PURITY OF LANGUAGE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 904, 23 December 1871, Page 2

PURITY OF LANGUAGE.

At the annual distribution of prizes at the Bishop's school, Nelson, his Lordship the Bishop of Nelson presided. We take that portion of his address from the " Nelson Evening Mail," in which he impresses forcibly the necessity of cultivating our mode of expression:— " Boys, I wish you to remember that we have received, each one of us, a precious inheritance in the English lauguage. It is the common property of every one, and it is everyone's duty to hand it on as pure, and as free from anomalies and drawbacks, as when he received it. In no part of the world ought better English to be spoken than in New Zealand, as the greater number of its original colonists were highly educated men, or men who proceeded from well-educated families, and there is not the same danger of the introduction of slang words rising from social traditions as there is in some other countries. But I have some fear lest pollution reach the " well of English uudefiled;" and the quarter in which I see danger is in the direction of America—not of cultivated, intellectual America—but an America of a vulgarity to which I trust we may uever be allowed to descend. I deprecate the introduction of a literature which scarcely deserves the name, which is obliged to resort to the gross and ignorant expedient of raising a smile by its vices and its bad spelling! We see it very frequently in our newspapers now; I cannot understand what the educators of our popular style of reading and expression—the editors of our papers —are aiming at in giving us so much of their style of writing and speaking, condescending to quote and invest them with the dignified influences of a proverbial authority. I can only suppose that they do this in the same way that the Spartans made their Helot slaves drunk, that their youths might avoid so sottish and degrading a state. I suppose, therefore, that they bring so much of this American literature and phraseology before us to deter us from affecting it and following it. Is it, however, true that our sense of humor and wit has so departed from us that our chief joke is a badly spelt word ? I trust that you boys will put away from you all slang words, and bad spelling, as ungentlemanly and degrading. As much a3 possible, abstain from the use of interjections. It has been well said by Max Muller that language and grammar are founded upon the downfall of interjections. A profusion of interjections, whether uttered in conversation, or spread thickly over the written page, is a mark of a low and vulgar taste, and degrades man to the level of the beast that perishes, whose language js for most part iuterjectional. The thought of this may sometimes save us from indulging in an ignornnt and wonderstruck character of oxclamation, and

will bgi a help to condemn the most objecyj&able form of interjectional speech—profane and vulgar swearing —which, if it be meant, is blasphemous, if unmeaning, is equally degrading. After all the discussions as to the origin of man, his power of continuing sounds at pleasure to express his own ideas is that which elevates him above and distinguishes him from the beasts, whose only language is the interjectional grunt, as of the pig, and the bow-wow, as of the dog. With regard to the best style of English writing, the last mail brought out some tetters of Mr Ruskin's on the subject. Mr Buskin, who is a master of English style, has recently told us the secret of his success is writing English. He was in the habit, when a boy, of learning by heart large portions of the Holy Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, and his chief books for reading at the most impressible period of his youth were " Robinson Crusoe" and " Pilgrim's Progress." This fact was a great encouragement to those who had neither the time nor the means of perusing classical authors, inasmuch as by equally simple means others could attain the same results in writing English. All boys should make it a matter of conscience to use the best and purest form of expression for anything they might wish to say, and, after a time, the habit of correct and elegant speaking would be formed, and all slovenly expressions be eschewed.