OUR MOTHER TONGUE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR MOTHER TONGUE

Random* Notes and Little Problems

SOME of the notorious anomalies in our spelling are spread throughout tho system, and as we are so familiar with them we take no notice of them, though the foreigner finds them sometimes amusing and sometimes maddening. Of this kind are our use of the final e to signify tho length of a preceding vowel and our doubling of final or medial consonants to indicate the shortness of the preceding vowel.

But other anomalies are confined to small groups or even to single words, like "gaol" and "gauge" for instance. Similarly foreigners regard all English people as mad because of eccentricities, as thev appear to them, which are common to the whole race, such as their passion for bathing, their talking about the weather, and, in the tropics, "g°ing out in the mid-day sun," while other individual Englishmen exhibit their lunacy in ways of their own, such as jumping on a sponge to dry it, as W, E. Gladstone used to do, or stuffing their ears with cotton-wool to escape the conversation of bores, as Herbert Spencer did. Source of Trouble A typical group of this kind is constituted by tho inflected forms of tho verbs "to crochet," "to croquet," and "to riehochet." The past tense forms of these verbs are written "crocheted," "croqueted,"' and "ricocheted," the last being sometimes spelt with tt; similar oddities occur with the present participle forms. The pronunciation of the three past tenses is very feebly indicated by these spellings: "croshid," "crokid," and "rikkoshade."

The source of tho trouble, which is inevitable, is that the three words, being French, are still treated as French in respect of the silence of the final t. If the t is sounded, as in "curvet," "bonnet," etc., tho dilliculty does not arise, and it is no doubt this consideration which has encouraged tho pronunciation of "valet" with

By PROFESSOR ARNOLD WALL

the t sounded, as it must be in the I forms "valeted" and "valeting." Full j advantage is taken of these peculiar i spellings by advocates of phonetic spell- j ing, of course, to push their wares, j but tho common Englishman, cherishing his eccentricities, turns a deaf ear.' I And the composers of limericks have ! their rights too. A Mystery A note on the Koala, written some | months ago, has brought me a letter from a reader who thinks it is "something of a mystery" that I had not come across the word before. My note must have been misunderstood, for, if I remember rightly, 1 said that it is not included in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, nor in Daniel Jones, but, so far from being unfamiliar with the word, 1 have seen and handled tho delightful little animal himself. My correspondent tells me that it is in Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary, an edition of at least 25 years ago. I do not use Chambers, and, as there are very many such "Standard Dictionaries," I rely on the two men- | tioned, with only occasional references to s others, for in tho multitude of eonnI sellors there is confusion.

One would of course expect to find Koala in the C.0.D., but it is obvious that a lexicographer must pick and choose among the many names of "native" animals, plants, trees, etc., which are familiar to residents in one or other of the "English-speaking" countries. Tho C.0.D., for instance, includes "kea," "kiwi," and "moa," but the last is only in the supplement of 1934, and "tui," "tuatara," and "huia" are excluded. 1 take this opportunity of informing readers of these notes that I have no copies of previous instalments, having started to keep them, but most unfortunately had the whole series stolen during the transit of a suitcaso .from Lyttelton to Wellington, * after which event 1 gave it up. As it is not impossible, though improbable enough, that some reader has kept copies, I wish to say that I should be very glad to be informed* of the fact if there is such a person.