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_Articulation_
Articulation is the forming and joining of the elementary sounds of speech. It seems an appalling task to utter articulately the third-of-a million words that go to make up our English vocabulary, but the way to make a beginning is really simple: _learn to utter correctly, and with easy change from one to the other, each of the forty-four elementary sounds in our language_.
The reasons why articulation is so painfully slurred by a great many public speakers are four: ignorance of the elemental sounds; failure to discriminate between sounds nearly alike; a slovenly, lazy use of the vocal organs; and a torpid will. Anyone who is still master of himself will know how to handle each of these defects.
The vowel sounds are the most vexing source of errors, especially where diphthongs are found. Who has not heard such errors as are hit off in this inimitable verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of s[)o]ap for s[=o]ap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters r[)o]ad for r[=o]ad; Less stern to him who calls his c[=o]at, a c[)o]at And steers his b[=o]at believing it a b[)o]at. She pardoned one, our classic city's boast. Who said at Cambridge, m[)o]st instead of m[=o]st, But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot To hear a Teacher call a r[=oo]t a r[)oo]t.
The foregoing examples are all monosyllables, but bad articulation is frequently the result of joining sounds that do not belong together. For example, no one finds it difficult to say _beauty_, but many persist in pronouncing _duty_ as though it were spelled either _dooty_ or _juty_. It is not only from untaught speakers that we hear such slovenly articulations as _colyum_ for _column_, and _pritty_ for _pretty_, but even great orators occasionally offend quite as unblushingly as less noted mortals.
Nearly all such are errors of carelessness, not of pure ignorance--of carelessness because the ear never tries to hear what the lips articulate. It must be exasperating to a foreigner to find that the elemental sound _ou_ gives him no hint for the pronunciation of _bough_, _cough_, _rough_, _thorough_, and _through_, and we can well forgive even a man of culture who occasionally loses his way amidst the intricacies of English articulation, but there can be no excuse for the slovenly utterance of the simple vowel sounds which form at once the life and the beauty of our language. He who is too lazy to speak distinctly should hold his tongue.
The consonant sounds occasion serious trouble only for those who do not look with care at the spelling of words about to be pronounced. Nothing but carelessness can account for saying _Jacop_, _Babtist_, _sevem_, _alwus_, or _sadisfy_.
"He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw," is the rendering which an Anglophobiac clergyman gave of the familiar scripture, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." After hearing the name of Sir Humphry Davy pronounced, a Frenchman who wished to write to the eminent Englishman thus addressed the letter: "Serum Fridavi."
_Accentuation_
Accentuation is the stressing of the proper syllables in words. This it is that is popularly called _pronunciation_. For instance, we properly say that a word is mispronounced when it is accented _in'-vite_instead of _in-vite'_, though it is really an offense against only one form of pronunciation--accentuation.
It is the work of a lifetime to learn the accents of a large vocabulary and to keep pace with changing usage; but an alert ear, the study of word-origins, and the dictionary habit, will prove to be mighty helpers in a task that can never be finally completed.
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