SCOTS FOR BEAUTIFUL SPEAKING

Hokitika Guardian, 5 July 1929, Page 5

SCOTS FOR BEAUTIFUL SPEAKING

That it is necessary to look to the Celtic races to supply the world With coloured speech was the opinion expressed by Miss' -Sybil Thorndike after her adjudication for. the Howard de Walden Cup (says a dispatch from Edinburgh to the “ Christian Science Monitor ”). Much interest has been aroused in Scotland over the success of the Edinburgh players and the fact that Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr George Bernard Shaw agree with Miss Thorndike’s opinion that the Scottish language lends itself to drama and beautiful speaking.

‘ ‘ The language the Scots use in everyday life,” says Miss Thorndike, “is coloured. The Scots, like the French, are very distinct speakers. They .give their consonants and words their full value. There is a slackness about middle-class English speech, arid the only people I ever heard speak English as it should be spoken were .an Indian and a Scotsman. Scots take infinitely more interest in -their language than we do.” Mr Ramsay MacDonald, when asked for his views, said: ‘‘lt is perfectly true' that there is no colour in English middle-class speech. It has been killed by conventionality. In fact, it is like a beautiful picture that has been cleaned so often that it has become thin and flat. We Scots have the colour and shade.”

Mr G. Bernard Shaw’s opinion was: ‘‘Most Scottish speech is very much more musical and expressive than English. As a matter of fact, ordinary English middle-class speech has almost ceased to be speech at all. People drop their vowels arid syllables and everything else, and at the present time they just make a noise. How on earth they make themselves understood to each 'other is difficult to know.”