USE OF ENGLISH

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 6, 2 October 1944, Page 6

USE OF ENGLISH

Mrs. S. Grecnbie Discusses Language Problems

The difficulties English-speaking people fyid who, through using the sa|ne language, did not always understand each other, were stressed by Mrs. S. Greenbie at the E.S.U. social for women members recently gn Wellington. Mrs. Grenbio, who is a well-known, American writer, and was formerly on the faculty of Vassar and Mount Holyoke, Colleges in the United States, is the wife of the Chief of the Office of War Information in New Zealand. A better understanding of the differences which the common language presented to En&lish-speaking people was a sure means of acquiring universal good neighbourliness, she said. Mrs. P. Eraser was a special guest and among the large number of visitors whom Mrs. E. D. Good welcomed, was the recently arrived American bride of a New Zealander, Mrs. Rex Inder. Mrs. Inder is a Texan and married her husband when he was in Washington. Among the English-speaking people around the world, Mrs. Greenbie said, she wondered if some serious misunderstandings did not arise because there might be different mental backgrounds to words. In comparing the different words used in a small way in America and New Zealand she reiharked, “I have got so far that I say ‘tram’ instead of ‘streetcar’ here, but I’m still bashful about saying ‘Are you there?’ when using the telephone. The great problem of writers was to make their language a common and perfectly universal picture for all. To understand each other’s mental landscapes and the use of a common, flexible and universally understood tongue was the problem of the English-speaking peoples. Since being in New Zealand/ Mrs. Greenbie said, she had heard of and read much criticism about streams of low-class American language directed at New Zealand audiences from radios and the films. Most of the characters using this type of language were comedy characters and were on the same par as the comedy Scotsman, Irishman or Cockney. Another idea that seemed to prevail among these critics was that the flow of. English which ran from the British Isles was pure and unadulterated. As an American and a scholar, she was sorry to say that there was no whole, complete English language. It wrns a made product and a useful one, which had-spread over the earth and proved its usefulness. There was no absolutely undefiled language for the English. She thought the English were unmatched for the great literature their writers had produced, even though some had taken considerable liberty with .the language. English literature had been cheerfully idiosyncratic and Dickens wrote a language that was very close to what we would call ’’journalese” today. So far as she knew the only attempt to fix the English language was made in America, “therefore, if you want to talk English, pure and uudefiled, you may have to talk American,” she said. The only thing which counted now was that we should all have a tongue which was generally acceptable. During the afternoon Mrs. Veitch gave elocutionary items and the war-work groyp conducted a stall.