VOCAL JUNGLE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4045, 19 April 1932, Page 2

VOCAL JUNGLE

THE AMERICAN TONGUE When, recently, the annual medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for excellence in diction was awarded, Hamlin Garland, in presenting the token, raised the question whether there was an American language, as distinguished from the English which is British. In an article in the New York ‘ Times ’ Otis Skinner, a previous winner of the medal, sets forth some observations and conclusions as to spoken English in America and discusses the likelihood of the arrival of an American English language. It is highly improbable that a native American speech flowing from a pure racial origin like that of the Latins and Teutons will ever become a reality, says Mr Skinner. In our conglomerate nation too much lingual wash from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Polynesia has polluted the streams of our English pure and undefiled to allow us a verbal harmony. We do not agree on a method of saying things. A charming Virginia acquaintance of mine on a visit to a New England town was in a quandary about a certain address. The name she sought seemed unfamiliar to everyone. Finally she said: “ I don’t know how yon-all call it, but I want to find someone named C-a-r-t-e-r.” It was this delightful lady who corrected the pronunciation of my infant daughter when she wanted to play a game of cards. “ Cornelia,” she said, “ you can’t have them unless you ask for kyards.” At this same tender age my child was the guest in the home of a Philadelphian friend. At the breakfast table she said she would like some porridge. “ My darling,” said her hostess in reproof, “ you must speak correctly—pourridge! ” My daughter still thought she would like some porridge. “ Pourridge! ” insisted the lady. “ Now, how do you say it? ” “ Oatmeal! ’ replied Cornelia defiantly. The name of Tremont is well known in Boston. There is a great diversity of usage in its appellation. Tree-mont, Tre-mont, and Trem-munt. There used to be a hotel of that name, and I once directed a cabman to drive me to it. He did not understand at fii'st. Finally it dawned on him. “Oh!” he said, “ you mean Trem-munt.” What is the standard of American speech? Is it New England, Middle Atlantic, Pennsylvanian, Southern, raid-continental, or Pacific? Each of these sections has its own tradition of verbal and tonal inflection, and when an inhabitant of one of them is overheard ordering his cocktail in the bar of Paris Ritz, his gloves at the Avenue de TOpera, or inquiring the rate of American exchange at the Guaranty Trust Company’s office in Pall Mall it is not too difficult to detect whether he comes form "New Hampshire, New York City, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Louisville, Detroit, Topeka, or San Francisco. The task is much less difficult with the female than the male speaker, the voice of the former being far deadlier than that of the male, far more aggressive in its local pride and satisfaction. Nothing is more expressive of the independence of our mother tongue than the letter R. It is the battle cry of our native land, the glory that is Umurrica. It pipes through New England nostrils, surges from the larnyx of Pennsylvania, assaults us in Michigan and Indiana, and roams at large on our boundless prairies. So proud are we of this birthright of ours that we accord it the honour of an extra syllable whenever possible, as in de-ur, cle-ur, fi-ur, sh-ur. “ Law ” becomes “ lor ” and “ saw ” is changed to “ sor.” NATIVE VITALITY. It is hurtled at infant ears from the teacher’s platform of our public schools, crawls into our homes through the radio, greets us from behind the counter of the department store, presides over shrilled debates in women’s clubs, subdues us from the pulpit, echoes in court rooms and legislative halls, and prevents our going comfortably to sleep at bad plays in the theatre, where actors transpose Hamlet’s meaning and speak the speech rippingly on the tongue. There is a native vitality and determination about it not to bo withstood. It resembles that knuckle clutch of the fork displayed at the dining tables of tho Waldorf-Astoria by pilgrims from mid-Western towns—a manoeuvre that always fascinates me, especially when by a difficult turn of the wrist food is deftly deposited on expectant tongues. Arc we as a nation tone deaf or have our eardrums become ossified by the vocal miasma rising from the American melting pot? The origin of much of our polyphone inflection is readily found. The Pilgrim Fathers who started the New England collection of cradles, spinning wheels, and highboys - also brought from nonconformist- English pulpits the heritage of Puritan nasality, intensified as time went on by the rigours of the New England climate. The followers of William Penn, together with certain Swedish and Welsh citizenry, bequeathed to the Philadelphians of to-day a flatness of tone still observable in Quaker families. As one proceeds south-westerly from Philadelphia he finds himself in tho country of the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch, where the early immigrant, who was really not Dutch but German, has left a lasting hurr on tho speech of his adopted country. OTHER ASCENTS. In the coal districts the spoken word is infected by Bohemia and Polish accents, while in Pittsburg there is a peculiar lilt, a possible mountaineer influence, as expressed in the familiar “ Alle-ghe-ny.” Maryland has passed more unscathed through tho years since her foundation by Lord Baltimore than some of her sister States. It is the dividing line between North and South, the barrier against which have broken the rude surges of Puritan and Pennsylvanian harshness and the lazy softness of the cotton fields. What manner of speech was possessed by the company of Captain John Smith and the later Virginia colonists it is difficult to determine. It is evident, however, that Virginian accent,

