PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3806, 22 February 1927, Page 10

PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

DOMINION ENGLISH. The manner in which the English language has been preserved in the Dominion, the clear and correct way hi which it is spoken by all classes of the community, and the absence, of dialects of any description, greatly impressed the famous American novelist and world traveller, Mr Gouvcneur Morris, who is to San Francisco after a month’s holiday in New Zealand. “In Great Britain, Canada, and Australia,” said Mr Morris, “the English language is more or less a lost art, but in New Zealand everybody I met —conductors on trams, railway officials, waitresses, and public and educated men spoke English as it should be spoken. It was also a great treat to visit a country where the newspapers are of such a high standard. I was struck with their quality and excellence, the leading articles and reports being written in the best English prose. Everywhere I went I found the people hospitable and kind towards strangers.” To those who read the above statements from the lips of a distinguished visitor ,and well-known American writer will come the feeling of satisfaction that in our Domnion our spoken English is so good that it has merited such words of praise. But have, we the right to the reward expresed in such fluttering terms? It is true that we have no dialects, sueh as are to be heard in different parts of England, and though we do hear in certain parts of our country the soft-sounded vowels of Scottish tongue and the richness of the Irish brogue, the language as spoken here by the settlers from the land of the heather and from the “ould sod,” beyond the tone and inflection, which often has a charm, is good enough English in form, at any rate. Our tone and expression may be fairly good, but the same cannot be said for our grammar and the pronunciation of certain words. It would seem that our kindly and very flattering visitor, Mr Gouveneur Morris, had no opportunities of listening to the language of some of our young people in the streets, and in the pits qf theatres and similar public places where the “I seens,” the “was yous,” the “were yous,” and the “a-gains” jar the ears of refined speakers or the well educated.

The misuse of shall and will, would and should, is perhaps pardonable because it does not jar the sense of correct speech in the manner that other simple words when mispronounced or misused. We may also excuse “absolootely” for “absolutely,” and “sooit” and “pursooit” for “suit” and “pursuit,” but not “aig” and “laig” for egg and leg, as five out of six pronounce those monosyllables. We also here “sut” and “soot” (short) for “soot” and “boot” and “room,” pronounced without any respect for the long sound of the double “o.” We do not shiver when we hear “decay-dence” for “decadence,” “indi-soluble” for “indissoluble,” and “indivise-able” for “indivisible,” but- we do try to shake the sound out of our ears when we hear “I laid down for a rest” instead of “I lay down,” and “I should of been” for “I should have "been.” The Australian “yairs” for “yes,” and the vulgarity' of “did'yer” for “did you” is perfectly inexcusable in polite or refined English, ’and the people who say “bean” for “been” instead of “bin” are legion. Clipping

the consonants is also a common error of our speech, and to hear people say “talkin,” “walkin,” “puddin,” and “shillun” is as great a torture as any of the other glaring vulgarities of expression. It is only equalled by “dorg” or “dawg” and “Gawd” for “dog” and “God.” We are no doubt highly delighted that strangers amongst us tell us that our English is delightful; but, if they lived longer with us and mixed with all grades of our society, they would sooner or later find that there is much yet to be done in the matter of purifying our pronunciation and perfecting our expression. The common or vulgar errors of verbal and phrase expression are the bugbears of our teachers, who, though in all our schools trying day 7 in and day out to eradicate vulgarisms in the speech of the young, seem to be engaged in what appears to be a hopeless task. They are fighting against the environment of the home and companionship, and these, in most cases, defeat all their efforts. . Correctness in pronunciation and in grammatical expression will become general only when the heads of families are sufficiently educated to know what is correct and interested enough in their children to have pride in the purity of their everyday speech. In our schools children in the upper standards learn to correct errors in speech and give the reasons for their corrections, and in their composition work can write, on the whole, fairly correct English, but as soon as they go outside the school walls they relapse into the speech and vulgarisms of their home life or their general surroundings or environment. Without the assistance of thoughtful and observant parents it is almost hopeless to expect teachers to eradicate vulgarisms. Household expressions or colloquialisms, as they are called, are the result of imitation of their elders Apart from personal correction and direction in regard to common errors of speech and pronunciation, good examples on the part of parents is best, and the learning of poetry and reading aloud with proper pronunciation and suitable expression the next best method of giving children a love or appreciation of the beauty of the correct form of speech and its proper delivery by word of mouth. There is nothing like elocution and plenty of it to teach the young the beauty of the English language and its great variety of expression. In New Zealand we have a splendid and costly system of education and as good teachers as any country in the world, and for that reason we have a poor excuse for speaking bad English. We have pride of race and language, but although we speak fairly good English, there is still room for much improvement in our daily language. Let it be one of our greatest duties to make our tone and expression as good • and as pure as we possibly can. It is a most /pleasing thing to hear our language spoken correctly, and especially so to hear it spoken well by the young. Words of advice: Beware of speaking through the nose. Use the lips firmly when speaking or reading aloud. Watch for errors in your own speech and that of others. * X * * ROMAN COINS. The other day a Lancashire carter shovelled sand from a pit on the golf links at Knott End, near Fleetwood, removed a stone three feet beneath the surface, and found a number of ’’-.man coins. After he had finished some hens busily entered the pit, and scratched up still more. There were upwards of 400 in all. coins of Imperial Rome when she was Mistress of the World. To the carter

they were of small account; to the hens, they were of as little value as the diamond which the cockerel in the fable found. “Ah,” said he, “if thine owner had found thee, and not I, he would have taken thee up, and have set thee in thy first estate; but I have found thee for uo purpose, for I would rather have one barleycorn than all the jewels in the world.” These buried coins tell of the fears and hopes of the Roman colonists in Britain. If their original owner could have returned to take them out of their hidingplace the history of the world would have been different. For these coins were not first lost in the earth; they were hidden there, and their presence beneath the stone tells of a Roman and his troubles, a Roman who was recalled to fight for the Eternal City the Goth was plundering, for a world-empire which was falling beneath the hqnds of the barbarians. If we glance at our history of the period as recorded in the old AngloSaxon Chronicle we find two brief but thrilling entries, nine years apart: A.D. 409. This year the Goths took the city of Rome by storm, and after this the Romans never ruled Britain. Altogether they ruled in Britain 470 years since Julius Caesar first sought the land. A.D. 418. This year the Romans collected all the treasures that were in Britain, and some they hid in the earth, so that no one has since been able to find them. Their Empire was tottering to ruins, but they did not know that: they meant to come back for what they had buried in the soil of Britain. They did not know they were leaving for ever this land which was the youngest son of Rome; they could not dream that the mightiest empire in the world was tottering into ruin, that when they left Britain they would see the land no more, that it would cease to be a Roipan province, that the horrors of the Dark Ages were about to spread over Europe, and that Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Normans were to succeed them, to weld a nation which was to rise to heights greater than the old Mistress of the World had known.