THE OXFORD ACCENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 257, 27 September 1935, Page 16

THE OXFORD ACCENT.

A MISNOMER. It is the misfortune of many charming people in London that they speak with the so-called Oxford accent, though according to Professor Gilbert Hudson, of Trinity College of Music, they are more to be pitied than blamed (says a London writer). The accent not only makes them use very bad English, but it causes them to be misunderstood and disliked. Aboard, and particularly, in the Dominions, it makes many enemies for England, and that, of course, is serious. Yet, if we are to believe Professor Hudson, there is really no such thing as an Oxford accent. The term, he says, is altogether a misnomer and does Oxford a grave injustice. “You can hear the same voice,” he told a gathering of musicians, “at any ot the public and upper class schools or at any assembly of the upper upper class in London. In Oxford I have not heard one example of it, so please do not call it an Oxford voice. Call it anything you like except good English, for it is nothing but a distortion of vowel sounds—a pinching and swarming—a lip and tongue laziness. It is a menace to the English language. “There is a tendency for elegant people to go back to a debased form of southern speech. While we are not allowed to drop our aitches in polite society, we are allowed to drop a whole string of words and go into the very best circles with impunity. The value of dialect, on the other hand, is this: It keeps the main stream of | language alive. Only a snob would do away with it.” As to what is good English, there is a variety of opinion concerning it, though most of us recognise it when we hear it. One of the delegates who attended the World Congress of Phonetio Scientists, discussing the question . the Either day, said that while it was difficult to fix upon a. standard, it seemed to him the King, in his public speeches, had established an almost perfect example. His Maesty’s accent and enunciation were! as nearly ideal as could be imagined, for, though-he gave full value to every j word, his diction was entirely free of affectation and exaggeration. When he was asked what he I thought of the Australian accent the; delegate replied with a shrug that he never thought of it at all if he could j help it! I