INELEGANT PHRASES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 142, 20 May 1925, Page 7

INELEGANT PHRASES.

(To the Editor.! Sir, —In your Monday’s issue, Mr H. S. Dettmann, headmaster of the Sydney Grammar School, is reported to have said: “One cannot h3lp noticing that Sydney is becoming very Americanised. I think it is a great pity.” It is a great pity, and “pity ’tis, ’tis true,” not only of the larger cities of the Commonwealth, but also of our own little country. During the past week our local State schools have been visited by the physical instructor of the Y.M.C.A., with the ob'ject of enrolling members for the various classes. This in itself is doubtless quite an admirablo undertaking, and has received the approval of the headmasters. However, I wonder if these gentlemen have read the advertisement on the blotters which have been distributed for use among the pupils. Here it is: “Can you do these stunts? Join the bunch down at the ‘Y’ and get the inside dopp on these and a lot of other stunts, etc., etc. Are. such Yankee phrases as these to be placed on our school desks to catch‘the wandering eye of the boy who should be concentratingl on the excellent ‘English’ reading matter provided in the School Journal and other publications at present in .use. Slang is no doubt expressive, often excusable, and adds the necessary dash of spice to conversation—but why import it?” We are a young country still, as it were, in “shorts,” and it seems that we must look to older countries for our pictures, motors, chewing gum and uplift institutions, but can we not find among ourselves sufficient initiative and originality to coin our own slang?—l am, etc., • ELLEN MOORE.

Palmerston North, May 19th.