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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 130, 19 December 1941, Page 9

Sir -I also join the ranks of those who protest against a running commentary on opera. "I.A.V." will, I am sure, have noticed with satisfaction equal to mine that in the latest issues of The Listener the mediocre (that is a kind word) dinner music has been given the space it deserves. The inch saved here has not yet been devoted to the afternoon classical music, but that considerable section of listeners to whom classical music is as important as swing to others will be most grateful for the details printed recently of classical programmes. Then how loathsome and deplorable I, too, find the -odia, -ola, and -iana tribes! How I squirm when I read such abortions as rendition and radiotrician! But language is not static; it does not,

like a human being, cease growing after a certain age. Science does not lead us to believe that the Piltdown man spoke the language we speak to-day, and the most fervent fundamentalist can hardly mairtain that Adam and Eve were created with a vocabulary including mongrel upstarts like "coastal," and "bureaucracy," results of false analogy such as "reliable," or neologisms like "motor," "appendicitis," "celanese" and "zipp-fasteners." It is usage which governs the "rules" of language, not the rules which govern the usage, and I am afraid there is little A. J. Hodgkin, the Editor or I can do about it, except refrain ourselves from offending. Fowler quotes, "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh," and if a sufficiently large number of people call a radio technician a radiotrician, Dr. Johnson may turn in his grave until he becomes dizzy, but radiotrician will sooner or later appear in the dictionary.

R.

(Christchurch) .