Sir,-In The Listener for July 25 Mr. Fairburn says, "Any English-speaking Scotsman or Itishman speaks infinitely better English than the great majority of expensively-educated southern Englanders." That is corroborated by YVY. in the Stevenson Bookman (1913), page 13: "So long as Lowland Scotch survives .... a Scots student will seek
out the purest examplars with a singleness of eye by us unattainable." Of course Y.Y. refers to writing and Mr. Fairburn to speaking, but both have noticed what I call "the unidiomatic precision of a foreigner." I noticed that first when I was at school. We had a Frenchman to teaci us French and a German to teach German and if either was absent the other could take his place. We found it delightfully easy to follow the Frenchman speaking German or the German speaking French, I think the reason lies on the surface. Among your own people you speak the colloquial language and you speak it with a rhythm peculiar to your town class cr your own district, but to a foreigner you use his written language and you speak it carefully and accurately, When I reached Gisborne in 1890 I was struck by the beautiful English spoken by the well-bred, half-caste girls who had been to Te Aute College. There again you have "the unidiomatic precision of the foreigner." Their English accent was perfect because they were not English.
THOS
TODD
(Gisborne).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 425, 15 August 1947, Page 5
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233Untitled New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 425, 15 August 1947, Page 5
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