Linguaphone Conversational Course [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION IT is hardly necessary, nowadays, to recommend the gramophone as a means of learníng languages; it has thoroughly established itself and has become, in the hands of enlightened teachers and students, an instrument capable of incalculable assistance. Experience has proved that every student of languages, whether he be well taught, badly taught, or not -taught at all, can derive benefit from a well constructed gramophone course; for whatever may be said of the living teacher, even though he be good, he falls short of the gramophone in one very important respect. The gramophone can repeat sentences a hundred tiimes without the slightest variation, until the rhythm and intonation of the speaker become firmly planted ín that part of the student's mentái apparatus which controls his linguistic habits. Speech is a performance, an act, an aspect of humán behaviour, and to acquire it, we must perform, act, and behave. To imagine that we can acquire a foreign speech by performing with the hand upon paper is as intelligent as to imagine that a man may become a good performer upon the piano by reading books upon harmony. There is no royal road to the acquisition of a foreign language; there is índeed no single road. Speech is acquired through the Ear and through the Ear alone, for it is through the Ear that the mind looks out, so to speak, upon the world of Sound. Sound is, in fact, nothing more than the feature in the world around us of which we become conscious through the Ear. The Eye plays somé part in the acquisition of Speech, bui its special realm is that aspect of Language which has been designed to approach the mind through the médium of the Eye alone, i.e. the written or printed word. This Linguaphone Course contains the language that educated people ín England use to-day; and every effort has been made to ensure that the language shall be natural. None of the nine speakers has been asked to say anything that he or she would not or could not say in the circumstances; they have all been given an emtirely free hand in emending their lines. We belíeve that as a result, students of English now have for the first time a course that is unique in that it embodíes the actual living idíom spoken by educated English men and women of the early part of the twentieth century. Students of English can now study the details of this twentieth century English—its vowels and diphthongs, its stresses and intonations, its rhythms, and even the odd details of its syntax. Inasmuch as no two speakers of a language speak alike, we shall find differences ín the pronunciation of these nine speakers, but every one of them can be accepted as a safe model for the generál student, while for those who make a special study of Phonetics, the various differences of detail will provide ample scope for study. After many years of experience in 'the University oí London in teaching English pronunciation to foreigners, I advise all students of our language to pay the utmost attention to two features of spoken English that are often imperfectly understood even by those native English people who attempt without special training to teach their language to foreigners. These two features are Rhythm and Intonation, itwo features of pronunciation upon which intelligibility largely rests. The surest way to become unintelligible in a language is to distort its natural rhythm. A. LLOYD JAMES.