STANDARD ENGLISH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 276, 6 October 1944, Page 5

STANDARD ENGLISH

Sir,-In The Listener for September 1 you had an exceedingly fine article on Standard English. Professor Gordon asks: Do we want to speak Standard English? This, he says, "is a regional dialect. It is also a class dialect," and "if we were to say that it is Public School English we should not be far wrong." Then I say, "Most certainly not. We don’t want to speak in that way." Besides being the mark of a very small class, copied intentionally chiefly by snobs, it is also slovenly, vague, and indefinite. Speech should be clear and definite so that any trained ear could write down a record of the sounds heard. In ordinary "good English" you have to judge by the context whether, for instance, the speaker said "ah" or "are," "birth" or "berth." The Oxford Concise Dictionary admits this, speaking of "a vague, indeterminate sound, which is almost identical for all vowels." The speech of an educated Scot dr Irishman is on this point much superior, and the old Maoris were or should have been a lesson to the young New Zealanders. Their articulation was perfect. Unfortunately that has been corrupted by their mixing with the slovenly, inaccurate pakeha, The speech I’d like to set up as the standard is that of the BBC announcers, They speak clearly and accurately. Good English undoubtedly, but where did they learn it? In very few cases could you say where. That is what we should aim at: nr ay definite and clear, free from the affectations of the upper-class English, and also from the traces of Cockney accent which, strangely enough, tend to re-appear in our school playgrounds, ot

THOS.

TODD

(Gisborne),