RUINED VOWELS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2767, 26 August 1931, Page 7

RUINED VOWELS.

FAULT IN AUSTRALIAN SPEECH. VIEWS OF MR. C. N. BAEYERTZ. For the purpose- of judging the elocutionary classes at the Wellington Competitions Society’s festival, Mr C. N. Baeyertz, of Sydney, who was a judge at the inaugural festival many years ago, arrived in Wellington by the Makura on Monday, after having been absent from New Zealand for twelve years. Mr Baeyertz bad a good deal to say about the Australians, particularly about the way they speak, and he drew a comparison between the general artistic taste of the New Zealander and the general lack of it hl an Australian. “Th average New Zealander has a far more careful regard for the beauty of the English tongue/’ he told a “Dominion” reporter. It’s a pleasure to return here for that reason alone, and it’s a delight to be in a country where they have a sane Government.

In New Zealand Mr Baeyertz is widely known as the founder of the now defunct “Triad,” a journal devoted to the arts, which he edited for thirty years. The English one heard in New Zealand was on the whole vastly superior to the English spoken in Australia, he said. It was an extraordinary thing that in Australia men and women who were educated, even doctors, lawyers, scientists, and those who had been, to universities, often spoke-abominably. He insisted on quoting the language of some children whom he said he had heard intoning “some sort of antiphonal chant” while playing a ‘game together. There had lieen six of them, he Said, three of them facing the other group. One group called out: “Shape, shape, come owriie.’L “Fried,” said the others. “Woh tov?” asked the first trio. “Woo-ulf,” was the answer. Then came the response, .“Woo-ulf wown’t be owme till nbine erclock ternight, so shape, shape, come owme.” “I heard all this in a garden in Sydney,” -Mr Baeyertz said. ' “I thought it so typical that I wrote a satire on the abominable broadening of .the vowels, which is so prevalent in Australia and took it to my friend, Mr Bertram Stevens, who was editor of the “Lone Hand.” He read it. through to the somewhat bitter end, and then, drew himself up with considerable dignity and said, “It’s a mistyke to suppowse that way spake loike that—we down’t!”

Mr Baeyertz said that colourblindness was a rather uncommon thing and it was hard to understand why tone-blindness should be an affliction of the average person in Australia. They never heard themselves speak. Nor had they ideas of art and literature coiripared with the average New Zealander’s taste in such subjects. In a literary way this was best illustrated by an examination of the books in a public library. In Australia it was the. trash and rubbish. which showed most sign of wear, while th? best books remained in a clean condition. In New Zealand, as far as he knew, the opposite state of affairs existed.. He confessed that, he did not understand why the Australian should be so backward in the respects he had mentioned. ' In other spheres they were intelligent and progressive. “I am not saying all this when I am here, and saying something different in Australia,” .Mr Baeyertz remarked. “It is just in this way that I have talked ever since I went over to Australia in 1914. The better educated Australians all know it, too. They admit that the New Zealander is in a class by himself compared

with the Australian as far as the appreciation of good art, literature, and music is" concerned.”