OUR LANGUAGE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9604, 23 December 1891, Page 6

OUR LANGUAGE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,-—ln view of the approaching conference of teachers, I cannot resist making an effort to draw attention to a subject which I think is becoming more serious every day. I mean the mispronunciation of the vowel sounds by the rising generation of New Zealand. I have watched it steadily on the increase during the past five and twenty years. I believe we are really in danger of losing the letter A out of the alphabet altogether. It is no exaggeration to say that to an ordinary English ear there is not the slightest distinction made by many children between the sounds of the vowels a and i. The confusion of ideas in . consequence is remarkable-—The " mice ” is laid on the table of the House of Eepresentatives; dresses are trimmed with “ lice/ 1 _ A striking instance came to my notice the other day. Passing one of the large schools in Christchurch, the younger class could distinctly be heard repeating their spelling lesson thus; -i-s-t, mast;” “l-i-s-t, last.” What happens when they spell mist and list ? The sounds **o" and “ow” are quite as incorrectly pronounced. The short " y ” at the end of a word becomes “ee,” as in “laideo,” “ baibee.” The fault arises from a wrong use of the muscles of the throat, and, knowing as we do the wonderful results accomplished by Mr Van Asch and others in teaching the deaf and dumb to speak, it certainly must be possible to teach all children who are in the full possession of their senses to pronounce the vowels correctly. No doubt the rules are perfectly simple for the proper production of these sounds, and it seems to me to bo a matter of such real importance that teachers in our schools should be expected to know them. If something is not done, in another fifty years some of our words will have lost their meaning, or will be unintelligible to people from other parts of the world. Oar language is surely too valuable an inheritance to be trifled with iu this way, wU.ho'K, any effort hoiog to co-rot:;, ih.»ef ml* - * before it is too iaGu Surely it is more imports, hl> to ta,k intelligibly than to read well, and yet a great deal of fuas ds now , being made ove r

the reading in our schools, while the subject of pronunciation is allowed to pass uncorrected.—lam.&o., J.H.