NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21617, 9 October 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE OXFORD ACCENT Mr. H. St. John Rum.soy, Instructor for Speech Defects at Guy's Hospital, declares boldly, in New Health, that the Oxford accent is merely a misuse of the mouth. Ho refuses even to call it an accent, and assorts that it is not the result of pronouncing syllables differently, but of "the basic vocal tone," which gives an impression of weary boredom with life in general and the immediate audience in particular. This weary tone, bo continues, is due to faulty technique in voice production. Instead of relaxing the muscles of their throats properly, in the healthy way demanded by nature, these weary young men apparently keep them tense, with appalling consequences. Professor Daniel Jones, Professor of Phonetics in University College, London, and adviser to the 13.8.C. on pronunciation, denies Mr. Rumsey's theory. "The Oxford accent is a real accent, and has nothing to do with voice-production," lie said. "People with good voice-production talk it as well as people, with bad. It is a dialect, with special ways of pronouncing 'o' and 'ay' and other vowels, just as Cockney has a special but. rather different way of pronouncing them. Whether it is a good dialect I will not sav, any dialect and any sound is good or bad according to the fashion."