Our Colonial Speech.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 51, 19 December 1901, Page 1

Our Colonial Speech.

We rather suspect that the fashion of dialect stories— we do not take count of the cruder and more restricted vogue of coon and coster songs — has had some effect in forming a certain prevailing taste, which even educated people have acquired, of dotting their conversation with provincialisms, slang, and other solecisms of speech. One of the mysteries of colonial speech is the admixture of so many cockneyisms in unexpected places. We have met them in districts remote, unfriended, solitary, slow, and in circumstances that it would be about as difficult to explain as to solve the mystery of the live toad in the heart of solid rock. Professor Morris, of the Melbourne University, grappled with the puzzle some years ago, and with a more or less qualified success. During the discussion of the subject a correspondent told all abay't hay'w (how), at a dance, a lidy asked one of her guests to tike the kike (cake) first and have the gripes (grapes) afterwards. Such language, flowing from beautiful lips, recalls the creepy fairy tale of the intolerably lovely maiden from whose mouth, when she opened it, there issued forth a procession of frogs and toads. Possibly those cockneyisms, like Dogberry's reading and writing, come by nature.

A writer in the Wellington Times has walked cautiously round about the cockney problem, sniffed gently at it, and found its present proportions in New Zealand small, but its potentialities dangerous. He warns the public that, unless educational authorities are careful, whole districts in the Colony will become infected with cockneyisms as they are with Californian thistles. 'An Irishman,' says he, 'does not say "gripes" for "grapes," nor a Scot, nor an educated Englishman. The monstrosity is cockney, pure cockney, and so far as our colony is concerned will be found flourishing either where cockneys predominate or where the teacher chances to have acquired the " langwidge." Even such ethereal beings as school inspectors have been heard to speak of the West Indiar Islands. But to say that this is colonial is a calumny. It is not any more colonial than the Edinburgh accent is Scotch or

the Yorkshire dialect is English. Gather Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh children into one school, and let each read the same passage, or better still, listen to them in the playground and then tell me which speaks Scotch or English. The fact is that in no country do the majority speak in the language as it is written. There is no colonial accent. We are too scattered, too young, and too mixed to have acquired this national feature. We believe it to be a fact that our colonial children speak as good and pure English as you will find anywhere. The cockneyisms are local and accidental importations, and should be trodden under foot of men.'