LANGUAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 133, 7 June 1929, Page 6

LANGUAGE.

Riding into town one day recently beside a respectably-dressed young man, I overheard his remarks to a friend. He used an objectionable adjective six times in two sentences. Then I read in a newspaper that an educationist appealed to the public to discourage American "talkies," which promised to ruin here "the purity of the English language." The simplest English is spoken by our Chinese residents, and the purest by our Scots. The average New Zealander is "a well of English" surely much defiled and a little American slang won't hurt him, but if the "talkies" were compelled to adopt pulpit English the young colonial would decorate it, hang sanguinary roses on it, pepper it with "foreign" words and turn it into rollicking, oathful, spikey, mouthsatisfying, ear-filling noise. It is in the home, the school and the playground that a love of clean, clear and meaningful English must be cultivated and the words of cinema subtitles or of "talkies" will be seen, heard, judged, condemned, but not imitated. "What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?" You do not imitate the grunt because you hear it daily, but the pungent quality of "bad language." has a special attraction for the young, and the "smart" quality of Americanese bites into the mind. Of the two the latter is best, and before we condemn our nasal U.S.A. friend we must put our own house in order. VERBA.