TO BE PRESERVED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 23, 28 January 1933, Page 12

TO BE PRESERVED

BRITAIN'S DIALECTS

, DRAMA LEAGUE'S MOVE

While the British Broadcasting Corporation is doing its best to Teplaee the local dialects by "standard" English, the British Drama League- seeks, through the medium of the gramophone, to preserve the dialects for posterity, says the "Morning Post." A Devonian from Moretonhampstead •spoko for four minutes and a half in his native tongue before the recording apparatus of a London gramophone studio recently. The matrix will "bottle" for future generations the rich wine of the Devon speech, undiluted by the water of "standard" English. This Devon Tecord is only one in an important series j which is designed, in the first place, to assist the actor, professional or amateur, who has occasion to reproduce an unfamiliar tongue. In the theatre there is often no appreciable . 'difference . between : the speech. of, Devon and Dorset, or of Leicester and Lincolnshire. The British Drama League intends the new series to serve as a final court of appeal. The record just, made, for example, would help a "Farmer's Wife'? company to get a3 near, as possible to authentic "Widecomb'e,". intonation. It would save a Churdles Ash from losing the character-of his lines by Tesorting to a standard "Mummerset" almost as featureless as the standard English of " i.. ' ■ . AGAINST STANDARDS. The Drama League rebels against standardisation. It is jealous for the safety of the'dialects which so enrich and vitalise English speech. The committee intends to choose for its "recorders" natives who know their county dialects thoroughly and who can render them with clarity and emphasis. Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, secretary of the league, stated to a representative of the "Morning Post" that the committee wondered whether to enlist dyed-ip-the-wool rustics of an. extreme type. This idea was abandoned, however,, for two considerations: a fear that the subject might feel self scious before the recording apparatus, and also that he might attempt, to '•improve" his speech for /the occasion, and so water down the genuine dialect. . . "*■ ■ ■ The projected scries 'consists of twelve double-sided records! All speakers : will begin with the same passage;, which lastß a minute, and which compresses into the shortest, possible space all the sounds in the English phonetic alphabet. -This "set piece" is followed by s poem or prose passage from the traditional literature of each speaker's district. • A LONG LIST, When the series is Teady the league will have for comparison the same phonetic passage in the dialects of Cornwall, Devon,. Somerset,.. Dorset, Kent, Northampton, Gloucester, and Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Leicester, Norfolk, and Suffolk, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire—there-are twq Yorkshire. records—the Scottish Border, the Scottish "Midlands, Galloway, Aberdeen/ Wales, the Irish Free State, -and Northern Ireland, not to mention a Cockney record and —as one crumb of comfort- for Mr. Lloyd James —a record of "standard English^" _ Cockney only just scraped into the list. The committee hesitated, but decided ultimatply to include it, even though, as a debased form of Kentish, Cockney cannot rank as . a dialect proper. : . Before the production of the records can be put an hand the league needs one hundred guarantors of three guineas, each. Half of the requisite number of guarantors have already come forward and Mr ; Whitworlh hopes to complete the list early in the New Year. So far, only two speakers "have made records—one of the dialect of the Scottish Border, and'the other of Devon. . A Yorkshire' record will follow before long; ' The theatres are responding, and a gramophone may be a familiar fixture at future rehearsals of dialect plays. Already the St. Martin's Theatre (London), the Boyal, Academy of Dramatic Art, and the -Repertory Theatres of- Birmingham and Liverpool have' ordered sets of records. - To crown all, at the end of-one week an order actually- came from the 8.8.C.. "It is useless,'* says'"..'Mr. Lloyd James, "to deplore, the passing of the country" dialects." ; Yet, before long, they will find a "permanent home in tlie temple of standard English. ..'.. v: . , ■-. ■ '

Surely a "most ingenious paradox.'