OUR LIMITED VOCABULARY

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 65, 10 December 1926, Page 11

OUR LIMITED VOCABULARY

AND CARELESS SPEECH. It is my privilege to sit in the allies of a captain of industry while he interviewed candidates for the post of traveller iu the firm’s commidities (writes Mary I’foulkes in the “Daily News”). “Why, I asked him afterwards, “did you turn down number five? He seemed to me a enough felow.” “I agree,” my friend rejoined, “be possessed all the necessary qualities except one —his vocabulary was too limited. Did von notice that he used the same word for half a dozen minutes? We could not send him out to represent •he firm.”

No need to ask for the offending noun. Who does not know the individual who calls every article, from a crano to a safety-pin a gadget, and every person, good, had, and indifferent, a blighter! I onco heard him call his fiancee a “blinking blighter” on the tennis court. Not that she minded. She, no less than he, will preface every remark with, “Say, kid,” and finish it with “What?” Who has not heard the after-dinner speaker, hopelessly groping for the right words in which to clothe his thoughts, harking back continually to “What I mean is,” and ending every other ohrase with ‘and what not”? Poor, inarticulate creature! He can get through his normal day by describing the weather as ‘O.K.” or “roten”; the state of his feelings as “full of beans” or “fed-up”; and his appreciation of his amusements is “tophole” of ‘piffling”; but if asked to describe anything he has seen, perhaps an arts and ■•rafts exhibition, he will say: “Some show! Quite arty drawings and things—some Johnnie here quite a fizzer at—what d’y’ call it —clay-modelling? Oh, sculture. is it? But for me the handicrafts room —all sorts of gadgets and weegees there—awf’ly int’restin’—what!” Whence has come this grave fault of the present day? It may be that our use of. skin", seeing that our new’est English dictionary devotes some pages to a short addenda of new and current words, many of which could rightly be termed slang. But a slang , term that serves a useful purpose will survive, and in time be incorporated into the language, as “not cricket,” “toseh,” “toe the line,” "the limit.” “to rag,” "to fizzle out,” "take the cake,” and “highbrow." We have no quarrel with these —it is the' misuse of our beautiful language that is so much to be deplored. The troub eloriginates in the home life of the child. Tn our young days we werae not allowed to use the word "tiling” to describe an article, and were often compelled to amend a slipshod sentence—even before company! The parents who do not permit laxitv of speech in early childhood may bo dubbed "to particular” or “pedantic.” but only in early youth is the habit to be formed of using the right word in the right place, striven valiantly with this dilficuilty■ of the limited vocabulary of the average child. In many infants’ schools the children are encouraged to repeat stories told or read to them, in their own words; later, they are required to read a. story for themselves, and then repeat it in as nearly the language of the author as possible. This method has had beneficial results. A further excellent aid to the enlargement of the vocabulary is to endeavour In write down one's thoughts in good English—a test which will tend to eliminate conceit from the veriest hign-