A GOOD ACCENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18760, 26 December 1930, Page 7

A GOOD ACCENT.

VALUE AS SOCIAL ASSET. ENGLISH THE KING SPEAKS. The value of a good accent as a social asset was discussed by Mr F. G. Blandford in a lecture on Modern English Pronunciation at the Cambridge University Local Lecture’s summer meeting. “In England,” he said, “it is regarded as a social disqualification if a person does not speak the type of English which we are now discussing. People regard good speech as good manners. The principle in pronunciation is to give the least shock to the least number.” People who spoke a less desirable accent tried to alter it for the better. “On the whole,” said Mr Blandford, “women are more pliable in this way. An assistant in a milliner’s or dressmaker’s shop in London is a good example of a girl of humble origin who talks English perfectly to her customer, but when talking to her colleagues in the staff room uses a very different English. Many maids talk standard English to their mistresses, and lapse into fruity cockney immediately they get back to the kitchen.” Referring to the trend of modern English, Mr Blandford said: “We are considering the King’s English, and we are also considering Lie Prince of Wales’s English. The King and the Prince do not talk the same type of English, and an analysis of the Prince of Wales’s pronunciation gives evidence of a very particular change. Yet the social environment and the outlook o-. life of th« King and the Prince are the same. The pronunciation of the iri.AAiufc is that of a young man, and the iung and Queen talk a perfectly different type of English. That is an indication of change.” Mr Blandford concluded with a reference to the English of Americans. “Standard English,” he said, “is the kind of English we would like to teach all foreigners, like the Americans, but,” he added, “there is less tendency to get ‘nasalisation’ in America and more tendency to get it in London.” Mr Blandford said to a reporter afterwards that as millions of people heard the 8.8. C. pronunciation, it certainly made for standard English. “Speaking perfectly broadly, the anouncers speak very serviceable English. In detail there are a great many words in their published list which I would pronounce differently, but that always happens. I think the 8.8. C. Committee has done its work extremely well. "I think the ideal accent is that which betrays neither your mother’s birthplace nor your father’s income.”