TITTLE TATTLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 17 December 1936, Page 11

TITTLE TATTLE

(BY “TATTLER”) DETERIORATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE There have recently been vigorous protestations against the deterioration of the English language, mainly by the importations of Americanisms, almdst wholly slang. Purists will have it that our language is being vulgarised, and that it is changing rapidly in composition and in pronunciation alike. Whilst one holds that there is a tendency for the English of the future to become a language of short words, with rapid staccato utterances, another maintains: “The English spoken 200 years hence will quite definitely not be the English we speak to-day.” Another considers that there may be a gradual approximation of the best American and the best English, that there may be evolved a universal language, “with AmericanEnglish the dominating ancestor.”

New words are constantly being added to our language. We import some, and will doubtless continue to do so, and we receive more through the medium of American “talkies.” Other new words are our own manufacture. Wireless should, and doubtless will, exercise an influence in preserving good spoken English, though, with many others, I contend that the 8.8. G. pronunciation is not all that it should be.

In passing, I may give an airing to a grudge that I owe to one of the 8.8. C. announcers. He (and it may be he is not the only offender) commits a “bloomer” every time he broadcasts a police message._He will tell us that in such and such a place on such and such a date there was a collision between, say, a private car and a pedal cyclist, and that the cyclist “sustained injuries from which he has

since died.” My objection to the announcement is the introduction of the word “since.” If the cyclist’s death is attributable to the irrjuries which he sustained in the collision, it is not correct to say that he has “since” died, for the reason that he could not have died before. Another grouse: Why are we told, in- announcing the details of a concert, that the orchestra or the vocalist will play or sing “first of all,” and that the orchestra is “going to play” or a vocalist is “going to sing”? Why not' “The orchestra will play,” or “Mr (or Miss) So-andSo will sing”? Use of the words “of all” in the first case, and “going to” in the second case, is decidedly incorrect, especially by those who we are led to believe are sticklers for exactitude in the use of the English language.

That by the bye. Unfortunately for lovers of pure English, there is a danger of a complete transformation of our language. Slang is being increasingly used; more and more words are being clipped, as if we had not the time or the patience to give the words their full pronunciation; and more and more is conversation, between young people especially, being devoted to “cliches,” which are as flippant as they are senseless and unnecessary.

“There is" a great degradation of speech,” says the Rev. Dr. Norwood. “I sometimes hear, in London, people who seem to be hardly speaking English at all, so degraded are the consonants. I look in hope for a generation who will be able to distinguish between the sound A and the sound I.”

Why this degradation of English? What is the cause? Dr. Norwood attributes it, in part, to’ universal elementary education, though that may appear to’ be a paradox. “At the stage to which elementary education has got. it has broken down our old dialects, and produced people who speak and are beginning to speak in a uniform clipped method of utterance,” he says. ■

In effect, that is what is said by Professor J., Dover Wilson, Professor of Education at London University.

He regards the quality of English written and spoken by graduates in our universities to be poverty-stricken in, vocabulary and imagery, and he declares: “The writing of arts persons is pretentious, suggesting nineteenthcentury architecture and domestic furniture!”

i Ur. Wilson proceeds: t ' “In the old days there was the daily reading of the Bible and prayers from the Book of Common i Prayer. In those days the young > ear was attuned to the rhythm of ’ the best English prose ever written; i the young vocabulary was enriched with the simplest words for the ■ greatest things. The expanding mind was filled with countless images of - the utmost grandeur. Now that has disappeared. The rhythm and harmony which find their way into the inward places of the souls of the country’s children, are of a different ' kind—they bellow from a non-selec-tive loud-speaker which is never - turned off.” * * * * ; Go where you will in England, in towns more than in the country, you will hear spoken what I may char--1 acterise only as bastard. English. Much of it will be in monosyllables. It has been pointed out by a professor of the English language on the Continent that in the first forty-two lines of the “Canterbury Tales” are fifty two-syl-lable words which, since Chaucer’s day,- have been reduced to onesyllable words. He holds, therefore, that there is a tendency for us to acquire a cribbed, monosyllabic language, “such as the Chinese!” If any reader requires proof of the manner in which our tongue is being clipped, I advise him or her to open a newspaper, wherein there will be found | many two- or three-syllable words ■which have been added to the language as monosyllables. For instance, students will say “lab.” instead of i “laboratory”’; “maths.” instead of “mathematics”; and “quads.” instead of “quadrangles.” The word “Associ- [ ation,” as applied to a form of football, !is clipped “Soccer,” and almost gen- ; erally people describe advertisements as “ads.,” and telephone as the i “phone,” and a bicycle as a “bike.” jWe are a busy people, and the busier [ we are the more impatient we are. Is i this, I wonder, the reason why we j reduce two- and three-syllable words - to monosyllables, or are we too lazy to give them their complete pronunciations? * * * • “Correct English,” declared George Eliot, “is the slang of prigs.” This is not so. We can speak and write correctly, grammatically, sensibly, and coherently without being priggish or pedantic. * * * * Early in this century the famous Irish-American fictional character, Mr Dooley said: “When we Americans have done with the English language it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.” <

The gods forbid! What we have to do is to aim to speak our “Mother Tongue” correctly, without finnicking exactitude or pedantry. If all of us did that, were careful in speech, or in correspondence, to choose the correct words to give expression to our thoughts and convictions, there would not be any cause to complain of the deterioration or disintegration of our language.