Excerpt from A Short French Grammar Pronunciation. It seems to me that the time has come for a more scientific description of pronunciation in popular text-books. I have attempted to furnish this without the use of any unfamiliar terms and with almost no mention of the positions of the unseen vocal organs. I have, in fact, in characterizing the individual French sounds, relied almost entirely on English key-words, but these words have been selected with such care that the correspondences are sufficiently accurate. Of course my descriptions are offered as a supplement to oral instruction by the teacher, not as a substitute for it. Through out the Grammar the pronunciation of French words and inflected forms has been clearly and consistently indicated. My phonetic notation is exceedingly simple: an intelligent person who knows French can read the transcription without any explanation; while beginners will, I think, find it a great help in studying French speech. To any phoneticians who may think I ought to have given less importance to the written forms, I would say that I agree entirely with the opinion expressed by H. Morf, Phonetzlrclze Stadt'en, VI., 1, pp. 112 - 113, on the comparative value of pronunciation and spelling to the student of a foreign language; for Americans, indeed, isolated as they are, he might have put the case still more strongly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.