FIRST THINGS FIRST

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 15, 17 July 1929, Page 8

FIRST THINGS FIRST

(To the Editor.) aft ftft tat-H moment. The "American" influence is bad enough, though probably not much 'worse than we would suffer from the same level of literacy in England were ye n closer contact with it. But dang, whether American or English, is readily 'recognised for what it is, and may be easily avoided if we will, or at least' tolerated without serious danger of any permanent influence on our speech. Much more dangerous are those influences that come, not from outside or below, bat from our own people, and with associations that seem to give them some mark of authority and accuracy. Chief among these is the growing abuse of the letter r, which in many quarters is no longer given any value as a consonant except when used initially. The good old consonant is being forced, against all reason and quite needlessly, to do duty as a vowel, and I venture to say that there are many m our schools—and many long out of them—who simply cannot discriminate between the consonant "r" and the vowel sound "ah." On the other hand, they will, lor what can only be reasons of simple slovenliness, introduce the "r" between two vowei sounds which otherwise might give them some small effort to sound correctly, and so we get such an abomination as "lawr-officer." Here we have the result of an influence that is entirely "English," and the pity is that these linguistic atrocities appear to derive so much sanction from those in high places. A year or two ago in England I listened to a speech by a cultured army officer, and over and over again he used the word "here," pronouncing it "he-ah," thereby not only ignoring the essential consonant, but making two syllables of a word that possesses only one. I was amazed recently to find that there is in use in our New Zealand colleges a "Phonetic Practice Book" in which the words "barn," "port," and "bird" are shown as pronounced without i the '"ly? that consonant apparently being deemed to have no other value than to impart a certain quality, to the vowel sound. "Oyster" is pronounced "oista"! Does our Minister of Education approva of this?

I remember some old verses about "The Letter H's Complaint":—

"Whereas I have by you been driven From health and home, from hope and Heaven," And so on. I think the letter "r" has an equal grievance, the only difference being that while the former is the victim of the illiterate Cockney, the latter has been murdered by the Oxford don.

I am prepared to take the risk of the American talkies; they at least give proper value to the much abused "r." But, Heaven preserve us, if it be not already too late, from the Oxford bleat, which, more than anything else promises to vitiate the once well-grounded claim of New Zealand to be the world's best exponent of English speech. (This claim, by the way, is made by Aberdeen, Inverness, and Belfast. I offer no opinion, as to the merits of the several claims-, but the significant fact is that not one of these cities is in England!)—l am, etc.,

KONALD BUCHANAN.