COMMON MISPROUNCIATIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 144, 10 August 1911, Page 3

COMMON MISPROUNCIATIONS.

Dealing with “New Zealand Speech,”’ in a paper read at the Otago institute on Wednesday evening, Mr G. E. Thomson, 31. A., selecting Ivpieai and fioquenlly observed mispi onnncia lions of vowels by the younger generation ol .New Zealanders, demonstrated that almost invari-

ably such mispronunciation is traceable to a lowering of the tongue, and consequent tendency towards the open vowels. This fosters the formation of harsh and discordant vowel sounds, and to this the lecturer attributed our New Zealand twang’, discarding as a primary cause nasal intonation, the other possible source of twang. Mr Thomson admitted that this tendency of the speech of young .New Zealanders was due to carelessness, but why, In' asked, should carelessness tend always to act in a certain way—i.o., towards a lowering of the tongue ! J Mo mentioned that of the three accepted standards of speech—Southern English, Northern English, and Scotch (any variant from these being a dialect) —the New Zealand dialect most resembled Southern English, and least resembled Scotch. In the course of a brief discussion Mi Smith said that in his native county (Yorkshire) one could guess a man’slocality almost to a few miles from bis dialect. Ho was beginning to find it possible to do the same tiling in New Zealand; for instance, lie could distinguish a Taieri dialect. Dr 31orrell also contributed to the discussion, ami remarked that wore be to speak the dialect of bis own county (in the South of England) ho would verge on many of the typical mispronunciations of New Zealand. Ho thought that many of these ought to be suppressed, especially a tendency ha had noticed to grunt at the end of certain words, such as “mountain,” the last syllable being a grunt rather than an articulation. In ids opinion our primary school, teachers (to whose general standard lie paid a high compliment) should be afforded a course of study in phonetics at out training colleges, as was now being done in Britain.