THE DECAY OF ENGLISH.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 169, 18 July 1924, Page 3

THE DECAY OF ENGLISH.

-■ I BEK2IAKD SHAW OX SLOYEXLY SPEECH. , Speaking afc the annual assembly of the English Association at Bedford College, Regent's Park, Mr. Bernard ! Shaw made bis protest against slipshod English. He told the srtoy z I He told the story of the family parrot, whose "Pretty Polly" and other pretty things deteriorated into sotinds which were not in the least like the original thing , —a change which the family had not noticed —and said that that wa3 an instance of the decay of language ;-which occurred very extensively among human beings. If a foreigner who had learned English ■well were put into Covent Garden, he i would not understand the language : there, because it had gone through a. process of decay and the people there were not epeaking English. "What you ought to aim at," said Mr. Shaw, "is to speak English that will be intelligible to a foreigner. It is not i sufficient for us to bo intelligible to one another, because we are in the '.relation of the family to the parrot." I Mentioning some of the difficulties j met with in spoken language, he said: ["Occasionally someone asks mo out, and very exceptionally I accept the invitation. Then I always find that, as I am the celebrated Bernard Shaw, people ! want to be introduced to mc. Many jof them cut it short by coming up boldly and claiming that they have known mc for years. Athleticism in Speech. "Eventually my hostess comes up and says, 'Oh, Mr. Bernard Shaw, may I l have the pleasure of introducing to you—mumble, mumble, mumble' I I sometimes feel like saying to my hostess, 'If you had only been articulate when you came to Miss Smith or the Countess of so and so, you would have been of some use to me.'" Another difficulty fatal to good conversation was the indiscriminate use of a word or the act of jumping at its Eglish. People should he taught to cultivate and he proud of a certain athleticism in their speech. There was athleticism in articulation as in other things, and he did not know why it was that so many young people who were quite properly proud of athleticism in lawn tennis and other sports should yet be intolerably slovenly when they came to speech. " I think they ought to be made a little ashamed of it," he said, "and be taught to understand that the most intelligent and cidtured people are generally rather particular about their articulation. I am, for example . (laughter), but generally, speaking in .public, one has to be. , No Correct Language. f "You must not make the mistake of '. trying to get a correct language," con- , tinued Mr. Shaw. " There is no such I thing. You will not get any two people 1 : who agree as to what correct language is." I There was, however, a genuine public; • 'demand for something else. People • knew very well that certain sorts of L speech cut off a person for ever from 1 getting more than £3 or £i a week all ' their life long—sorts of speech which made them entirely impossible in cer- - tain professions. 3 ' ~£~ ."