ON THE LEARNING OF A MODERN LANGUAGE 117 



The third division of beginning work in French has to do with the 

 pronunciation. This in its way is quite as troublesome as the prose 

 composition. Before the days of methodical, scientific procedure, some 

 would give it up as impossible at the outset and refuse to make an 

 effort; others would pronounce as best they could, badly, without fear, 

 determined at least to indulge in the luxury of uttering a French phrase 

 now and then if they wished. At the present time the study of pro- 

 nunciation has been reduced to a series of definite rules with phonetic 

 symbols, which, barring an occasional exception, can be applied with 

 almost mathematical precision. With the aid of these rules, applied 

 with infinite pains, every French sound can be attained, and almost 

 perfectly. In some cases, to be sure, perfection is only approximately 

 attained, but the short-coming is by no means offensive. It is not true 

 that the pronunciation of French is so far beyond the powers of Ameri- 

 cans that it would be better, as a professor in one of our leading uni- 

 versities is said to have advocated, to abandon all effort toward cor- 

 rectness, and pronounce the words in the most convenient English 

 fashion. 



Reading, writing, and pronouncing French are, therefore, the three 

 elements which may profitably enter into a first-year course in French. 

 The taxpayer, the average man, the student in some other department 

 of the university — now wishes to know, and with reason, why training 

 in speaking the foreign tongue is not provided. He is right in rating 

 the ability to speak French correctly and fluently as no mean achieve- 

 ment, and one worth making an endeavor for. It is not easy to give 

 an entirely satisfactory reason for not emphasizing this part of the study. 

 But a little reflection will convince anyone that conversation must be 

 the outcome of favorable psychological conditions, which are absent 

 from the classroom. Fictitious conversations grafted upon the neces- 

 sarily formal conditions which must obtain in any classroom where the 

 number of students is large, cannot be otherwise than spiritless and 

 dead. In a rather small class, to be sure, the students might perhaps 

 be coaxed to throw off their restraint and to play as they did when 

 they were children, imitating and acting out whatever the conversation 

 might suggest. But this they will not do. The period of play has 



