It is with extreme diffidence that I offer to read a paper before this Association. My own teaching is done under conditions of such disadvantage—with students so poorly prepared, and with results so unsatisfactory—that I cannot but feel how presumptuous it would be in me to attempt here to teach those who themselves teach under so much happier conditions and to so much better purpose than I can do. My sole apology might be an experience which, covering now three decades of language teaching, has passed through many phases both of our professional activity at large and of my own individual work. But these phases, for myself personally, have been rather renewals of effort and of disappointment than landmarks of progress or of triumph; and this experience, if I could recount it, might serve rather as a warning than as an example. So that it is as a seeker rather than as a giver that I come, to share my counsel with my more favored brethren; in order that by the confession of my own shortcomings, and especially by the criticism and discussion which this paper may elicit, I may be helped —and so perchance may help others—to find “the better way.”

The science of phonetics is still so new that it may seem premature to suggest the possibility of a partially deductive method of exposition, but if it is to be used in teaching beginners in a language how to pronounce, how much easier the task would be if we could begin by stating certain general characteristics which color the whole phonetic field of that language so that the peculiarities of every sound in it, and the rules of phonetic change might be largely explained by and remembered through them. That this will some day be done, I firmly believe, and I wish here to suggest how one such characteristic of French may be used in this way.

Das mouillierte l ist wohl oft in Einleitungen zu altfranzosischen Texten besprochen worden, ist aber nie zum Gegenstand einer Einzeluntersuchung gemacht worden. Als leitendes Princip bei der Untersuchung dienten mir die zwei von W. Förster, Ausg. von ‘Cliges,’ p. lxix, gegebenen Regeln. 1. “Die Schicksale des l können je nach der Natur des vorausgehenden Vokals in ihrer Entwickelung überhaupt verschieden sein, und obendrein brauchen sie zeitlich nicht zusammenzufallen; 2. a priori ist anzunehmen, dass die, einzelnen franzosischen Dialekte dieselbe Lautgruppe verschieden behandelt haben.”

It is well known that two kinds of ne are present in Chaucer, which are written alike in the manuscripts. These two particles, however, must not be confounded. One of them is ne (neque) and the other is ne (non). Compare Old French ne and né (=ni).

In an paper addressed to linguists and phoneticians it were superfluous to dwell upon the importance of phonetics. All scholars interested in philological research or in modern language instruction must be aware that the teaching of living tongues is greatly improved by a knowledge of phonetics, and that without this science the satisfactory pursuit of comparative philology is impossible. Whatever be the system we adopt in the French and German courses of our colleges and schools, we must admit that pronunciation is an essential element; and the intelligent teaching of pronunciation demands an acquaintance with the physical action by which the sounds of human speech are created and modified. The American teacher, if he have exceptional advantages and an unusually delicate ear, may perhaps be able by mere imitation to acquire a correct foreign accent himself, but neither he nor the foreigner can ever, without a knowledge of phonetics, tell his pupils how to reproduce it. As for the science which we commonly call philology, it consists mainly of the study of sound changes; and the only solid foundation for such study is, obviously, a thorough mastery of the principles of sound-production.

The didactic poetry of the Middle Ages, devoid as it largely is of romantic charm and artistic beauty, presents, nevertheless, a phenomenon of no little interest to the historical student. The growth of this species of literature is simultaneous with the decay of chivalric poetry, and it is one of the first manifestations of that commercial spirit which, together with the failure of the Crusades and the break down of the Hohenstaufén dynasty, marks the thirteenth century as one of the great turning epochs in European history. Three features of the didactic poetry are especially significant in this respect. First, what may be called the democratic attitude of the didactic writers. As a rule,1 they detest war, they abhor the unproductive life and the shallow amusements of the nobility, they extol the honesty and industry of the peaceful citizen; and if few of them go so far as to say with Hugo von Trimberg, that true love of mankind could be found only with the lower classes, since they alone were capable of self sacrifice, yet it is an adequate expression of the prevailing sentiment of his fellow writers when the sturdy Ulric Boner says that a poor freeman is richer than a rich man in dependence.

Prof. Edward A. Freeman—writing or speaking to a friend in regard to a young American who was going to the University of Jena in order to study Anglo-Saxon—remarked: “Why does he not go to Orange County, Va., instead of to Jena? They speak very good West-Saxon in Orange County.” This statement may serve as an introduction to my remarks on the pronunciation of Fredericksburg, Va. For Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Orange Counties have about the same pronunciation and have preserved to a remarkable degree the older English sounds brought over in the seventeenth century by the early settlers of this region.