THE KING'S ENGLISH.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13739, 21 May 1910, Page 8

THE KING'S ENGLISH.

Within the past few years- a number of people, mostly visitors, have criticised the pronunciation of t.e -vipg's English in New Zealand. We have been told that it is niijch worse here than at Home, and remembering the mpnuer or speech of the average undereducated Cocjsney, and the dia. unintelligible to the stranger from New Zealand—. I4if,t pre to he heard in some parts of the Old Country, we have woiir dered if the charge were true. We have no intei"tjoi} of defending the abominable t' va ng which is sa noticeable in s,ome New Zealand speech, for it is quite indefensible. But piere destructive criticism is of little use in effecting reform, and we tprped with interest to the disciiEfciqn on the buhjept at the Secondary School Assistants' Association in Wellington the other day, to learn, what t\\e teachors th aught about it. r Andrews, of Napier, who led the attack;, seem? to have father confused jdp.ig on the matter- He declared that the New Zealander, the heir to all tho aggs, li«id heei] at **'9i"l* improving jps mother tongue by

" sppaking it with a voice and an •"'accanb thst wquJc) stamp him "it "Homo qs an illiterate and . ulgar 'person" Twenty years ago, wlmii Mr Andrews arrived in New Zealand, he noticed a differenco between Home and colonial speech, which was especially parked j n the - i.atiYC-born Now Zealanders. Tho adults, -mostly liatives of the Qld Country, "spoke " pfpvuieial, if-not literary Efighsh.'' fn order to have had ut that time native-born children attending schooj, these qduUs must have been in tho Dominion nearly thirty years. That disposes of the argument that the deterioration in.pur speech began with the qdvent into New Zealand during the 'last tweptvTfiYC ypars of "a class of "settlers inferior to thp pioneers in

■'uulturo and ' social position."- The pioneers of Cqntcrbqry dicl inelucle a good proportion of jpghly-ediipfited and cultured mop cpd women, but settlers of cejqql attainments have bqjni coming constantly iptp tho country sinca then. Besides, as Mr Andrews gtJPJlt*!.* thereby weakening his own argument, the New Zealand "dialect" is cqnimon to the whole Dominion—'-the university .gigduato " the same taolty vpwols as the. " biishmnn; children of cultured parent. " reproduced tlicr,e faults with tho, " samo harsh voice and the samo "aberrant pronunciation as were shown

'by children of a lower social standing." CißiOriy, then, the twang—for it is that rather than a djoloct, which connotes, besides a pronounced accent, the use of word's of purely }ocai origin 7-caqnot be attributed wholly, or in any large degree, to the arrival of large numbers pf ill-educi}ted immigrants. The speaker declared that parental carelessness was at the rcot of much of the difficulty encquutored by teachers in New Zealand. That is only partly the case. Where the parents thenjselves are uneducated they canpot be expected to correct errors of speech in their children. It is, then, for the teachers to sco that their scholars pronounce properly, and the wide spread ot indifferent pronunciation suggests that the teachers may npt all be qualified for their task. Mr Andrews clearly recognised this, for he admitted that the principles of voiceproduction wore wrongly or vaguely understood, and no vocal and elocu-

tionary training was imposed upon candidates fpr the teaching profession. Here-lie was getting to the root of the difficulty. It should be. as he said, the teacher's aim to stay the process of deterioration from which the language is suffering. But- to do this, the teacher must know exactly what is wrong, and must remember that unhis own speech i.s free from fault it will be a casp of the blind leading the blind.