Henry Sweet

“ A standard spoken language is, strictly speaking, an abstraction. No two speakers of standard English pronounce exactly alike. And yet they all have something in common in every sound they utter. There are some divergences, some peculiarities of pronunciation, which pass unnoticed, while others, less considerable perhaps in themselves, are at once felt as archaisms, vulgarisms or provincial isms, as the case may be, by the majority of educated speakers. ”

“ The advantages of beginning a foreign language in a phonetic notation are many and obvious. In the first place, the learner who has once mastered the notation and learnt to pronounce the sounds the letters stand for, is able to read off at once any text that is presented to him without doubt or hesitation, and without having to burden his memory with rules of pronunciation and spelling. Another advantage of phonetic spelling is that when the learner sees the words written in a representation of their actual spoken form he is able to recognize them at once when he hears them. ”

“ But how the ear transmits to the brain the impression of sound is still a mystery. Again, although the mechanism of the vowel is clear enough, there is still no generally received acoustic theory of its formation. In fact, from the physical science point of view there is as yet no science of phonetics.
The real function of phonetics is philological and literary. The only sound basis of a theoretical knowledge of phonetics is the practical mastery of a limited number of sounds—that is to say, of the sounds which are already familiar to the learner in his own language. ”

“ The dictionary, as far as it was worked out by Grimm himself, may be described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.
Grimm’s scientific character is notable for its combination of breadth and unity. He was as far removed from the narrowness of the specialist who has no ideas, no sympathies beyond some one author, period or corner of science, as from the shallow dabbler who feverishly attempts to master the details of half-a-dozen discordant pursuits. Even within his own special studies there is the same wise concentration ”

“ From a more theoretical point of view phonetics is, in the first place, the science of linguistic observation. Without phonetic training the dialectologist, and the missionary who is confronted with a hitherto unwritten language, can neither observe fully nor record accurately the phenomena with which they have to deal. These investigations have greatly widened the scope of the science of language. The modern philologist no longer despises colloquial and illiterate forms of speech. ”

“ At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of Volapük had done before him. But instead of taking them mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief European languages, but not impartially. Like all inventors of artificial languages, he is more ready to experiment with foreign languages than with his own; and hence the Slavonic roots in Esperanto are much less numerous than those taken from the other European languages. ”

“ Although by the introduction of the Code Napoléon into Westphalia Grimm’s legal studies were made practically barren, he never lost his interest in the scientific study of law and national institutions, as the truest exponents of the life and character of a people. ”

“ In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical artificial language that has yet appeared. Its inventor has had the double advantage of being able to profit by the mistakes of his predecessors, and of being himself, by force of circumstances, a better linguist. ”

“ Sounds which are distinct in one generation may be confounded in another, and new distinctions may be made, new sounds may arise. A spoken language is, therefore, necessarily a vague and floating entity, and English is no exception to the rule. ”

“ But from this centre his investigations were pursued in every direction as far as his unerring instinct of healthy limitation would allow. He was equally fortunate in the harmony that subsisted between his intellectual and moral nature. He made cheerfully the heavy sacrifices that science demands from its disciples, without feeling any of that envy and bitterness which often torment weaker natures; and although he lived apart from his fellow men, he was full of human sympathies, and no man has ever exercised a profounder influence on the destinies of mankind. ”

“ Where there is no traditional orthography, as when Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was first written down in Latin letters, spelling was necessarily phonetic; but where there is a large literature and a class of professional scribes, the influence of the traditional orthography becomes stronger, till at last the invention of printing and the diffusion of one standard dialect over a large area occupied originally by a variety of other dialects make changes of spelling as inconvenient as they were once easy and natural. ”

“ The only consonant-symbols that require special notice are the following:—
All the systems of phonetic notation hitherto considered are based on the Roman alphabet. But although the Roman alphabet has many advantages from a practical point of view, it is evidently impossible to build up a consistent and systematic notation on such an inadequate foundation of arbitrary signs. What is wanted, for scientific purposes especially, is a notation independent of the Roman alphabet, built up systematically—an alphabet in which there is a definite relation between sound and symbol. ”

“ The importance of Grimm’s generalization in the history of philology cannot be overestimated, and even the mystic completeness and symmetry of its formulation, although it has proved a hindrance to the correct explanation of the causes of the changes, was well calculated to strike the popular mind, and give it a vivid idea of the paramount importance of law, and the necessity of disregarding mere superficial resemblance. ”

