Otto Jespersen

“ As a matter of fact, whoever does not possess a foreign language well enough to hear it in his mind's ear as the native does, will never be able to appreciate the higher forms of a foreign literature, whether in prose or in poetry.
If, thus, a little phonetics is useful, or shall I say indispensable, to the teacher of foreign languages, it is so, too, to the teacher of the mother tongue. He also has often to contend with imperfect articulations and vices of pronunciation in his pupils ”

“ By phonetics is meant the science of speech sounds, their production by means of lips, tongue, palate, and vocal chords, their acoustic qualities, their combination into syllables and other sound groups, and finally quantity, stress and intonation. Phonetics thus may be called that part of linguistic science which deals with the outward aspect of language as opposed to the inner or psychological side of language, or it may be lookt upon as that part of physics and of physiology which deals specially with sounds as used by human beings to communicate thoughts and feelings to one another. ”

“ I therefore pass on to another field where advantages are likely to accrue from a more extended knowledge of phonetics. The question of spelling reform is a burning one in all civilized countries. Not only in English, but also in French, in German, in Danish, in Swedish, in Russian, and to a much lesser degree in Italian and Spanish, do we find numerous instances of words spelt otherwise than pronounced, of mute and superfluous or ambiguous letters. ”

“ Each new generation keeps up faithfully nearly all the absurdities of the preceding one, and as each new generation is bound to change the pronunciation of some sound and of some words, the gulf between the spoken and the written word is constantly widening, and the difficulty of learning how to spell is ever growing greater and greater. ”

“ Practical usefulness thus often comes in at the back door, tho it should not be our primary object in scientific pursuits. But on the other hand, if it is possible to point out some practical advantages, this can do no harm, and may even be valuable in inducing people to take up some line of study which has not hitherto been thought necessary to average students. And this applies with especial force to phonetics, which, besides presenting great interest to the inquisitive spirit, offers also no inconsiderable practical advantage to the student. ”

“ But what is the use of this science of speech sounds? Before attempting to answer this question I must be permitted to say that such a question in itself is not a scientific question. The true man of science pursues his inquiries without asking at every point about the use of examining this or that. A zoologist will not be deterred from examining the habits of ants or the muscular structure of their hindlegs by the cry of the man in the street that it is no use knowing all these things ”

“ The truly scientific mind does not ask about profit or use, but tries by every accessible means to add to human knowledge and to our intelligent understanding of the wonderful world that surrounds us. ”

“ Some little knowledge of the nature of heat and the construction of a thermometer is presupposed in every man and woman of any but the lowest standard of education, but in spite of the fact that many, perhaps most, lessons in all schools are really language lessons, very little has been done hitherto to make school children understand the mechanism of speech, tho we possess really in our vocal organs an apparatus much more wonderful and much more interesting than the most ingenious steam engine ever devised. ”

“ If the pupil is still unable to pronounce [y] because he involuntarily shifts his tongue-position back again to the familiar [u] -position, the teacher passes on to the second part of the experiment, which is surer, and might therefore have been taken first: place your lips in this pouted [u] -position, without producing any sound, look in the mirror, and be very careful that the position of the lips remains unchanged, and then try to say [i···] . If the tongue is placed in the correct position for [i·] as in tea, the result can not be anything else but a [y·] . ”

“ Still, the question about utility is not quite futile; only it should not be urged in the first place, and it should never stand in the way of scientific research, however useless it may seem in the eyes of the uninitiated. Science is useful; but often it is so in a roundabout or indirect way. When my countryman Oersted discovered that an electric current influenced the movements of a magnetic needle, he made a great step forward in science. ”

“ The pupil tries to imitate that pronunciation, but fails, and thus we have an endless repetition of the same word by the teacher, followed very often on the part of the pupil by an equally endless repetition of nearly the same bad pronunciation as before, tempered as often as not by mistakes in the opposite direction, the pupil shooting over the mark where before he had shot below the mark. ”

“ I am, however, inclined to think that the radical spelling reform I am hoping for, will be brought about not so much thru a diffusion of phonetic science proper as by one of its accessories, namely phonetic symbolization. Any science needs some more or less conventional symbols; the mathematician has his +, and -, and √, the chemist has his letters and formulas, etc., and similarly the phonetician must have his signs and symbols to denote sounds and their relations. ”

“ Then he is able to strike at the root of the evil, chiefly thru an isolation of both sounds concerned: he pronounces them long and distinct by themselves, without any sounds before or after which are apt to bewilder the ear by diverting the attention from the sounds themselves, and then he shows how the difference of impression which it is now easy to appreciate, is produced by shifting the tongue a little forward or a little backward, or by voicing the sound, or whatever the mistake in question may be. ”

“ In the same manner purely scientific investigations may unexpectedly lead to some great practical result: the observation of the habits of mosquitoes leads to the diminution of malaria and other diseases, and research work in chemistry may eventually benefit mankind in some way not at all anticipated by the original initiator. ”

“ It is the last system only which can serve as a basis for the spelling reform of the future, and it will probably do so thru being used for a totally different purpose, namely that of teaching small children to read their own mother tongue. ”