She says for example, “pro-vo-ca-tion,” “in-di-vi-du-al,” with ever so little difference between the value of syllables, and a good deal of inconsistency in the pronunciation of the same word one day and the next. When she speaks English she distributes her emphasis as in French and so does not put sufficient stress on accented syllables. Another friend, who is as familiar with French as with English, finds her French much more intelligible than her English. John Hitz, whose native tongue is German, says that her pronunciation is excellent. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a foreigner does when he is still labouring with the elements of a sentence, or as children sometimes read in school when they have to pick out each word.

The principal thing that is lacking is sentence accent and variety in the inflection of phrases. This is like the effect of the slow dwelling on long words, not quite well managed, that one notices in a child who is telling a solemn story. When she is telling a child’s story, or one with pathos in it, her voice runs into pretty slurs from one tone to another. Some of her notes are musical and charming. Her voice has an aspirate quality there seems always to be too much breath for the amount of tone. Her speech lacks variety and modulation it runs in a sing-song when she is reading aloud and when she speaks with fair degree of loudness, it hovers about two or three middle tones. Her voice is low and pleasant to listen to. The two persons who have written authoritatively about Miss Keller’s speech and the way she learned it are Miss Sarah Fuller, of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, who gave her the first lessons, and Miss Sullivan, who, by her unremitting discipline, carried on the success of these first lessons.īefore I quote from Miss Sullivan’s account, let me try to give some impression of what Miss Keller’s speech and voice qualities are at present.

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