The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-05-20
STUDYING BY pHoNoGRApH.


A phonograph' is but a phonograph
after all Nevertheless, perhaps not a
man lives who, hearing one of these
wonderful little machines speak wheel
lily in a tongue not his own, but Won
ders little that the wheels are not
strained in the effort. 1t does not make
a particle of difference that the very
name of the machine is significant of
the thing that reports. The phono-
graph, in effect. is nothing but an echo
frozen by mechanism. The man who
hears a photograph speak in a foreign
tongue has much the sensation of a
man who. calling for a number in his
telephone, catches an induction CONVEX
sation carried on over the wire by a
couple Of Chinese in their native
tongue. The wire carries the sound,
whatever it may be, but the listener
does not recognize the naturalness of it.
The existence of this condition makes
it strike a man the. more strangely
when he hears of a school that teaches
languages by the use of the phono-
graph. Probably, there could be moth
ing more simple. The idea is sound, for
IL the photograph does not get the true
Partisan twist. to the French lesson,
say, it must be because the teacher
has not got it. Certainly the phono-
graph talks through its nose-or would,
If it had nose. 1t wheezes, at all
events. But it must repeat all the
twists and turns and accents. after its
own fashion. that are spoken into it.
Whether man who learns a language
by talking back at a box could make
use of his knowledge practically, is an
other thing 1t is easier to talk back,
to a box and the difficulty with learn
ing most languages. lies in the fact that
people never speak after the book.
When Mark Twain said that the
Frenchmen were good spoilers, but
that they could not pronounce worth a
hang he was giving utterance in jest
to a great truth. The Hawaiian is said
20 be a musical tongue. and it should
be from the preponderance of vowel
sounds in it, but it does not sound
musical when a native gets to throwing
II at the rate of about thousand words
a minute. 1t sounds. to a haole, like
a man trying to break his voice over
rnacadamized road that has been ex-
posed TO the rains of quarter of a
century.
Nevertheless, the scheme for learning
language by the photograph is prob
ably a good one. At all events. it is
better than learning a language from
. book. wherein the spelling never does
correspond to the pronunciation, and
wherein there is used system OF dia- z
critical marks that would be a liberal
education in themselves-if any one
man under the sun could possibly learn
them all. The photograph experiment
IS a new scheme anyway. and its work 2
ings VIII be watched with great deal
Of interest. So long as there is babel
OF tongues in the world. the man who !
knows the most OF them has a distinct
advantage, and any plan that enables
him to learn more. or that makes the
be encouraged. After awhile, when
English becomes the universal Ian
guage and the world is no longer a
Babel. the learning OF tongues viii be !
a thing OF the past. Of course-and
maybe, then, people who only uSS
words now viii learn to speak the gem
eral tongue Men viii say what they
mean, instead OF only thinking they
have said it.