betical character assumes, when embodied in words, is the thing signified; its name is the sign. It is the former sort of information which is more immediately required by a person who wishes to pronounce the written words.

A foreign alphabet, however, may be useful to a person who knows the language to which it belongs sufficiently well to converse in it, as its words and their orthography may become a subject of conversation, and the letters may then require to be named in that language. In addressing foreigners on matters relative to orthography, one should be able to designate the alphabetical characters by their right names to be understood. A few minutes would suffice to render them familiar to a person who has already some knowledge of the language.

But it is contrary to reason to call, as some do, the letters of a foreign language by their foreign names, when speaking the native tongue,—a practice which becomes downright absurdity, when the person spoken to is unacquainted with that foreign language. If, in the general intercourse of society, conversation should fall on etymology, or any other subject requiring the mention of the alphabetical elements of different languages, not only would the introduction of their foreign names savour of pedantry on the part of the speaker, but it would ungraciouly compel the uninitiated to a painful acknowledgment of ignorance : and, among persons acquainted with the languages referred to, it would produce confusion, in consequence of the diversity of names given to the same letters in different languages. The English, for example, give to a and e the names which the French give respectively to e and i. It is obvious that an object, whether an alphabetic character or any other, for which there is a name, must be called by that name in the language which is, at the time, the medium of communication. If the alphabetical character alluded to does not exist in the language of the speaker, its foreign name must then be used, as would any foreign term for which there is no equivalent.

Oral spelling, considered as a preparatory step to reading the native tongue, is disapproved of by all persons who have reflected on this subject; it is still more objectionable in the study of a foreign language. In the vernacular, children are assisted in combining letters into words by previous acquaintance with these words in another form. In a language not their own, beginners are deprived of this assistance. If an English child be given the word cow to spell, he will certainly

be embarrassed, because the names of the letters ce, o, double u uttered separately, are quite different from their collective power. If, after being told the right pronunciation, he retains it, it is not because the letters which compose the word cow indicate its sound; but because, having heard and pronounced that word before, he easily and at once associates with it the idea of the animal; and the written word cow becomes a visible sign corresponding to the articulate one which is familiar to him. It is very different in a foreign language: an English child, who learns French and is told the pronunciation of a French word, has no clue by which to arrive at, or remember it, since he has never heard nor used the word before. Hence it is, that the names of the letters and the practice of spelling words are not conducive to the acquiring of the foreign pronunciation.

CHAPTER III.

ORAL READING.

SECT. I. ORAL READING-AS A MEANS OF ACQUIRING THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

ORAL reading the art of delivering written language-properly claims attention in this Book ; for it is based on the practice of hearing. He who has not heard a language cannot pronounce its written words correctly. That learners should, as is usually done, be made to read aloud, instead of listening to their teachers, is a most unaccountable perversion of principles. But, whether this art be looked upon as a means of acquiring the foreign pronunciation, or as a valuable acquisition, it is, in our opinion, equally liable to objection.

Considered in the first light, oral reading, at the outset, is in direct opposition to nature and reason. Attempting to read foreign words which have not been heard, is as absurd as would be an attempt to sketch objects which have not been seen. In pronunciation, as in drawing, penmanship, and all arts of imita tion, the correctness of the execution is based on patient study of the model. In every thing which regards the foreign pronunciation the teacher's voice is the model. The process by which this model may be rendered familiar to the learners has been explained at length in the two preceding chapters.

The practice of reading aloud a foreign language begets an incorrect pronunciation, if prematurely attempted. The written words, as was observed in the foregoing Chapter, necessarily lead to a false pronunciation, by recalling to the mind of a beginner the deeply-rooted native sounds and intonations. On seeing the same letters combined in the same way as in his own language, he naturally attaches to them the sounds to which he is accustomed, although perfect resemblance very seldom occurs. The proportion, for example, of syllables similarly pronounced in French and in English, being about one in fifty, he cannot help

committing forty-nine mistakes in fifty French syllables which he utters. Were he corrected at every error, he could not proceed. The teacher, partly from inattention, or to save himself trouble, and partly not to discourage the beginner, notices only the most glaring errors, and reserves the correction of those which he considers as secondary for a later period, when, in fact, they will have become almost incurable from habit.

Another great difficulty which a person encounters in reading foreign languages orally, arises from the want of affinity between their orthography and their pronunciation. In our derived idioms, the phonographic principle has been so much departed from in the passage of words through different languages, that, in many instances, their orthography rather indicates etymology than represents pronunciation. This discordance between the spoken and the written signs is in none, perhaps, more striking than in the French and the English. In the former it consists in the consonants being frequently silent, and in the latter in the vowels being indistinctly and variously pronounced. These facts sufficiently establish the singular anomaly, that neither language is pronounced as it is spelled, and that, consequently, their written form is an unfit medium for arriving at their pronunciation.

Those who practise oral reading as a means of acquiring the pronunciation of a foreign language, are prone to imagine that the difficulty will be overcome by perseverance; but the unavoidable repetition of the errors only strengthens them, and . renders them so familiar to the ear of the deluded reader, that he often mistakes the facility which he acquires in uttering them for correctness of enunciation. Bad habits thus fortified by self-complacency, are almost unconquerable. To acknowledge that to be wrong, which, from long practice, is done with ease and pleasure, is an effort of reason and self-denial above the power of the great majority of persons.

People are, in general, too anxious to read aloud in a foreign language; they delight in hearing their own voice give utterance to strange words; and, although in doing so they often introduce none but the sounds of their own language, these are applied and combined in so novel a manner, that the readers are apt to fancy they actually pronounce the foreign language. Fraught with evil consequences as is this childish and irrational practice, it is but too frequently encouraged by teachers who pronounce well themselves, but think it less troublesome to listen to their

pupils than to read to them. There cannot be too much blame laid on those who thus sacrifice to their convenience the improvement of the learners committed to their care. Some excuse, however, may be given for those who do not offer themselves as models in pronunciation, either from distrust in their own powers of elocution, or a consciousness of imperfect knowledge of the foreign language. But, while we give them due credit for candour, we cannot but pity the learners who have the double misfortune of pursuing a bad course under incompetent instructors.

It is particularly at the outset of the study, and when the written language is as yet imperfectly understood, that oral reading must be avoided. It is contrary to reason to attend to the pronunciation and orthography of words, before knowing their signification; for, should the learner even succeed in pronouncing or writing them correctly, it would be of little benefit to him. Spoken and written words, divested of their meaning, are deprived of the great link by which memory can lay hold on them; and, if they are not fixed on the mind, how can their pronunciation or spelling be retained? Oral reading should not be attempted, until some progress has been made in mental reading.

The only natural and rational way of proceeding is, as we have shown, to acquire the foreign pronunciation, as the vernacular, by constantly associating ideas with the words spoken by a native, not by the learner's reading them himself: it must be learned through the ear, not through the eye. We doubt not that this will be the more readily assented to, when it is considered that the processes by which the pronunciation is arrived at in speaking and in oral reading, are the reverse of each other. In the act of speaking, the words follow spontaneously and by an immediate connection, their correlative ideas, as these rapidly pass through the mind; the speaker becomes conscious of having employed them, only from the impressions which they make on his own ear; and the notice he may afterwards take of their orthography is deduced from the pronunciation. In reading aloud, on the contrary, the pronunciation is deduced from the orthography; it is associated with alphabetical combinations, not with ideas. From this difference in the processes by which oral reading and speaking are performed, it often happens that a disciple of the ordinary routine reads a foreign word correctly and speaks it badly.

In public instruction, reading aloud by the learners is still