and of the consequent difficulty which they experience in acquiring the foreign pronunciation. The neglect to which this art is usually consigned in the teaching of foreign languages is such, that there is not even a term by which to express it; and, for the purpose of classification, we have been under the necessity of attaching this new acceptation to the words hearing and audition.

Teachers, in general, make their pupils read, instead of reading to them; they wait until they begin to speak the foreign language, before they address them in it. Many persons, on arriving in France, unused to hear French spoken, although proficients in reading it, are unable to understand the people. Some, not reflecting that the difficulty lies in the deficiency of their unpractised ear, attribute it to an extreme rapidity with which they imagine the French express themselves; others, to their running the words into one another; not a few declare, that the French spoken abroad is not the same as that of their teachers at home. If these are not natives of France, there may be some truth in the declaration; but if they are, there can be no reason for believing it probable. Were they even liable to the charge of ignorance, as it may often happen, yet they cannot but speak like their countrymen and contemporaries, unless they have forgotten their own language, a circumstance of rare

Occurrence.

The deficiency of learners in the Second Branch must not be attributed to a difficulty in the acquisition: it has already been observed, that it is incomparably easier to understand a language spoken than to speak it, as it is easier to understand books than to write. The capability of comprehending what is spoken would be as easily acquired in a foreign language as in the native, if the hearing faculty were as much exercised in the one as in the other. That some find it more difficult to understand a foreigner than speak his language can be attributed only to the method pursued, contrary to that of nature. Among the causes of error on this point, it may be stated that deficiency in speaking not preventing, in general, the speaker's meaning from being apprehended, leaves him often unconscious of his mistakes; whereas, in the act of hearing, a single word not understood suffices to mark the deficiency, and to render a whole sentence obscure. In speaking, people evade difficulty by giving utterance to the ideas alone for which they have words, and thus do not feel sensible of the scantiness of their verbal stock; but the

hearer, having no control over the language of those who address him, must be previously acquainted with nearly all, if not all, the words and forms of expression which may be used in conversation, an ability to be attained by practice in reading and hearing. The illiterate portion of the community generally understand what is spoken as accurately as is desirable; whereas, from the difficulty of the art of speaking, they continue all their lives to express themselves very incorrectly; and, in conveying their limited and common-place ideas, they constantly misapply terms and violate the laws of language, without in the least suspecting the extent of their deficiency: they imagine themselves as skilful in the art of speaking as they really are in that of hearing.

The difficulty experienced by English people in comprehending French conversation may, if they have learned from natives, be attributed either to the nature of the volumes they have read and their limited number, or to the want of practice in hearing the language, and the consequent incapability of associating the ideas with the sounds as the words are uttered. The classical and narrow course of reading to which learners are usually confined in the study of living languages, and for which we have, in the preceding Book, suggested the remedy, does not acquaint them with the familiar terms and idiomatic forms of ordinary conversation; the consequence is that, when visiting foreign countries, they hear numerous expressions of which they are utterly ignorant. The other two causes of difficulty, which it is the object of the present Book to remove, are equally obvious,— the ear, untaught by the teacher's voice, cannot, in the usual rapidity of speech, recognise the foreign words, however familiar they may be to the eye; and the inability to think in the language renders the obstacle truly insurmountable. Instead of laying hold at once, in their native dress, of the ideas of the speaker, they endeavour to translate him, consuming thereby considerable time in substituting English words for the French, and in searching for corresponding idioms: thus they lose ground in following him, and arrive at the erroneous conclusion that the French speak more rapidly than the English.

SECT. II. THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH LANGUAGES COMPARED AS REGARDS RAPIDITY OF UTTERANCE.

The extreme rapidity of thought naturally leads to rapidity of speech; and, in this, the English surpass, perhaps, every other nation. Voltaire shrewdly observed, that an Englishman gains every day two hours on a Frenchman in conversation. The truth is, that the English language is spoken considerably faster than the French. This results from a difference of genius in the pronunciation of the languages and the characters of the people.

Pronunciation is composed, as we have seen, of two elements— vocal sounds and articulations, represented in writing by vowels and consonants. Vocal sounds admit of duration-vocal articulations are produced instantaneously, and, with the exception of a few, cannot be dwelt upon. When a consonant is placed after a vowel, it generally shortens it. Thus the long syllables, me, we, fie, no, due, though, become short by adding consonants to them,―met, web, well, fit, fig, not, knock, dun, dust, thought. Now, in English, consonants predominate, and usually end syllables: hence, a rapidity of utterance is the unavoidable consequence.

