definite. That is, in the place of
something distinctly wrong we are offered something which has an
offchance of being nearly right: but as it has entirely ousted and
supplanted the original vowel I do not see how there is any means of
interpreting it correctly. The _er_ of _over_ is a definite sound, and
to print it where it was out of place was a definite error--to give it
three interpretations makes it cover more ground: but its usurpations
are still indefensible.]
7. _ON THE CLAIM THAT SOUTHERN ENGLISH HAS TO REPRESENT ALL BRITISH
SPEECH._
On this head certainly I can write nothing worth reading. Whether
there is any one with so wide a knowledge of all the main different
forms of English now spoken, their historic development and
chief characteristics, as to be able to summarize the situation
convincingly, I do not know. I can only put a few of the most evident
phenomena in the relation in which they happen to affect my judgement.
And first of all I put the small local holding which the Southern
English dialect can claim on the map of the British Empire. It is
plain that with such a narrow habitat it must show proof that it
possesses very great relative superiorities before it can expect to be
allowed even a hearing: and such a claim must lie in its superiority
in some practical or ideal quality: further than that it might allege
that it was the legitimate heir of our great literature, and in
possession of the citadel, and in command of an extensive machinery
for its propaganda.
Now, in my opinion it could not establish any one of these claims
except the last, namely its central position and wide machinery.
I do not pretend to foresee the future, nor even to desire it in any
particular form; but it seems to me probable that if the 'P.S.P.'
continues its downward course as indicated by Mr. Jones, then,
unless everything else worsens with it, so that it might maintain
its relative flotation in a general confusion, it must fall to be
disesteemed and repudiated, and give place to one or more other
dialects which, by having better preserved the distinctions
of pronunciation, will be not only more convenient vehicles of
intercourse, but more truthful and intelligible interpreters of our
great literature; and I believe this to be well illustrated by the
conditions of our 'S.E.' homophones: and that something better should
win the first place, I hold to be the most desirable of possible
events. But perhaps our 'S.E.' is not yet so far committed to the
process of decay as to be incapable of reform, and the machinery that
we use for penetration may be used as well for organizing a reform and
for enforcing it. There is as much fashion as inevitable law in our
'P.S.P.' or 'S.E.' talk, and if the fashion for a better, that is a
more distinct and conservative, pronunciation should set in, then at
the cost of a little temporary self-consciousness we might, in one
generation, or at least in two, have things again very much as they
were in Shakespeare's day. It is true that men are slaves to the
naturalness of what is usual with them, and unable to imagine that the
actual living condition of things in their own time is evanescent: nor
do even students and scholars see that in the Elizabethan literature
we have a perdurable gigantic picture which, among all stages
of change, will persistently reassert itself, while any special
characteristics of our own day, which seem so unalterable to us, are
only a movement, which may no doubt be determining the next movement,
but will leave no other trace of itself, at least no more than the
peculiarities of the age of Queen Anne have left to us.
I have been told that the German experts believe that the Cockney form
of English will eventually prevail. This surprising opinion may rest
on scientific grounds, but it seems to me that Cockney speech will be
too universally unintelligible; and, should it actively develop, will
be so out of relation with other and older forms of English as to be
unable to compete.
I wish and hope that the subject of this section may provoke some
expert to deal thoroughly with it. The strong feeling in America, in
Australia, and in New Zealand, to say nothing of the proud dialects of
our own islands, is in support of the common-sense view of the matter
which I have here expressed.