PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2849, 21 October 1908, Page 86

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

DO WE SPEAK ENGLISH? • Th iu HA& 9U€stion an Australian a sks in the Melbourne Argus. He suggests that, as an Education Bill is b^ing inquired into by the Victorian Parliament, a clause might be inserted dealing with the pronunciation of j the English language and the art of speaKing in propeny accentuated and ! virile tongues ; and says that a gabble threatens to become the Commonwealth national language. "Some rattle off sentences with electrical rapidity, running words into one another, in a high-pitched monotone. A drawling deliverance, mispronunciation of vowels, the uttering of minced-up sounds with clipped endings, through imperfectly-opened mouths, are common fajults, many of which are caused by not using the jaws wh«n speaking." As an example, lie gives the following, said by the boy who brought him hie newspaper — "Amiverelatonite?" Can you make it out? Mr Baeyertz, in this month's Triad, gives a column or two to the elecutionary items he judged at the Dunedin Competitions. Here are some of his criticisms : — Sovtttx — sovereign ; body — body ; \ euUun — sullen; contending — contending; ' tiaitou — traitor ; womtrx — Women ; eoopremacy — supremacy ; -kissuz — kisses; i ru-un — ruin ; chay-yer — chair ; they-yer — there. As' an example of misplacement of emphasis in phrasing, he gives the following : — •• Contending fob their Fatherland ; They cam^ to conquer or to fall. In ruminating deep and long, And by the uplifting op his brow. Listen to the average speaker or reader, '< and you will find that Mr Baeyertz is quite right in his denunciation of slipshod enunciation, pronunciation, and phrasing. How often will you find "ed" in "fainted,^ for instance, pronounced "faintid" or '"faintud"? The ending "es" is as badly treated. Then take the doubled consonant in eucli words as afford, occur, approach : the vowel is almost invariably sounded without its consonant, and,, as likely as not, the "d" in the first word is dropped too. Words, again, arc run one on top of the other, and we get such barbarisms as "atome" for "at home," "ashe" for "'as she," and so on — the phrase indicates how the contracted form is said. Not one in a dozen separate two words the first of "which ends with the same sound as the second begins with. The verse I have quoted shows the mistake so often made 4n emphasising the preposition and other particles. Sometimes, of course, it has to be emphasised to bring out some contrast, but this is comparatively seldom. Emphasis is mur1 dered, as a rule, or else it is suppressed, 'and the reading or speaking reduced to a deadly monotony. How emphasis alters the meaning of a sentence may be illustrated by emphasising, in turn, the words ! of the following sentence :— Are you cycling to Dunedin to-night? ! The pause is another aid to elocution very much overlooked. ■ THE BALLARAT COMPETITIONS, j These opened over a fortnight ago, and by this time the Kaikorai Band from Dunedin will be getting ready to play in the band contests. This Eisteddfod — Welshmen originated this yearly gather- . ing, hence the name — commences with the elocutionary items, and the adjudicator is Mr -W. L. Paine, who was a prize-taker 20 years ago. He complained of such pronunciations as "how-er" for "hour," "daye" for "day," "ove" for "of," /'abord" for "abhorred," "natoor" for "nature. "' In pretty well every piece, too, rendered in the first four days, he complained of false emphases and wantof sympathetic interpretation. The falling inflexion was iis«d too frequently, and co on. I aip. giving these notes, hoping that bo^s and girls in country districts will strive hard2r to speak clearly and to read intelligently. 01 course, boys and pirls in large centres can profit just as much by observing tho hints I have given ; only in towns there are teachers of elocution who can give so much assistance in reading and speaking. "THE MEN WHO TWANGED." Perhaps it will startle you to hear that the Yankee who twangs is f.peaking with an accent which is not American at all, but genuine English! In an Auckland paper a writer says, "If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, I should fcmile at the ijmorance of their ojsrn history which makes Englishmen regard tho American twang as of alien oi'igin and transAtlantic grafting" ; and again : 'Whenever we pass an American sailor on the streets of Auckland [he was writing when the fleet was anchored in Waitcmata Harbour. — Pater.], we should say vith prido and thankfulness : 'Thus epoke the Englishmen who killed a king,' and we should realise as never before the meaning of that great national upheaval which histoiians term the Puritan movement, and should realise how the Cromwellian temper was empire-building indeed." Then he gives an outline of the great and long struggle which took place for freedom in England. The following is a part of it : — "From the days when Englishmen were J

' bidden to choose whether they would think for themselves or have others think for them, to say whether human liberty should cease through Christendom, or .whether modern democracy should be bom with blood and tears, the pioneers of English liberty had been speaking with a twang. Wyclifie and his Lollards twanged at their prayer meetings, the schismatics of the Keformation. twanged at .their conventicles, the Puritans of the seventeenth century twanged more nasally than any. It was natural for them under their circumstances to twang af* prayer, just as priests intone ; and it became a habit, <gi'ew into a part of them. J "They twanged when they claimed jas1 tice from the Stuart ; they twanged when I they laid the cropped ears of their mutij lated spokesman before the Lords; they twanged when they raised London for the Parliament — and London has twanged in memory of them ever since ; they twanged their nasal hymns as they rode to, Naseby and Marston Moor; they twanged at Worcester, and they twanged at Dunbar. Through all fhe long annals of the English there is nothing greater or nobler, nothing higher or mightier, nothing which tells more of the lifting of a nation, of the purifying of the world, than the annals of the king-killers, the annals of -the -men who twanged." Will you cultivate th» twang now as a proud memory? There is one thing, however : the twang of the Americans has more geniality and humour behind it than' appeared behind the twang of the Puritans. They lived in hard 'times, and had to fight hard. The ] times were uot conducive to geniality and humour in tho.«e who took life seriously. , Grim work had to be done, and they did | 'it.