THE BAD SPEAKING OF SCHOOLBOYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE BAD SPEAKING OF SCHOOLBOYS.

After ; spending more than 'thirty years a* a teacher Mr. G. 811111110115 is convinced that- the greatest of all difficulties to be overcome in teaching English children is their defective articulation. As Milton said: "We Englishmen, being far northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide . enough* to ' grace a, southern \ tongue; but-"are observed by all other nations to speak exceeding close and inward." Writing in the Contemporary Review Mr. Simmons shows how deepseated is this, national habit. The uncertainty of English pronunciation is one cause of the English child's dull ear and clumsy tongue. Spelling is reckoned : to. occupy more than a year of the average boy's school life as it is. Yet we must be prepared to pay a heavy price so to train the sense of sound in our boys that they can ■*■;■'. effectively learn a foreign language. For , want of phonetic training a large part of the time spent in English schools on - foreign languages is time wasted: — "It was only the question of a child -) as to the meaning of ' jilicity' that revealed to the teacher that 'pity my sini- ■ plicity' had passed into the child's mind and was nightly reproduced on its lips as 'pretty mice ana plicity.' Who can tell ' by what strange roads thought travelled' in a small boy (one who was learn- ; ing Latin) when he converted 'spacious firmament' into 'sparrows ferment,' and a line from Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' became 'Splashed all their :| neighbours bare'?''