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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 5

Sir-I have thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Fairburn’s articles on Spoken English and Miss Marsh’s contribution too. They prompt me to try and make several small points. (a) The Standard English Mr, Fairburn likes is undoubtedly the stage speech which post Great War actors strove.to attain. It was mostly a process of ruthless pruning. It was the boast of a good actor that one could not "place" him, i.€., detect locality, school or university, in his voice. For instance, how many would recognise the background of Lancashire in Donat or

Yorkshire in Mason. (b) The ear develops sensitivity if ‘one is interested in speech, but also, paradoxically enough, the voice becomes far from immune to environment and becomes positively allergic to local accent. Your correspondent R. G. B. Lawson unwittingly illustrates this. Alister Cooke comes from Manchester. At Cambridge he acted and modelled himself on Shaw’s Higgins (Pygmalion) till he could "place" the voice of any of his fellows with amazing accuracy. Rid of a slight Lancashire accent he spoke standard English. Now some years later he is accepted as being unmistakably American. I too once purged the Yorkshire from my voice and spoke tolerable standard English, only to hear myself the other day in a recorded broadcast telling the children to "Gow" (as in cow). (c) I can, I think, detect an Otago voice sometimes,,but otherwise no local flavour here. This idea is borne out by the remarkably uniform accent and intonation of the wartime broadcasts of thousands of New Zealand voices in With the Boys Overseas. And yet I have a Swedish friend who is an expert, complete with recordings, in the various dialects of Suffolk, a rural area about the size of Taranaki. He can place people village by village. The BBC however is wreaking its havoc on many of the local dialects. I have heard school children in Norfolk correct themselves, abandoning rather pleasant local sounds for far from standard BBC ones. (d) I think New Zealanders just do not mind about voices-they just -accept them, We have many who can

mimic excellently so we cannot be deaf. There is perhaps some "inverted snobbery" which dislikes careful speech, but it is unconscious and whether it matters is not for me to say. Those who do not enjoy the spoken word miss a possible pleasure. Of course the Maori knows this pleasure and can speak the imported tongue with more taste and accuracy than most of the importers.

PHILIP A.

SMITHELLS

(Wellington)