"SPOKEN ENGLISH."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19062, 26 July 1927, Page 8

"SPOKEN ENGLISH."

ADDRESS AT CANTERBURY

COLLEGE.

The monthly meeting of the English Association was held at Canterbury College last night. Miss D. M. Stewart read a paper on *"% lish—The Subject in which Everyone is a Xr a Sc;ibin g briefly the. course in speech training pursued _by P«mary and secondary teachers in England, Miss Stewart spoke of the position ot New Zealand in regard to speech. "Linguistically," she stated JNew Zealand is in a very hopeful condition. The percentage of educated people here is relatively high. lne country is small, and rapidly assunir lates new ideas and methods. Central control of education, though not always an ideal condition, yet has its value, especially when, as .in the present instance, teachers are in accord as to the ends to be attained. With these advantages, we ought to have a very high standard of spoken English, in our country, and a very high reputation abroad." The speaker pointed out, however, that language was continually changing, the change being always along the line of least resistance. Careless speakers always tended to form their consonants indistinctly and to confuse their vowel sounds. In New Zealand there were no conditions that -would be likely to produce a distinctive New Zealand accent. The only divergences from standard English would be similar to those observed among careless speakers the world over, the extreme example being the language of the London Cockney. For many reasons it was important to prevent New Zealand from developing an accent that differed from the speech of the cultured Englishman, one reason being that we in New Zealand produced a very small proportion of the poetry we read and the songs we sing. New Zealanders -depended greatly on the music and poetry producers of England. If w» could not speak their language, we wasted half of their great gifts to us. The other English-speaking countries had for several years been making efforts along scientific lines to stem the tide of divergence from standard English. Though the case of New Zealand was not so pressing as that of Australia or South Africa, we should have to work hard to maintain our superiority. * Prevention was better, cheaper, and pleasanter than the type of cure to which schools in other countries were submitting themselves. It was the duty of people; with a fastidious appreciation of English literature _to help in creating strong public opinion on this matter. A beautiful national soeech was more difficult to attain than grammatical essay-writing or fine class singing, but not less worthv of our endeavours.