A trained ear is absolutely necessary
to reading poetry well, and the constant reading aloud of poetry cannot
but afford an admirable exercise.
For children, the use of diacritical marks has little or no value, until
the necessity arises for consulting the dictionary for pronunciation.
They are but a mechanical system, and the system we commonly use is so
devoid of permanence in its character that every dictionary has a different
system. The one most common in the schools is that introduced by Webster;
but if we would consult the Standard or the Century or the Oxford, we must
learn our system all over again. To the child, any system is a clog and a
hindrance, and quite useless in teaching him phonetic values, wherein the
voice of the teacher is the true medium.
For older students, however, especially students at home, where no teacher
is available, phonetic writing by means of diacritical marks has great
value.* It is the only practicable way of representing the sounds of the
voice on paper. When the student writes phonetically he is obliged to
observe closely his own voice and the voices of others in ordinary speech,
and so his ear is trained.
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