In French, on the contrary, consonants act but a secondary part, and are often silent. The spoken words, in reality, end with vowel-sounds, although consonants terminate their written representatives. In the division of the words, consonants seldom terminate syllables: for example, the French word caricature is divided into syllables thus, cā-rī-cā-tū-rě; its pronunciation, conformably to this division, is necessarily longer than that of the English word, commonly pronounced according to this other division, căr-ic-ă-tūre. The same may be said of every other word in the two languages. The vowels, which contribute so much to lengthen the words, are pronounced full in French, as if every syllable were accented. From these facts, there necessarily results a steady and slow enunciation.

The difference in the rapidity of utterance of the English and French languages is rendered still more striking, when it is observed, that many of the French long sounds, especially the nasal and those marked in writing by the circumflex accent, have no existence in the English language; whilst the short and indistinct sounds, of which almost all unaccented syllables con

sist in English, and which constitute the great bulk of its pronunciation, are some of them never, and the others very seldom, used in the French language. The shortest sound, for example, which the two languages have in common, (the sound represented by a, e, i, o, u in dial, her, sir, word, and but), is expressed in French only in two ways,—by the unaccented e, and the compound sign eu,—while it occurs, in English, under thirty different alphabetical forms. It is probably in reference to these unaccented syllables, that Milton observed, "We Englishmen, being far northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide enough to grace a southern tongue, but are observed by all nations to speak exceedingly close and inward."

"The best way," says Sheridan, "of seeing clearly the difference between the genius of the French tongue and ours, in this respect, will be to sound a number of words immediately borrowed from them, and see in what the diversity of pronunciation consists, such as docteur, doctor; ābāndōn, ăbăndon; combat, combăt; college, college; compagnon, compănion; Europe, Eŭrope; obstacle, obstǎcle; sōlīde, solid, &c.; in most of which words the syllables are all long in the French, and short in the English, as the accents are placed on the vowels in the French, and on the consonants in the English. This it is which makes most of their words appear to an English ear to have as many accents as syllables, by obliging them to give an equal stress to them. And this would be our case also, even with the short sound of the vowels, if we were to rest an equal time upon each syllable as they do."+

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To the testimony of Sheridan, we will add that of a celebrated critic, Hugh Blair: "We incline, in general," he says, short pronunciation of our words, and have shortened the quantity of most of those which we borrow from the Latin. . . . In English, we have many words accented on the fourth, some on the fifth syllable from the end, as mem'orable, am'bulatory, prof'itableness. The general effect of this practice of hastening the accent, or placing it so near the beginning of the word, is to give a brisk and a spirited, but, at the same time, a rapid and hurried, and not very musical tone to the whole pronunciation of a people." "Such is the vehemence of our accent," observes also Lord Monboddo, "that every syllable which follows the accented, is not only short, but almost lost in the pronun

* On Education, to Sam Hartlib.

† Lectures on Elocution.

Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres.

ciation."* The opposite habits of utterance of the French and the English, as proved by these facts, are rendered strikingly obvious by the respective errors of pronunciation which the natives of the two countries are apt to commit when speaking each other's language: the English most generally err by pronouncing the French words too short, and the French by pronouncing the English words too long.

This difference in the mode of utterance arises from a corresponding difference in the national dispositions. As activity characterises northern, and indolence southern nations, so the English, despite their old reputation for much phlegm, are more hasty in decision and more energetic in action than the French. This may be seen in all their undertakings, private and public,—in their meals, their modes of travelling, and their national dances; but it is particularly illustrated in their oratorical and dramatical as well as colloquial delivery. It is this natural hastiness of disposition which has also caused the innumerable ellipses and contractions which so much disfigure the English language and make it incomparably more elliptical, both in construction and pronunciation, than any other with which we are acquainted. Besides the indistinctness and rapidity of its unaccented syllables, already adverted to, it admits, in familiar conversation, as well as in poetry, of numberless contractions, which would not be tolerated in other languages. The only licence of this kind allowed in speaking French is the omission of the unaccented e, when three vocal articulations are not thereby left together; in poetry encore is the only word in which a letter, the final e, may be dropped.

The English have so strong a propensity for hurrying in their speech, that they contract words of all kinds, even proper names. a practice quite unknown among their continental neighbours, How ridiculously short are the familiar contractions, 'tis, isn't, I'll, don't, sha'n't, you'd, &c.; mam, gent, bus, pos, on spec, incog, a middy, an M.P., &c.; the christian names, Bill, Dick, Joe, Bess, Mag, Kate, &c.; and other proper names such as Chomly, Lester, Notts, Bucks, &c. for Cholmondeley, Leicester, Nottinghamshire, Buckinghamshire, &c. Besides these accidental contractions, the English language contains more monosyllables than the generality of other languages, a circumstance which again tends considerably to shorten the expression of thought. "Such, in Britain, is the propensity for dispatch," says Lord Kames, "that,

*Origin and Progress of Language.