ENGLISH IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10001, 23 March 1910, Page 4

ENGLISH IN AMERICA.

In his baccalaureate address to the students of the City of New York, Professor Finley did not enlarge upon such topics as "civic duty" and "religion and patriotism," which afe usual on such occasions, but made an eloquent plea for the English language, which, in many parts of the United States, owing to inefficient education and the enormous influx of foreigners, is getting a trifle mixed, albeit there is still more uniformity in speech from the Atlantic to the Pacific than there is in England, for example, between the dialects of Devonshire or Sussex and those of Northumberland and Yorkshire. There is no dialects there, but, as Professor Finley deplored, there is a general tendency to slang, to carelessness in speech, and to vocal mannerisms, which make Americans a marked people wherever they go. "We talk," said the professor, "a great deal about national reform and city reform, but the reform of our speech is just as urgent and just as desirable. Think of your doty to the English tongue, the tongue which was mother to the first language of some of you, and which has been a patient fostermother to others. Think of th; significance of this miraculous gift made as commonplace as light by tne, often ugly by abuse, and frequently hateful to the ignorant or indolent by its grammatical restraints of law and custom."