The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein online

XIV DISTINCTNESS AND PRECISION OF UTTERANCE

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Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless lips that speak of so'ap for soap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode
The clownish voice that utters ro'ad for road
Less stern to him who calls his coat a co'at,
And steers his boat, believing it a bo'at,
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast,
Who said at Cambridge mo'st instead of most,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a root a ro'ot.

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.

_Enunciation_

Correct enunciation is the complete utterance of all the sounds of a syllable or a word. Wrong articulation gives the wrong sound to the vowel or vowels of a word or a syllable, as _doo_ for _dew_; or unites two sounds improperly, as _hully_ for _wholly_. Wrong enunciation is the _incomplete_ utterance of a syllable or a word, the sound omitted or added being usually consonantal. To say _needcessity_ instead of _necessity_ is a wrong articulation; to say _doin_ for _doing_ is improper enunciation. The one articulates--that is, joints--two sounds that should not be joined, and thus gives the word a positively wrong sound; the other fails to touch all the sounds in the word, and _in that particular way_ also sounds the word incorrectly.

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