Phoneme

“ Compare ESTEEM.
Prepositions:
It is vain to calculate on or upon an uncertain result.
[91]
CALL, v. Synonyms:
To call is to send out the voice in order to attract another's attention, either by word or by inarticulate utterance. Animals call their mates, or their young; a man calls his dog, his horse, etc. The sense is extended to include summons by bell, or any signal. To shout is to call or exclaim with the fullest volume of sustained voice; to scream is to utter a shriller cry; to shriek or to yell refers to that which is louder and wilder still. We shout words ”

“ 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 voice, whether in speaking or singing, has a weird curious sound in the telephone. It is in a measure ventriloqual in character; and with the telephone held an inch or two from the ear, it has the effect as if some one were singing far off in the building, or the sound were coming up from a vaulted cellar or through a massive stone wall.
'Proceeding to our next experiment, we joined up the telephones in one office to several wires in succession, putting ourselves in circuit with lines going to various distances and working with different instruments. ”

“ Speech is the most perfect utterance of man; but its powers are limited both in time and space. The sounds of the voice are fleeting, and do not carry far; hence the invention of letters to record them, and of signals to extend their range. These twin lines of invention, continued through the ages, have in our own day reached their consummation. The smoke of the savage, the semaphore, and the telegraph have ended in the telephone, by which the actual voice can speak to a distance ”

“ To persons intending to make this use of the telephone a word of counsel may not be impertinent. As no human being, however well-eared, ever understood the telephone until it had repeated itself a number of times in response to his demands for more light, and as the moribund are not commonly in very good voice, it will be wise to begin the “last words” while there is yet a little reserve fund of life and strength remaining, for repetition and explanation. ”

“ As we were saying of the telephone, when we speak those only a few feet away hear nothing. The words die upon the air, and we explain to ourselves that they are no more. But thirty miles away, up on the side of the Sierras, an ear is listening, and every tone and syllable is distinct to that ear. ”

“ That the ways of telephones and the persons who operate them are sometimes trying, no one can deny,—least of all, the writer of this chapter, who lives in a house with one of these maddening essentials to human comfort. But the loss of temper that manifests itself in the outward speech is not a requisite of the proper appreciation and use of the telephone. It is nothing less than a habit, and a pernicious one,—this way we have of talking into the transmitter. Let us remember that courtesy pays better than curses, and politeness better than profanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The phonetists claim, with truth, that any given articulated sound may, in the history of speech, pass over into any other; the same may with equal truth be claimed of the ideas signified by words: there can hardly be two so disconnected and unlike that they may not derive themselves historically, through a succession of intermediate steps, from one another or from the same original. The varieties of significant change are as infinite as those of phonetic change ”

“ Suddenly his youngest son, darting into the room, said breathlessly, "Father! come home quickly; there is a telegram." At the word "telegram" the occupants of the reception room were alarmed. The arrival of a telegram is not a daily event in villages, and as a rule telegrams bring ill news—news of misfortune. ”

“ Letter, Syllable, Connecting Word, Noun, Verb, Inflection or Case, Sentence or Phrase.
A Letter is an indivisible sound, yet not every such sound, but only one which can form part of a group of sounds. For even brutes utter indivisible sounds, none of which I call a letter. The sound I mean may be either a vowel, a semivowel, or a mute. A vowel is that which without impact of tongue or lip has an audible sound. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or who else has so impressed upon us the value of the rising inflection, as a gentler habit of speech? This propaganda of politeness has gone so far that to-day the man who is profane or abusive at the telephone, is cut off from the use of it. ”

“ On the other hand, through having a telephone of my own I now escape one of the commonest and most tiresome of life's irritations—which is to wait outside one of these call-offices while the person inside is carrying on a conversation that is not only unnecessary and frivolous, but unending. ”

“ In such cases the spirit is placed in a position similar to that of a person at one end of a telephone line, who after had an answer to his opening "Hello!" talks away, thinking that the person at the other end is hearing every word he utters, perfectly unconscious that the communication has been interrupted from some cause or other common to telephone lines. How often do we, in our telephone conversations, interrupt our flow of talk to anxiously inquire, "Are you still there?" ”

