PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES, UNIVERSITY OF Rochester, SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. ROCHESTER, N. Y. SCRANTOM, WETMORE & CO., 1894. NOTE. It is not the aim of this little book to present a scientific exhibit of French sounds; but rather, without the technicalities of phonetics, to give plainly and simply all the necessary directions for pronouncing French. Each rule is followed by abundant examples for practice; a concise tabular view of the vocal elements with their English equivalents is for the first time presented, and the very important matters of accent and the linking of words are fully explained and illustrated. It is believed that, if the directions here given are faithfully followed, the student will not fail to obtain a correct and elegant pronunciation of the language. To this treatise on pronunciation, there is added a small collection of gems from the literature, both in prose and poetry, thus furnishing material for reading aloud and for memorizing, both of which should be carried on continuously throughout the entire course. FRENCH PRONUNCIATION. FRENC INTRODUCTION. RENCH Pronunciation is so very unlike our own, that it requires special attention and care from the beginning. It is probably safe to say that no word, no syllable, even though it have the same combination of letters, is pronounced in French exactly as in English. The difficulty surely lies not more in the new sounds, formidable as they may at first seem, than in acquiring the ability to give, in the French way, the sounds which are common to our mother tongue as well. Unquestionably, the most striking peculiarity of the spoken French is the lightness and evenness of the sounds, together with the nearly uniform stress upon all. The so-called French accent is practically but the laying aside of our strong Teutonic accent, and giving, with light tripping movement and about the same stress, all the syllables to be pronounced. This will be best shown by pronouncing in this manner in French a few words which are essentially the same in both languages. Give a as in mat; é as a in mate; i as in machine; g as s in pleasure; and pronounce all the syllables with exactly the same accent or stress: animal, admirable, édifice, liberté, général, astronomie, administrative, possibilité. Thus by a very simple and easy process, our common words are transformed into French, but how great the change! As in the study of all modern tongues, we find here certain sounds which are characteristic of the language. These are to be kept continually in mind. They are, besides the new sounds represented by u, eu, and the nasal combinations, especially the flat sound of a, the short or open o, peculiar also to the German and Italian, and the grave or circumflex e, so prominent in French, but which does not exist in English as a long sound at all. To these we must add a single consonant, the letter r, which has nearly ceased to be an audible factor in our language, but which can never be omitted in French, or in any other of the modern languages. It will thus be seen that, in order to acquire the French pronunciation correctly, two things are of especial importance, namely: first, a careful and constant study of the sounds of the letters, both |