BROADCAST ENGLISH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 95, 18 April 1941, Page 4

BROADCAST ENGLISH

Sir,-While I agree with most of what "Lapsus Linguae" says about pronunciation (Listener, March 21), I notice that his examples of the vagaries of pronunciation are mostly proper names of people and places. These I am not concerned with; if a person writes his name Cholmondeley or Samuel Clemens, and wants it pronounced Marshbanks or Mark Twain, that is his affair, and politely I follow his personal desire. My comments on pronunciation, especially as heard on the air, concern words which have a pronunciation accepted by educated persons who know what is correct. There is at a certain time and for a numberof years, often more than a generation, a "correct" way of saying a word. Dinghy is not now dingy; what it-or what banal or basic, or even Achilles-may be in forty years’ time I don’t know. But there is a correct way of saying these words now, and we should not hear them mispronounced. What I am concerned with is not the lowest common denominator, as in the humorous examples quoted by the Daily Mail, but:the highest common factor (not the "highest factor," Oxford or extreme BBC) but the highest common standard, commog to people who have some knowledge of the language, some education, some personal acquaintance _ with proper speech. People who do not know, as those speakers on the air I have mentioned obviously do not know, the correct pronunciation of words they use should ascertain it by reference toa good dictionary for instance. The main cause of this mispronunciation is: not, as "Lapsus Linguae" suggests, that we lack a standard spelling, it is sheer ignorance of the correct pronunciation. Nor, as "Lapsus Linguae" says, is their guess as good as mine. They don’t know: I do. As I wrote the above your current issue (March 28) came into my hands. "Quis custodiet"? I do not

agree with J. Voss that bureau is accented on the last syllable; French words have no pronounced stress, | as have most English words, on some syllable. Adult is pronounced differently, according to whether it is noun or adjective. Richard Roe really underlines what I say-that ignorance is the cause of mispronunciation. As for precedence, mentioned in a precedent paragraph (but this is not to be a precedent) if Fowler says I am wrong he is probably right, as we both are usually-JOHN DOE (Auckland).