WORDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 185, 4 August 1923, Page 17

WORDS.

WE, US AND THEM. [By THOMAS CI.ODD.) Now /"aland folk, mnst of whose parents were from the Shires of England, the hills of Scotland, the green lance of Ireland, or the Land t>l Song (Wales), often smile in a superior way at the accent —the ignorant accent —of the newcomers who have the temerity to talk like the fathers and mothers of Sew Zealajiders talked, and like the aunts and uncles of New Zealanders still talk. There is no "ignorant" language. If the (Jiver of Gifts makes it possible for a man, woman or rhild to make sounds "understandod of the people." why cavil with accents or jibe at wordg you don't understand; and which words, by the way, are poor word*, because j-ou "DON'T" understand. The cultured accent of one age is not the cultured accent of another. We New Zealanders have trifling variations of speech, but generally we speak the language spoken by the largest number of people in the Empire —Cockney, or a variation almost undetectable from that dialect. The flattening of the vowels (we often call the chief industrial fountain of New Zealand a "key-ow") elightly differs from the Cockney" flattening which makes "Strorbry" a "kali," but the dialects are related. What is immensely valuable is that a Cockney understands a New Zealander and a New Zealander a Cockney, and any British person 'both. There is a rugged beauty about county dialects equal in artistry to the "Oxford bleat." English bowmen at Agincourt spoke the dialects the ploughmen of English Shires speak, nowadays, for the language of "cultivation -, is merely by way of a little conventional fence to mark ue from "the common herd"—heaven help us! Even our aspirates often have to be learned—they are not part of us. The Anglo-Saxon ill fant, unlike the Maori newcomer, does not instantly master the intricacies of "hang up your hat on a hook in the hall." The" accent and the words used by that celebrated rapscallion, Squire Western, with whose daughter (you remember) that equal scallawag, Tom Jones, was in love, did not use language that would lXi tolerated by a professor of the same at the Auckland University College. It is presumed, however, that the languaue of Squire Western wae the language of the landed gentry of those times, who would have been astonished without measure to hear an Auckland University student declare that "he had a meet on with a bosker tart," and which student would be juetly enraged at the ignorance of the Devonshire peasant who referred to his daughter as "a dibbetty little maid," whose "pinny was dabbered." It would create scorn even in Freeman's Bay. The same man maybe would ask, "Garge, wur bist thee a while a Xorthtcountryman would "gang" or "£ ae -" Aa ,on ? as " the P eo P Ie to whom they spoke understood that they were really about to vanish, what matter what they said. There is a Tace of people somewhere in Darkest Africa who can't talk. They communicate in clicks. Basuto and Zulu and Matabele is still full of clicks, but the big, black, bounding nigsere never make any mistake about what they want. For instance, a Zulu would never click out that he wanW mealie pap when he was really hungering and thirsting for sweet potatoes. Don t be arbitrary! Even the speaker of the most unexceptionable English as used by the universities may have a warm heart- even the most pronounced murderer Of English in Seven Dials, or the most violent assassin of worde in Lower New York, may be guiltless of real wrong. Observe, if you please, that most of us are arbitrary. That genius, Henry Lawson, wrote rather a "ood little <hit of verse about the Englishman "Who always says ■Vood bay' to yon when he means to say 'rood I've , " ' Dear old Harry was of course thinking of the right and only Vu-ti-ili-ir, way. which is "good iboy," went' pprhap's. that most Australians -i-'iv So ion"." By the vvay, there tea nliiee in Xu-tralia called Solong. It is an appropriate name that-what YOU Want to say to it. It's euphonious too. That's what I «ay .i" ?t '"'"'•