PHONETICS 



Ililli 



PHOSPHATES 



1. ami on the IVnnsylvunia and tho Phila- 

 delphia & Reading railroads. Tin' population, 

 which in 1910 wat 10,743, wtat 1 1.711 d-vderal 

 .Miniate) in 1916. Phoenixville has large iron 

 and steel mills, and manufactories of boilers, 

 hosiery, underwear, silk and structural steel for 

 bridges. Prominent feature-; of the borough are 

 Reeves and Reservoir parks, a Carnegie Library 

 and Moo.-e Home. Phoenixville was settled in 



:id incorporated in 1849. v.\ 



PHONETICS, fumt'ik*. the science of tin- 

 sounds of speech and their representation by 

 alphabetic character.-. It concerns itself at tin- 

 outset with the vocal organs and their relation-; 

 to each other, whereby articulate speech i- 

 produced; with the resonance cavities of larynx. 

 pharynx, nasal passages and mouth and the ef- 

 fect produced by them on the air expelled from 

 the lungs. Many sounds which to the casual 

 observer seem identical are shown by such close 

 >tudy to differ in their method of production 

 and hence in their actual phonetic value. 



Phonetics have a practical value in the learn- 

 ing of a new language; for the surest way of 

 acquiring the correct pronunciation of sounds in 

 a foreign language which differ from those in 

 the native tongue is to ascertain and exactly 

 reproduce the relative positions of the vocal 

 organs. Without the knowledge of phonetics, 

 too, people born deaf and dumb could never 

 be taught articulate speech. 



The Phonetic Ideal. A detailed technical 

 discussion of the speech sounds of the English 

 language with their phonetic values is beyond 

 the scope of this article, but there are certain 

 general facts which are worth the attention of 

 anyone interested in the study of languages. 

 The phonetic ideal is an alphabet which has a 

 .-ymbol for every sound used in the language, 

 and no unnecessary symbols. Perhaps there 

 h:is never been an alphabet which fulfilled these 

 conditions; surely there is none to-day. Some 

 languages are, however, far more nearly pho- 

 netic than others; thus the Spanish has very 

 few exceptions to its sound system, and the 

 German is a close second. In German, almost 

 every letter of the alphabet has but one sound, 

 and there are few silent letters in words, practi- 

 cally all exceptions being covered by a few 

 definite rules. 



Phonetic Weakness of English. With Eng- 

 lish, however, the case is quite different. With 

 the possible exception of French, no other lan- 

 guage equals it, in irregularities and arbitrary 

 distinctions. English speech calls for certain 

 sounds which the Latin people did not use. and 



for these the Latin alphabet, adopted almost 

 without a change, afforded no -ymbols. In 

 many instances, too, pronunciations have 

 chained, and words which were formerly pho- 

 netic are now distinctly not 96. How far the 

 English alphabet fails of being a perfect pho- 

 netic medium may be seen by an examination 

 of letters A, E, I, O, U, C, G, J and N and their 

 sounds. Each of the vowels is forced to do 

 duty for several sounds, the lir.-i for no fewer 

 than eight ; and occasionally these sounds over- 

 lap, or duplicate the pronunciation of certain 

 diphthongs; r is an unnecessary letter, except 

 in such combination.- as <-h, for one of its values 

 i> equally well represented by k; the oilier by x. 

 These facts taken in conjunction with the very 

 frequent silent letters, show why English is so 

 difficult a language for a foreigner to master. 

 Few of the European languages are so difficult. 

 Why Reform Is Slow. A number of attempts 

 have been made to reduce English to a really 

 phonetic basis. Phonetic alphabets, wherein 

 each sign represents, wherever it is found, one 

 definite sound value, have been suggested by 

 various scholars, the English alphabet being 

 taken as a base, with such additions and sub- 

 tractions as were absolutely necessary. Some 

 of these schemes have found ardent defenders. 

 but it seems impossible that any of them 

 should ever receive full support. And, strangely, 

 the chief argument against them is the very 

 need for them : if phonetic divergences were less 

 common, they might be corrected and yet leave 

 the language practically as it stands; but a 

 wholesale sweeping away of all the irregulari- 

 ties would render all previously written books 

 almost as difficult for the uninitiated reader as 

 if they were in a foreign language. A.MCC. 



Consult Bell's Hound* ami 'I'lu'ir l!cl<tl JOHN ; 

 Sweet's The HonndN <>f /-.'ni/liuli: .Jones's 'I'lir I'ro- 

 nnnclation of /V/M///.V/I. 



ItelnttMl StibjvftM. Tho reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes: 

 Deaf and Dumb, sub- English Language 



head. The Education Voice 



of Deaf-Mutes. 



PHONOGRAPH, jo'nograj, the technical 

 name for the popular talking machine (which 

 see). 



PHOSPHATES, fox' fates, compounds of 

 phosphoric acid and some other substance. 

 They are abundant in nature, occurring in phos- 

 phate rocks in combination with lime and mag- 

 nesia ; in the remains of animals (bone ash) 

 and of plants (vegetable mold). Phosphates 

 are necessary to the growth of plants and ani- 



