GOOD ENGLISH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19759, 9 April 1926, Page 6

GOOD ENGLISH.

AMERICAN SUPERIORITY. Clear utterance is one of the signs of clear thinking. A person who speaks well is probably a person who thinks well (writes Mr St. John Ervina in “Good Housekeeping”). What are we to say to the clergy who moan and bleat their way through the lovely liturgy of the Episcopal Church ? If they will not pro nounce those beautiful sentences finely and firmly, how can they expect the laity to listen to them with patience? If our actors will not open their mouths and let the good, rich English words come out, how can they expect the audiences to heed them? It is in church and in the theatre that the man in the street should hear his language well spoken and learn to spea! it well. But in neither the one nor the other to-day, at all events, in England, is it spoken any better than one may hear it spoken in the street. For my part, I would throw off the stage every actor who eluded his r's. 1 would refuse to employ in any capacity whatever actresses who spc..k through their clenched teeth, and say “wall” when they mean "wire.” The English language is a rich and robust one, full of known and unexpected beauties, and it should be richly and well spoken. It is a dreadful thing to learn from a foreigner that he can better understand English as spoken by an American than when it is spoken by an Englishman. One could bear the knowledge that the American is more articulate to the foreigner than the Englishman, but it is difficult to bear the knowledge that it is due to the fact that he does actually speak the English language better than the Englishman speaks it.