EDUCATIONAL.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1603, 31 January 1873, Page 4

EDUCATIONAL.

The following, taken from an American contemporary, will, perhaps, be appreciated by the friends of education:—

SLANG AND SYNTAX.

The number of well educated people who habitur ally speak correct English is very small. A great many who consider themselves good grammarians constantly indulge in expressions that Lindley Murray would not know how to parse, and that our modem grammarians would utterly condemn. We can forgive those who from imperfect culture always will say "it aint" for "it isn't," and " I'll learn you" for "I'll teach you," but when graduates from our common schools persist in such inaccuracies, it is time protest should be entered, and they be called to account for corrupting the King'B English. It is not only with grammatical errors, however, that we have now to deal. Hurtful as these are they are less injurious to the language of social life than that vast class of expressions that are covered by the word slang. Bad grammar is not nearly so contagious as piquant yet faulty expression. It is certainly better to violate a rule of grammar or language than to break one of the ten commandments, to express the intensity of one's emotions in slang rather than in profanity. Such is the infirmity of humin nature that the best of us feel at times compelled to use vigorous and unusual phraseology. It ia well to remember that even ia such cases we shall accomplish more in the way of forcible diction by coolly aelecting our expressions, by polishing our invective, by refining our epithets, than we can possible do by indulging in Billingsgate, or profanity, or slang. A witty scientist once silenced a London fisherwoman who was pouring out at him a flood of vile talk, by hurling at her, in emphatic tones the language of palaeontology, thus, " You ichthyosaurus, you pterodactyl, I'll send you to the paleozoic regions j I'll feed you on cephalopoda, and saurians shall cmiume your parietals." In blank silence the woman stared at her enemy, and could not utter a word in reply. We have all noted and admired the grace and elegance with which educated foreigners speak our language. The secret of this lies in their careful pronunciation,, their accurate observance of grammatical rules, and their total ignorance of slang. They talk, as we «ay, like a book. The conscientious and habitual avoidance on our part of all impure English will make our language chaste and elegant and expressive, as is theirs. This may be done without the slightest affectation.

It is frequently the caae that children in our schools eyery day use slang and bad grammar, and are not corrected. Teachers refrain from doing their duty from ftar of hurting the feeling 3o f their parents, from whom the children have learned these errors. This ia all wrong. Every teacher should feel in duty bound to bo\t the seed of correction by ill waters, and, so far as she can, educate parents, through their children, into the use of faultless English. la the South the temptation to borrow original and racy idioms from the eluss formerly taid, in. lemtwdet i* almost irteiitfiih^ tmd fo Dji^t

circles, where the standard of syntax is not the very highest, the derivation of words used and the manner of putting them together present many puzzling and amusing phrases. As a rule, Southern men and boys use better language than their wives and sisters, because less tempted by constant hearing of African idioms to depart fron the purity •of their nativo tongue. Every section has its peculiarities of pronunciation, its idioms, its provincialisms, and in proportion as one's language is faultless are all these features removed, and it becomes impossible to tell the Northerner from the Southerner, the New-Englander from the Californian, the American from the Englishman.

Cicero says that the men of his time noted for their elegance of language learned of their mothers to speak their native tongue with precision, and never knew how to talk but with propriety. Of Csesar it was said he was incapable of talking as a private man. To the cultured ear no musio is so delightful as tha constant flow of elegant thought in exquisite diction. Only by a loving and discriminating study of words, by a careful exclusion of all questionable phrases, by an artistic choice of language, can this rare and enviable accomplishment be made one's own. From the lips of beauty how discordantly fall the clashings of false syntax and provincial slang. What a sad contrast we often see between the spotless and shining silken robes that drape the figure of loveliness, and the bedraggled, muddy, ragged phrase that clothes the vaouity of thought. How freely does snowy linen, shining kip, and immaculate broadcloth covering an ignorant soul supply the plaoe of vigor of thought embodied in forcible and Addisonian phrase. When the two are combined, as in William Pinckey and Charles Dickens, all the world yields to their fascinations, and admires tbe setting not less than the jewel. We do not wish to talk blank verse in the bosom of our families, but the rhythm of well-balanced sentences will not make loved voices less musical; the absence of every clumsy and incorrect phrase will not detract from the allurements r»f our firesides ; felicitous epithets will not be spots on our feasts of charity or diminish the relish with which after the day's labor we seek the society that makes home home.