THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS - It feels appropriate this Festive Season to Post the following beautiful anonymous Poem.

It is rooted in Frederick Schiller's - "Ode to Freedom" changed in translation to Ode to Joy               

                                                               
                                                                .........................

                                         "Joy to the World" the carolers sang out
                                          as last minute shoppers scurried about,
                                          desperately seeking that one special gift
                                          that would give Christmas morning a magical lift.

                                         As an old man stood standing listening to the song,
                                         midst all the madness of the bustling throng,
                                         in a shaky, hoarse voice he began to join in
                                         singing the words of the famous old hymn.

                                         One by one, people stopped with their madness,
                                         to join the old man, for a moment of gladness.
                                        When the carolers had finished with singing the song,
                                         the whole throng was united as they all sang along.

                                        As if by magic from out of the sky,
                                        church bells rang out from a chapel nearby,
                                        And when it was over people greeted each other,
                                        sharing messages of good will with one another.

                                        You see, the magical lift the shoppers, sought, for so long,
                                        was not in the buying or scurrying along.
                                        That magical gift so desperately sought,
                                        was the Spirit of Christmas - which could never be bought.

                                                                      .....................

                                        I will have read this twice at public occasions this week.
                                        I have made a voice recording which will be attached shortly.

                                                    Festive Seasonal Greetings to you all.



Now to the Consonant - j.

In the English language this consonant has two sounds. The attached sound recording gives these.

The most common is where the sound comes from closing our front teeth together, pressing the tongue against them and our hard palate in the roof of the mouth. The actual sound forms at the point and time when we part our teeth letting the air, our breath, move forward out of our mouth.

As a gesture this sound has a feeling of "uprightness" not unlike the vowel i. A conscious stretching tall from our feet secure upon the earth through our arm and hand extended upward as high as we can towards the sky.

This consonantal sound carries vowel and other consonantal sounds well.

Examples where j is at the beginning of a word are jealous, jolly, jetty, jar - all words able to be formed well through the j driving the other sounds. These examples are in the recording.

Where the j is in the middle of a word the sound is equally important.  Take the word "adjacent." Without the j sound we would not recognise or understand the word. Try it - quite extraordinary.

The second type of sound that can come from the consonant j has a more "silent" quality.

This occurs where instead of the above 'hard' sound there is a softer quieter vowel sounds of 'u' or 'ay' spelt phonetically or the consonantal sound of y.

An example, from a name, is Julia. This name can be spoken both ways - with a hard J or softer quieter vowel sound of 'u' or 'ay' - spelt phonetically as Ulia. This silent quality has a very marked effect changing the manner in which this name sounds dramatically to very good effect.

Both ways of speaking this name are given in the recording.

I wish you well with this consonant.

I would appreciate hearing how these sounds are formed and written in other alphabets around the World. J ranks among the ten most common sounds in world languages. Please let me know.

The next Post will be the Fifth Instalment reading of Goethe's Fairy Tale " The Green Snake and The Beautiful Lily."

My best wishes to you all.