THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH REDUCED TO RULES BY MEANS OF A SYSTEM OF MARKS APPLIED TO THE ORDINARY SPELLING BY W. A. CRAIGIE M.A., LL.D. RAWLINSON AND BOSWORTH PROFESSOR OF ANGLO-SAXON IN THE UNIVER- OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1917 INTRODUCTION THE difficulty of inferring the pronunciation of English words from their written form is mainly due to the frequency with which the same symbols are used to represent different sounds, and to the uncertain position of the stress in words of two or more syllables. To become familiar with the pronunciation of the language as a whole the foreign student must either receive prolonged instruction from a teacher, or must make extensive use of phonetic transcriptions and pronouncing dictionaries. With either or both of these methods the correct reading of English in the ordinary spelling must from the outset be largely a matter of memory. It is possible, however, by the use of a comparatively small number of diacritics to remove the greater number of the uncertainties, and to make the usual spelling of the words sufficiently phonetic for practical purposes. With the addition of these marks, the current spelling of English becomes a real guide to the pronunciation, as soon as a few general rules have been grasped. The application of such a system to English corresponds very closely to the method followed in languages which are written with the Arabic alphabet. In these languages the beginner learns from books in which the whole apparatus of vowel-signs and other auxiliary marks is employed. As he makes progress in his knowledge of the language, these marks become less and less essential to him, until at last he is able, like the native reader, to dispense with them altogether. Similarly the foreign student of English would at first practise his reading on texts provided with all the marks which serve as a guide to the correct pronunciation. In course of time many of these would become unnecessary, and in the end he would be able to interpret the ordinary spelling without these extraneous aids. |