ben, pop. and vulgar, instead of bien. Cf

21-22. Il n'en devait être que meilleur, "To be sure, it was only better for that," or "It must have been so much the better for it." The exact and idiomatic rendering of the various forms of devoir is often rather difficult, because the English verbs "must" and "ought," corresponding to the French verb, are defective.

26. . .où il voulait qu'on le descende (descendît), " . .where he wished to be set down," " . .where he wished to alight or get off." The p. subjunct. (descendît) is grammatically correct, but is rare in ordinary conversation, where it is generally replaced by the près, subjunct. (descende). Cf. Chr. Fr., Introduction, § 8, p. xii, note 1.

12. — 6. Poisson sans boisson est poison. Distinguish carefully, in reading these words rapidly, p and b, and voiceless, hard s (= initial s, and ss) and voiced, soft z (=s between vowels) . This is an excellent exercise for Germans and American students of German parentage. Also the other phonetic exercises contained in No. 7 are very useful for foreigners.

13, — 1-12. The t is quite commonly pronounced like c or ss=hard, voiceless s, not only between two ^s, but, before an i, also after other vowels and after consonants: initier, "to initiate," initial, ~e, ' initial"; nation, f., notion ,

f., portion, f., exception, f. There are, however, manyexceptions: In pitié , amitié , moitié (see text), the t is pronounced = t.

The anecdotes 9, 10, and 11 illustrate a very difficult part of French phonetics, the liaison, f., that is the linking or joining, in pronunciation, of a consonant, otherwise silent, at the end of a word, with the initial vowel of another word that follows it in a sentence, if the two words are closely connected with each other by their meaning and grammatical relation, and, therefore, can be pronounced rapidly one after another without any stopping.

14. — 3-4. . .buvant à la santé de tous les-héros (les zéros) ici présents. The hyphen (trait d'union, m.), between les and héros, marks the faulty linking of s=z, in pronunciation, with a word beginning with an aspirate h (h aspirée). This makes les héros sound exactly like les zéros, because h is necessarily silent in this case, and, according to a law of French syllabication, the s=z would belong to the ê of the following syllable. The difference between aspirate h (h aspirée) and mute h (h muette), kept up by grammars, dictionaries, and school-instruction, is explained in a note, at the head of the series of words beginning with h, in the Vocabulary. According to the strict rule of grammar and orthoepy, the h aspirée prevents the linking, even if it is not pronounced. The mistake illustrated in No. 9 is made sometimes by foreigners, but much more frequently by natives, children as well as illiterate adults, in Paris and other parts of France where the h aspirée is generally no longer sounded.