“ By modulation we mean the wavelike rise and fall of the voice that always occurs in some degree in speech,—sometimes called melody—and the change of key, or general pitch, in passing from one sentence, or part of a speech, to another. Frequently, novices in speaking and in reading, will swing the voice upward in the first part of every sentence, give it perhaps another rise or two as the sentence proceeds, and swing it down, always in precisely the same way, at the end. ”

“ I know friends of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so much as answer it back. They tell me that at first they used to swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed. That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks you. You want to see a man two streets off. You might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes. You are on the point of starting when the telephone catches your eye. ”

“ We all remember the newspaper controversy, not long ago, as to whether we ought to call a message sent by telegraph a telegraph or a telegram; and many of us, doubtless, are yet waiting to see how the authorities settle it, that we may govern our own usage accordingly. We have a suffix able, which, like a few others that we possess, we use pretty freely in forming new words. Within no very long time past, some writers and speakers have added it to the verb rely, forming the adjective reliable. ”

“ A sort of moral elevation, the result of their leadership, has come to mark their character. When one is acquainted with the matter in hand, a simple telephone conversation is a model of clear language and logical reasoning. ”

“ There, I grant, is a great difficulty. If only there were no silent letters, and if all letters had always the same sound, we should, indeed, have reading made easy. The phonetic people have something to say for themselves. ”

“ Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. ”

“ If the word "lie" be given immediately after the pronoun with the same intensity of feeling, the voice discretely descends from the high pitch heard at the end of the utterance of the pronoun, and in uttering the next concrete, again ascends through an interval, of less or more extent according to the emphasis which is imparted to it.
Again, in speech of sorrow, murmuring, piteous complaint, and the like, concrete intervals of less extent than those used in ordinary discourse are often heard. ”

“ It must be remembered that a phonetic system can only be an approximation. The differences of pronunciation existing among educated persons are so great, that, on the phonetic system, different persons ought to spell differently.
But the phonetic party have produced something which will immortalize their plan: I mean their shorthand, which has had a fraction of the success it deserves. All who know anything of shorthand must see that nothing but a phonetic system can be worthy of the name: and the system promulgated is skilfully done. ”

“ Science has been busily at work of late years, but it has not yet discovered a means of bringing sound to our ears as this glass which I am holding brings the figures of those men near to my eyes. There is the telephone, but you cannot carry a telephone about with you in a little pocket case. ”

“ Strictly speaking Phonetic Laws have no exceptions: that is to say, a phonetic change affects equally the same sound in all words existing in the language at the time, provided that the sound is under the same conditions in all the words. ”

“ We are in the position of one who, conscious of the justice of his cause, attempts to carry on a discussion over the telephone with “Central.” He only hears an inhuman buzzing sound indicating that the line is busy. ”

“ Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. ”

“ When you talk over the long-distance telephone, the voice seems instantly to reach the party at the other end of the line, yet we know that a period of time has had to elapse to allow the voice waves to move along the telephone wire and reach the other end. ”

“ The borrowing of foreign words always entails their phonetic modification. There are sure to be foreign sounds or accentual peculiarities that do not fit the native phonetic habits. They are then so changed as to do as little violence as possible to these habits. Frequently we have phonetic compromises. Such an English word as the recently introduced camouflage, as now ordinarily pronounced, corresponds to the typical phonetic usage of neither English nor French. ”

“ Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world—a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. ”

“ By this it is also explained, that, in the practical investigations heretofore carried on, chords, melodies, etc., were transmitted with marvellous fidelity; while single words uttered as in reading, speaking, and the like, were perceptible more indistinctly. Nevertheless, here also the inflexions of the voice, the modulations of interrogation, exclamation, wonder, command, &c., attained distinct expression. ”

“ The telephone enables us to speak to distances far beyond the reach of eye or ear, 'to waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole; 'the phonograph enables us to seal the living speech on brazen tablets, and store it up for any length of time; while it is the peculiar function of the microphone to let us hear those minute sounds which are below the range of our unassisted powers of hearing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is the operation of telegraphy. The sounds are read off as clearly as ordinary spoken language, though mistakes are sometimes made. For instance, a party of young school-girls, out for an excursion once, wished to advise their schoolmistress of their safe arrival at a certain point, and sent the message, "Arrived all right"; but the schoolmistress was horror-stricken to read the message as delivered to her, which read "Arrived all tight." ”