“ Combinations of stops and vowel-like consonants (tr, gl, kw) are glideless in English and most other languages. In English the breath-glide after a voiceless stop unvoices the beginning of the following vowel-like consonant; thus try is almost (trhrai) .
Vowel-glides.—Vowels are begun and ended in various ways. In the “gradual beginning,” which is the usual one in English and French, the glottis is gradually narrowed while breath is being emitted. In the “clear” beginning the breath is kept back till the glottis is closed for voice, which begins without any “breathiness.” ”

“ If we distinguish only three, they are called weak, medium and strong. The use of stress in different languages shows the same variety as quantity. Some languages, such as French, make comparatively little use of its distinctions, uttering all the syllables of words and sentences with a more or less even degree of force. English, on the other hand, makes great use of minute distinctions of stress both to distinguish the meanings of words and to mark their relations in sentences. ”

“ Acoustically speaking, indeed, voiceless stops are pure glide sounds, the stop itself being inaudible. In voice-stops, on the other hand, the stop itself can be made audible as well as the intervening glides. In English these latter are fully voiced when they come between voice sounds, as in ago; but when preceded by voiceless sounds or by a pause, as in go! they are formed with imperfect vocality, full voice being heard only just before the stop is loosened. ”

“ The interior of the mouth may be explored by the fingers. If the little finger is held against the gums during the articulation of the vowels in it, ate, at, the difference in the height of the tongue will at once become apparent in the formation of the first vowel the tongue is pressed strongly against the artificial palate, while in that of the second it only just touches it, and in that of the third it does not touch at all
Several forms of apparatus have been devised for a more accurate determination of the positions of the tongue and the other movable organs of speech. ”

“ It is evident that the more familiar a sound is, the easier it is to gain insight into its mechanism and to recognize it when heard. It is indispensable to cultivate both the organic and the acoustic sense. These processes we are continually carrying out in ordinary conversation. All, therefore, that we have to do in dealing with native sounds is to develop this unconscious organic and acoustic sense into a conscious and analytic one. ”

“ The claims of instrumental phonetics have been so prominently brought forward of late years that they can no longer be ignored, even by the most conservative of the older generation of phoneticians. But it is possible to go too far the other way. Some of the younger generation seem to think that the instrumental methods have superseded the natural ones in the same way as the Arabic superseded the Roman numerals. This assumption has had disastrous results. It cannot be too often repeated that instrumental phonetics is, strictly speaking, not phonetics at all. It is only a help. ”

“ Some consonants are formed without either in- or out-breathing, but solely with the air in the throat or mouth. In forming “suction stops” or “clicks” the tongue or lips are put in the position for a stop, and the air is sucked out from between the organs in contact, so that when the stop is loosened, a smacking sound is produced by the air rushing in to fill the vacuum. Thus the point-click is the interjection of impatience commonly written tut! In many savage languages clicks are a part of ordinary speech. ”

“ The natural method of learning sounds is mainly a subjective one We listen patiently till our ears are steeped, as it were, in the sound; and then, after repeated trials, we hit on the exact position of the organs of speech by which we can reproduce the sound to the speaker's satisfaction. But the natural method admits also of objective control and criticism of the movements of the lips and Jaws by direct observation. ”

“ The pitches of the breath consonants are absolutely fixed in each individual pronunciation, while those of spoken vowels can be varied indefinitely within the compass of each voice by tightening the vocal chords in various ways and shortening their vibrating portions· the tighter and shorter the vibrating body, the quicker its vibrations, and the higher the tone. But when a vowel is whispered or breathed nothing is heard but the resonance of the con figurative passages, especially in the mouth, and the pitches of these resonant cavities are as fixed as those of the breath consonants ”

“ The final arbiter in all phonetic questions is the trained ear of a practical phonetician: differences which cannot be perceived must—or at least may be—-ignored; what contradicts the trained ear cannot be accepted. ”

“ The flattening of the tongue makes our vowels wide and favours the development of mixed vowels, and gives the dull quality which is especially noticeable in our (l) ; and its retraction is unfavourable to the development of teeth sounds; while the neutrality of the lips eliminates front-round vowels. In such a language as French everything is reversed. The tongue is arched, and raised, and advanced, and the lips articulate with energy. Hence French sounds tend to narrowness, mentality and distinct rounding. ”