WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH?

Evening Star, Issue 19786, 9 February 1928, Page 4

WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH?

PROBLEMS OF PRONUNCIATION Many characteristic witticisms'are included in two gramophone records which Mr George Bernard Shaw completed for the benefit of Linguaphon* Institute students of good English Hot* are a few of them--If what you hear is very disappointing, and you feel instinctively " that must be a horrid man,” yon may be quite assured tho speed is wrong. Slow it down until you feel that you arc listening to an amiable old gentleman of seventy-one with a rather pleasant Irish voice, then that is me. There is no such thing as ideally correct English. No two British subjects speak exactly alike. In London 999 out of every 1,000 people not only speak very bad English, but speak even that very badly. Even in private intercourse with cultivated people you must not speak too well. Apply this to your attempts to learn foreign languages, and never try to speak them too well, and do not be afraid to travel. You will be surprised to find how little you need know or how badly you may pronounce. Even among English people, to speak too well is a pedantic affectation. In a foreigner it is something worse than affectation. It is an insult to the native who cannot understand hie own language when it ie too well spoken.