NEW ZEALAND SPEECH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 267, 4 August 1944, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND SPEECH

Sir-The discussion on pronunciation began with a letter in your columns from an ardent Little New Zealander signing himself "J.L." It was in the best bantam-cock style. He objected -to any attempt to correct mispronunciations which tend to make our speech a dialect. He was proud of his New Zea-land-ese. A pretty name for a pretty dialect! I think that it is a serious mistake to encourage local shibboleths and differences within our community of Eng-lish-speaking nations. The only result will be to encourage petty national conceit and parochialism which might end in dividing the Empire into'’a number of hostile and suspicious units with a core of jealousy and bad-feeling. If that comes, our Empire will be as transitory as the Greek Maritime Empire, which soon dissolved because of the selfish, short-sighted policies of the daughter colonies. Surely this war has taught us that only in unity. lies our hope of continued existence and strength. Then, too, it would be a pity to try to standardise our speech in its present form (if indeed that were possible) when our standard of education and culture lags so far behind our standard of

material comforts, and so far below what we may hope to attain if we are allowed a long period of peace to cultivate the higher arts of living. My own pet aversion is the inability of many New Zealanders (and most NBS announcers) to pronounce the sound "oo" in words like two, improved, typhoon, and so on. Why must it always be "ee-oo." It is a curious defect — I think really of Cockney derivationyou might hear it in the Old Kent Road. And yet woe betide the unwary newcomer who calls a tui a TEEOQOEY! In conclusion, why is it that nearly all Maoris speak much better and more melodious English than their Pakelia fellow-countrymen?- K,. E, CROMPTON, M.B. (Havelock North).