PURE ENGLISH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5080, 26 January 1927, Page 3

PURE ENGLISH.

HIGH STANDARD in DOMINION. DANGER OF DRAWL. The English language as it is spoken in New Zealand* is the purest in the Empire. That is the opinion of Mr J. W. Shaw, M.A., lecturer in English at the Auckland Training Col- ■" lege who delivered an interesting address to .the teachers of the summer school at Cambridge last week. In the cour.se of his lecture Mr Shaw stated that every strong national type had evolved not only its own language, but also its own pronunciation. Due to immigration and colonisation the English language had, as it were., been reproduced in various types of speech in the colonies and English-speaking countries. It had become very pronounced in thq United States, also Canada and Australia. The question was, are Nq>w Zealanders developing a different pronunciation of English to other parts of thp English-speaking world ? The 'answer was that so far. as New Zear land was concerned pronunciation had — developed remarkably on its own lines out of our extraordinary number of dialects brought to the. country by colonists. Largely through the agency of the schools a pronunciation had been evolved in New Zealand that was thought by many to be the purest in the, British Empire. American and Australian speech differed from that of the Homeland, because the people of both countries had s.et themselves out to evolv.e. .a type of their own. Such did not apply to New Zealand, where there was much evidence indicating a desire for speech in conformity with the. highest standard of English in the Old Country. This feature equally applied to the language of the Universities or. the pronunciation evolved by ordinary culture. - In N e .w Zealand, stated Mr Shaw, no difficulty was experienced with consonants, but the chief danger lay In the acceptance of drawl and to the too use of diphthongs. There was also a distinct inclination to elongate the final “y” and to pronounce lovely as "lovelee.” Mr Shaw went on to give further examples of *■ this failing. In concluding a highly interesting and educational talk Mr Shaw stated that the evolution of pronunciation in New Zealand was on sound lines. Heljfful assistance was being rendered by the schools in the adoption of only those principles that provided the basis of pure, English. After a careful study of the subject he was ''satisfied that English as spoken in the Dominion was the purest in the jJnglish-sP eaMn ff world.