A Test in Phonetics

If Phonetics is a comparatively recent subject for European students of foreign languages and is eyed by them with some sus- picion as an invention that is meant to make their studies difficult, it is even more so with English Phonetics for African students. Have not Africans been learning English for over a century, and with good results in many cases, without giving a thought to its phonetics? Why introduce this new subject and add to the number of books they have to read and the number of examinations they have to pass before they can get their degree? Yet if the study of a foreign language is to be up to date its phonetics cannot be neglected; on the contrary, it is as important as the study of its spelling, if not more so. With the invention of radio and telephone, of gramophone and tape-recorders, the importance of the spoken word has increased immensely and it is far more essential now than it was a hundred years ago that those who learn a foreign language should learn to speak it properly. Thus a new subject has been added to the schedule of language students and teachers: the study and practice of the sounds of the language, and for the teachers also the study of how to teach these sounds. The difficulties, now that English Phonetics and examinations in Pronunciation are being introduced in several parts of West Africa, are of two kinds. There is first of all the general difficulty which African students share with language students all over the world, that Phonetics requires a concentration on speech and on the movements of speech organs which is quite new to them and in a way unnatural. For in speech, the attention of both speaker and hearer is - and should normally be - directed entirely to what is said, not to how it is said; we consider the message, not the move- ments of the organs that produce the message. It is only by making a special effort that we can direct our attention to the latter. We have to be made conscious of things which we normally do un-