EDUCATED SPEECH

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1928, Page 2

EDUCATED SPEECH

A COMMON DENOMINATOR

A stereotyped pronunciation of the English language is not likely in Britain and for a great many reasons it would be a great pity if we could. Broadcasting, of course, has its effect, but’ it is not yet, nor ever will be, sufficiently potent to eliminate either local dialect or idiom. Nevertheless, the task of finding a “common denominator of educated speech,” which the broadcasting authorities have been engaged upon for the last two years, is as valuable as it is interesting, even though it modestly declares its aim to be no more than to assist wireless announcers. The work was done by a committee consisting of Mr Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, as chairman, Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson, Professor Daniel Jones, Mr A. Lloyd James, Mr George Bernard Shaw, and Mr Logan Pearsall Smith. The findings of this committee have now been published in a booklet containing a list of recommendations in regard to 200 words of doubtful pronunciation. It has an introduction by Mr Lloyd James, who is a. lecturer in phonetics, and who points out. that 'dictionaries disagree among themselves, some offering alternatives which others ignore. “If the “8.8. C. quotes one standard dictionary, the critic quotes another, and there is no end to argument, because, as is inevitable, its recommendations arc inconsistent — how could they be otherwise in regard to a language which pronounces plough “plow” and cough “coff”? As instances, it recommends the pronunci-

ation of “doci. j” as “dosyle” and fragile” as “fragill.” Again, the second syllable in accomplish is pronounced “com,” but the first syllable of ‘‘combat” is pronounced “cum.” “Constable,” too, begins with “cun.” Among other interesting rulings, “chastisement” has the accent on- the fit st syllable—“the long ‘i’ is obsolescent.” Celtic has the soft “c” pronounced as “s” In electricity the first syllable is ell—not eel. Falcon is pronounced fawkon, fauteuil as fotill, and finis as fynis. The committee prefers “sinuemaa” to ’’kinema ’ or kyneema, and “finnance” to “fy-nance”; also it gives the first syllable of “envelope” as “en” and not “on.” On the whole, the committee have hit on a reasonable middle course between Sycela of pedantry and the Charybdis of vulgarism. In a few cases, however, the committee have given three optional pronunciations, and they refuse to be dogmatic about the way to talk English. They think that the south of England variety of pronunciation (e.g., the long vowel as in “dance”) will tend to prevail merely because it is current in the metropolis. The educated speech of the capital has a heavy handicap in its favour. This in spite of the Cockney tongue of the masses, which can lead a bus conductor (as it did, in fact, recently) to demand extra money for a passenger’s suitcase with words which sounded like: “You left a pie on your bag, sir.” (You’ll have to pay, etc.)