Personal

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 10

Personal

Mr D. C. Bailey, assistant director of the Tourist Division of the Tourist and Publicity Department since 1959, has been appointed district manager of the Government Tourist Bureau in Auckland. Mr Bailey was in the Christchurch bureau from 1947 to 1950.

there is no check on children’s speech in primary school, very little reading aloud, and some teachers’ grammar and speech leave much to be desired. Children should be corrected kindly before they get to school, but teachers must show that they care about intelligible speech, too. A few satirical television shows might lift parents and teachers and N.Z.B.C. from their inertia on this. Radio announcers would surely welcome correction if they plan to go overseas. It seems ridiculous in this age of close world communication, when there are so many careers necessitating clear speech, that we are more neglectful in this area than we have ever been in our schools and radio.—Yours, etc., CLEAR SPEECH. August 8, 1968.

Sir,-rl admire Paul Maling’s perseverance as a statistician but I think “H.L.G.” goes to the root of the matter, and I endorse his suggestion that announcers be provided with a dictionary clearly indicating (with an alternative if there is one) how a word should be pronounced. I have heard New Zealand speech described as a “language,” which I think is wrong; for it is plainly a dialect, evoking abroad among New Zealanders, and those who like them, as much nostalgia as the Scottish or Devon accents arouse in Scots or Devonians here. If I heard a New Zealander in London inquire for the whereabouts of the nearest “baar,” 1 would certainly enlighten him, and ask which island (North or South) he hailed from. This colloquial way of speech is far more heart-warming to hear than the N.Z.B.C.’s announcers’ attempts to interpret 8.8. C. English, though some make a creditable shot at it—Yours, etc., CARACTACUS. August 8, 1968.

Sir, —Coming closer to earth, N.Z.B.C. mispronunciations are not viewed with any great joy by the layman. The fatuous scheme of creating a dialect child from careless Colonial and American parentage and rearing it on mistakes is not exactly inspiring, either. Some standard training would correct the worst faults, which are certainy no basis for a “new” language. Racing and sports commentators may be considered beyond the law, as their treatment of the Queen’s English owes more to our frontrow forwards than to careful schooling. Some excuse could be offered for them, but the regulars have little to defend their garbled Americanisms, the personal malapropisms and strangling of ordinary words. Whatever officials may give us as red herrings for excuses, it is unquestionably N.Z.B.C. responsibility to show the way. Failing this we might end up with a David Frost interpretation of a new dialect as being “a mess which no-one understands.”— Yours, etc., PILGRIM. August 7, 1968.