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This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech.
Yoshida-Torajiro was son to the hereditary military instructor of the house of Choshu. The name you are to pronounce with an equality of accent on the different syllables, almost as in French, the vowels as in Italian, but the consonants in the English manner except the j, which has the French sound, or, as it has been cleverly proposed to write it, the sound of zh.
This is soon imitated, and thus a starting-point is gained. The feeling produced upon the hand is the method of giving him an idea of the powers of the consonants. A later and better system is that called "visible speech."
And when that last line and that last word burst from thousands of German throats, as in the crowded cafés of Berlin, it is the fullest German damn that can find expression in German consonants. I believe the Prussians of Berlin would be as pleased to megaphone that line from Calais to Dover as they would be to throw their first shell across the English Channel.
A few further examples of the multiple expression of identical functions in other languages than English may help to make still more vivid this idea of the relative independence of form and function. In Hebrew, as in other Semitic languages, the verbal idea as such is expressed by three, less often by two or four, characteristic consonants.
The Spanish with its guttural sounds, and frequent termination with consonants, is less soft than the Italian; but its tones are, if possible, more fuller and deeper, and fill the ear with a pure metallic resonance.
Besides these they have the diphthongs ai, nearly equivalent to e, and au, nearly equivalent to o. The vowels i and u have also the powers, respectively, of y and v. From these sounds, combined with the simple vowels, comes the Assyrian syllabarium, to which, and not to the consonants themselves, the characters were assigned.
It is copious; every place, tree, shrub, or plant used by the people has its proper name; it is harmonious and pleasing, abounding in vowels and liquids, destitute of gutturals, and sparing in aspirates and other harsh consonants. At the same time, like the rest of the family, it is clumsy and unwieldy, whilst immense prolixity and frequent repetition must develope the finer shades of meaning.
The ear receives from it an impression similar to that which is made upon the fingers by the touch of a thick woolen velvet, rough, but at the same time, yielding. The union of jarring consonants being rare, and the assonances easily multiplied, the same comparison might be employed to the ensemble of the effect produced by these idioms upon foreigners.
About half a mile from Llanystred Castle, amidst the splash and dash of the water, Hubert distinguished some peculiar and unaccustomed sounds, like the murmur of many voices, in some barbarous tongue, all ll's and consonants. He waited and listened.
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