Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/492

476 of works of imagination, are lost when the attention is absorbed in the choice of words which will best render the thought of the author. Poetry, especially, cannot be read by the translator. All its beauties and merits disappear in passing into the prose of another language. Besides, the study of poetry is of no use in acquiring the materials of discourse for the exchange of thought with foreigners, or in following the progress of civilization among other people. The student should enter upon such reading only at an advanced period of study, when he can mark the rhythm and the cadence. Milton, for instance, who is on the programmes of the university, is not understood by the majority of the English, and yet our young people, who have not read more than four or five volumes of English prose, are expected to understand it in the translation!

—The premature exercises in pronunciation, made necessary by the priority given to the art of speaking, are contrary to reason in proceeding from letters to sounds; since it is necessary to know the pronunciation in order to establish the value of the signs which represent it. It is this inversion of logical order which has given birth to reading aloud, to all the systems of written pronunciation, to all those dissertations on the letters of the alphabet in the beginning of most grammars.

The real use of reading aloud is to test the progress made in pronunciation; and, when once it is acquired, to keep it in memory by practice. But, at the beginning of study, it is a process doubly irrational: it implies that the sign leads to the thing signified previously unknown; and it presents characters to the eye instead of sounds to the ear, thus moulding the pronunciation upon the orthography, which often represents it only imperfectly; especially in the case of the English language. The attention of the pupil is occupied with the pronunciation of words without regard to their meaning, to which pronunciation is subordinate. This proceeding has become very general only because, demanding no knowledge on the part of the master, it is suited to the capacity of those who wish to teach.

Reason requires that we adapt means to ends, but reading aloud is precisely the reverse of that which occurs in conversation. In reading, we pass from the word to the idea; the orthography suggests the sound. In speaking, on the contrary, we pass from the idea to the word; the sound suggests the orthography. Reading aloud can be only a source of error to a beginner. The corrections required will never form good habits, for these are the result of the repetition of correct impressions, such as are produced by the words of the master when reading to his pupils. To speak and pronounce a foreign language correctly, we must hear it spoken habitually. The alphabetic combinations by which we represent the foreign pronunciation are equally irrational. They can only bring to the mind of the student the sounds of his own language. It is by hearing sounds, and not by