Editorial
This is the third article in the series Literature on Language. ( July 2007, February 2007)

Literature on Language 3: Pronunciation

Jonathan Marks

Jonathan Marks is the author of English Pronunciation in Use Elementary (CUP 2007). He contributed a language awareness article on word formation to the second edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary (2007) and has just finished work on a soon-to-be-published Polish-English dictionary. You can find a previous Literature on Language contribution in Humanising Language Teaching January 2007.

Have you ever, in your career as a teacher or learner of any language, suspected that there might be a grain of truth in any of the following ?

The pronunciation you learn at school doesn't get you very far when you have to communicate with the natives. Native speakers pronounce their own language improperly and degenerately. Explanations of what to do with the vocal organs don't necessarily help people to pronounce alien sounds - especially if the explanations involve the use of abstruse metalanguage. Reference to spelling doesn't necessarily help with pronunciation. Too much introspection and 'monitoring' (in Krashen's sense) of pronunciation can be counter-productive. Beyond a certain age, trying to pronounce a foreign language accurately is a hopeless undertaking.

If so, you might find support, as well as amusement, in this passage from Jerome K Jerome's novel Three Men on the Bummel (1900):

[.....] I possess a diploma for modern languages. I won my scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German. The correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when I come abroad hardly anybody understands a word I say. Can you explain it?"
  	
"I think I can," I replied. "Your pronunciation is too faultless. You remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his life he tasted real whisky: 'It may be puir, but I canna drink it'; so it is with your German. It strikes one less as a language than as an exhibition. If I might offer advice, I might say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and throw in as many mistakes as you can think of." 
	
It is the same everywhere. Each country keeps a special pronunciation exclusively for the use of foreigners - a pronunciation they never dream of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used. I once heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word Have. 
	
"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it were spelt H-a-v. It isn't. There is an 'e' at the end. 
	
"But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at the end of h-a-v-e."
	
"No more you do," explained his teacher. It is what we call a mute 'e'; but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel." 
	
Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently. Afterwards, when he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give expression to a sound that only the context could explain. 
	
Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose, have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to attain the correct pronunciation of the German word for church - "Kirche." Long before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in Germany, rather than be bothered with it. 
	
"No, no," my teacher would explain - he was a painstaking gentleman; "you say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e. There is no k. It is -."  And he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that I could never for the life of me detect any difference between the way he said it and the way I said it. So he would try a new method. 
	
"You say it from your throat," he would explain. He was quite right; I did. "I want you to say it from down here," and with a fat forefinger he would indicate the region from which I was to start. After painful efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place of worship, I would excuse myself.
	
"I really fear it is impossible," I would say. "You see, for years I have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man could talk with his stomach. I doubt if it is not too late now for me to learn." 
	
By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets, to the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this word correctly. My teacher was delighted with me, and until I came to Germany I was pleased with myself. In Germany I found that nobody understood what I meant by it. I never got near a church with it. I had to drop the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly go back to my first wrong pronunciation. Then they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the corner, or down the next street, as the case might be. 
	
I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one receives:
	
"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost - but not quite - to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis. Now, without opening your lips, say 'Garoo.'''
	
And when you have done it they are not satisfied.

The Pronunciation course can be viewed here.
The  British Life, Language and Culture course can be viewed here.
The  Fun, Laughter and Learning course can be viewed here.