like that of all the States below the Mason and Dixon line, has been under negroid influence for more than two ceucuries. It was inevitable that the negro mammy should flavour tho speech of the white children she brought up and the house slave that of his young master. More and more did each generation take on the negro lilt that sang in their ears from every quarter. A pleasant voice, that of Virginia; utterly wrong in diction, its limpid caress stops our ears to its sins of mispronunciation. J ist why the Virginia voice should be gentle, while that of and Tennessee is raucous and grating 1 do not know. Something poisoned it at its source. I never hear its feminine shrillness without a rasp of my nerves and an “ edge ” to my teeth. LOOSE AND SLOPPY. The further south we travel the more loose and sloppy becomes the spoken word, until finally it merges into the uncertain creole of New Orleans. The atmosphere of Texas would seem to have a beneficial influence on vocal effort. I have known many examples of fine voices and unaffected speech from the Lone Star State. ft renews its vigour as it crosses tornado-swept Kansas, its unshackled It’s reverberating in the great open spaces, and again subsides into the J-less Scandinavian of Wisconsin. Our American speech softens vastly as it nears the Pacific Ocean. What ever the cause the gentle rains of Oregon, or the fogs that roll through the Golden Gate of San Francisco, or contact with the sensuous language of Spain, or that the early pioneers cast aside from their prairie schooners into the alkali desert something of the rasping vocalisation of the East—there is a perceptible absence of provincialism beyond the Sierra Nevada range. But woe is me. What can one say of our New Yorkese, that incredible melange born of every accent under the sun? There the tonal idiosyncrasies of Scandinavian and Australian, the Czech, the Slovak, the Pole, the Greek, and the Filipino, the sons of Erin, of Spain, and of Italy and Africa, the Russian and the Japanese, the Jew of Germany and the Balkans have compounded the mixture that is the Manhattan equivalent of Cockayne. ENGLAND’S ACCENTS. Not long ago the American Academy of Arts and Letters gave a medal to Mr Holbrook of one of the broadcasting studios, in recognition of the excellent quality of his diction. In presenting the medal, Hamlin Garland took occasion to launch a few welldirected shots at the work-a-day speech of our country. In rebuttal, however, of his own arraignment he attacked the polyglot utterance of England, laying special stress on the almost unintelligible language of the Cockney. Those of us who have wandered about Co vent Garden Market amid + he shouting of hucksters in the busy morning hour, who have attempted to follow the words of British curates reverberating through “ long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults ” at cathedral services, and who have been mystified by the throaty emanations of Oxford and Cambridge dons can appreciate Mr Garland’s point of view. It is not the purpose of these reflections to assault the orthoepic sins of Great Britain. She has burdens enough to bear without that. It proves nothing to say that her little island enshrines some sixty or seventy different dialects. O’Farrell informs you that only in Dublin is English spoken in its purity, while MacPherson says that you hear the verra best English in the whole wurrld in Edinboro. Who, then, shall decide when doctors disagree ? What boots it for the pot to call the kettle black ? The truth is that our mother tongue at its best is neither insular nor provincial. English is English, whether uttered in Liverpool or Chicago.