HOW TO SPEAK
Sir,-"Homey" (Christchurch) or any other person who gets the urge to kill a fellow man because of his pronunciation should be locked up. ‘The trouble
with "Homey" is that he still has the "Exile from England" complex, and if his intention is to live here, the sooner he identifies himself with New Zealand life the better. I wonder what he thinks the New Zealander feels like when he first visits the United Kingdom and listens to the mutilated speech talked all over the country and still called English. I do not object to this multiplicity of pronunciation and dialect personally, but I always wonder why English people who speak with so many assorted tongues have the hide to come here and criticise unkindly New Zealand English speech. Standard English, talked by what is called "the best people" is really an artificial speech, learned parrot-fashion, and patterned in the same mould, until its exponents are letter perfect, but it always retains a ram-rod quality, easily identified. As a boy I was taught to say ate, so much disliked by "Homey" and that was not in this country, so New Zealanders are not the only persons who pronounce after this fashion. Has "Homey" never heard ate (to rhyme with gate) in the U.K.? New Zealand is not England, and here the English language is bound to develop on different lines, influenced by spelling to some extent, and environment. "Homey" seems to imagine that father is always pronounced fahdher, and lather as ladher, whereas they usually rhyme with blather, and I suspect that the "inventors" he talks about really meant it to be faeder or fahder. Co-vent or Covent do not matter much. If a corruption of convent, the pronunciation with -vent seems in order, but would "Homey" seriously suggest that Magdalen is correctly pronounced as Maudlin, and that New Zealanders should say Hahford, Kezzik, Marrilibun, Grinny, Hahdn, Hobun, etc.? Probably the laziness or slovenliness of the local inhabitants set the standard. Anyhow, they may call them what they like, others will continue to do likewise. The English lahguage is not the sole possession of the people born in England.
ARGOSY
(Te Awamutu). =
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470131.2.10.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 397, 31 January 1947, Page 16
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363HOW TO SPEAK New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 397, 31 January 1947, Page 16
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