VISIBLE SPEECH, a system of alphabetic characters, each of which represents the configuration of the mouth which produces the sound. The system is the invention of Mr. Melville Bell—the well-known elocutionist, formerly professor of elocution in Uni versity college, London—and was published 111..1867, under the title of Visible Speech Mr. Bell has since published a short shilling work—English Visible Speech for the Million (Trabner), which is quite enough to give a general idea of the system.
Mr. Bell, believing his system to be practically, as well as theoretically, perfect, • was anxious to bring it into general use at once, and accordingly made a very generous offer to relinquish all his rights if the expense of casting the new types and publishing the theory of visible speech were defrayed by the government. The proposal was rejected, and Mr. Bell was compelled to publish his system as an ordinary copyright.
Now that the system has been thoroughly tested by the very few who are competent to do so, we are able to give a definite and impartial opinion on its merits, and to say that the absolute perfection that Mr. Bell artributed to it does not exist—that the analysis of sound-formation on which it is based is, in some instances, imperfect or erroneous, and that the symbols might, in many cases, be improved, even where there is no fundamental error of analysis to correct. The chief defects in Mr. Bell's analysis of speech-sounds are: (1) his ignorance of the latest results of German investigations of the mechanism of the throat sounds (whisper, the Arabic gutturals, etc.); (2) his imperfect knowledge of the synthesis of sounds, syllabification, word-division, etc.; (3) errors bf detail, espe cially in the consonants, such as his including/under the same I (" divided " consonants), and his analysis of th. Other points are still doubtful, and it is certain that, as our knowledge advances, many other difficulties will appear. But it is none the less true that our very knowledge of these defects is due to the vantage-ground on which visible speech has itself placed us. It was an immense advance upon any phonological analysis previously attempted, and opened up once for all the way to arrive at definite results. It was, in short, a new instrument placed in the hand of the student of pho netics. and it must, it is clear, for many years to come, continue to he a purely scien tific instrument. When finally perfected there can be no doubt that it will come into general use, and finally supersede the present system.
Apart from the question 'of absolute perfection, we cannot refuse Mr. Bell's analysis our profound admiration as a great work of genius. Unaided by the resources of the German physiologists, lie has completely beaten them on their own ground: where they, with all the resources of the laboratory at their command, have painfully collected a few isolated observations, he has erected a splendid edifice. And it is precisely where they utterly break down—namely, in the analysis of the vowels—that his genius shines most brightly. By his discoveries of the distinction of " narrow " and "primary," of the " mixed " vowels, intermediate between the guttural and palatal ones, and of the com pound character of the labial vowels, Mr. Bell has been able to select from the enonnoes number of shades of vowel-sound (for every movement of the tongue produces a new sound), certain definite formations, thirty-six in number, all definitely correlated, which include, with the various intermediate formations, nil possible simple vowel sounds.
The system of notation is not less a work of genius than the physiological analysis on which it is based. All the letters are formed by the combination of about thirty radical symbols, most of which are, to a certain extent, pictorial of the action of the organs which produce the sound. Thus a simple circle 0 represents breath issuing from the open throat (aspiration); while the narrowing of the glottis which produces vocal mur mur is symbolized by I, from which, by modifiers to indicate guttural, palatal, " pri mory," "wide," etc., all the vowel symbols are formed. Contraction in the mouth is indicated by a C, and the part of the mouth in which the contraction takes place is _shown by the direction in which the symbol is turned— thus, C denotes contraction in the back of the mouth (Scotch and German a in loch), 0 denotes lip-contraction. Com plete stoppage is indicated by drawing a line across the opening, giving a symbol resem bling D, which turned this way would represent the sound of p, while a would repre sent The symbols for vocality, nasality, etc., are similarly incorporated into the con sonant symbols. This will be enough to show the two chief features of the system: (1) its simplicity and perfect consistency; and (2) the correlation of the symbols. Thus, when the student has learned to recognize the symbol for in as differing from b only in the addition of the sign for emission through the nose, he is at once able to recognize and form for himself the symbols of ng and it, if he is already acquainted with Those of g and d. Such a system is evidently of the highest value in all philological investigations which involve the study of sound-changes in different languages. It has been found That many phenomena of language, such as " umlaut," which, when formulated in the ordinary Roman type, require a long technical exposition to be made intelligible, ex plain themselves at once without further comment when transliterated into the visible speech symbols. It is from the use of visible speech by scientific philologists that we hope most, both for the progress of phonetics and general philology, and also for the improvement and ultimate practical application of visible speech itself. A striking example is afforded by Dr. J. A. H. Murray's admirable work on the Southern Dialects of Scotland, in which the phonetic portion owes its clearness and exactness mainly to the use of visible speech. It has also been employed by Mr. H. Sweet in his history of English Sounds. Mr. A. J. Ellis, lastly, the father of scientific phonology in England, although employing a system of his own, refers constantly to visible speech, to establish the absolute value of his symbols.
The practical applications of the systems to the acquirement of the pronunciation of foreign languages, to telegraphy, to the instruction of the deaf and dumb (for which it is already largely employed in America), and to general elocutionary purposes, are self-evident. It is clear that visible speech has a brilliant future before it, and it is the duty of all interested in the advancement of science and education to do all they can to dis seminate a knowledge of it among all classes.
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