English visible speech for the million : for communicating the exact pronunciation of the language to native or foreign learners, and for teaching children and illiterate adults to read in a few days.

  • Alexander Melville Bell
Date:
[1868]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English visible speech for the million : for communicating the exact pronunciation of the language to native or foreign learners, and for teaching children and illiterate adults to read in a few days. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    an intermediate quality—without the fricativeness of consonants, or the sonorous purity of vowels. Glides are, like consonants, merely transitional sounds ; and they differ from vowels in that respect only. Vowels have a ' fixed configura- tion ' throughout their duration, and to this these elements owe their effect in forming syllables. Glides unite with vowels to form DIPHTHONGS or monosyllabic double sounds. 12. Glides are represented by the 'Voice-line,' with an organic curve subordinately added. Thus : ' Voice' Glide, ... I (a non-syllabic sound of X) as in weary, fiery, &c. ' Front' Glide, . . . fi (a vowelized O) as in die, day, boy, &c. ' Point' Glide, ... V (a vowelized Q) as in ear, air, ore, &c. ' Lip Round' Glide,! (a vowelized 3) as in cow, house, know, &c. EXPLANATION OF MODIFIERS. 13. The sign of PROLONGATION is j. This symbol is used to distinguish the 'quantities' of identical vowels, as in w«tch (J) and w«ll (J J) ; meal (If) and rm'lle [French] ([). 14. The same sign is employed also to denote a momentary 'holding' of consonants, as in app/e, mutto«, &c, where L and N, without vowels, have the effect of syllables. The L in 'battle-axe' (GDI) is thus distinguished from that in ' atlas' (00) ; and the N in ' lightening' (03 | when a trisyllable), from that in ' lightning' (Q3). 15. The sign ' denotes the accented syllable of a word. The same sign, inverted, denotes the accented word in a ,sentence—the ' emphatic ' word. The * accent' is placed before the syllable or word to which it refers. 16. To save the necessity of inserting the ' accent' in every word, the RULE has been adopted in Visible Speech printing, that:—The accent is always on the first syllable, unless otherwise expressed. The preceding explanations are intended to qualify the Reader to teach the system, or to facilitate his own acquisition of the new science of ' Visible Speech.' For the use of pupils, all theoretical matter may be dispensed with ; and a ' CLASS-PRIMER,' consisting of a separate impression of the DIAGRAMS, the Alphabetic Table, and the Reading Exercises in this Work, has been prepared, which may be obtained of the Publishers, or, by order, of any Bookseller.* The Scriptures and other books should, of course, be printed in the New Alphabet, for the benefit of those who master the initiatory lessons. The assistance of Governments should be extended to such a work; but means will doubtless be provided from some source for the creation of a Visible Speech Literature, when Readers are prepared to profit by it. Let a small band of Educational Volunteers devote their services to the promulgation of this system, and an illiterate adult may, in a short time, be a rare phenomenon in any civilized country. It is only necessary to add, that the Speech-Letters in this Work are * ' Class-Primer of English Visible Speech,' price Sixpence.