Better Speech

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 449, 30 January 1948, Page 8

Better Speech

ILDA FANCOURT’S Monday morning talks from 2YA, The Way to Good Speech, are noteworthy in that they are among the few modern examples of sessions requesting audience participation. In the good old days when radio was new it was fairly common (if one can go by humorous recitations still extant) to broadcast morning exercise sessions befote breakfast, when all the family (or so the optimistic announcer appeared to believe) assembled in the ‘radio room and raised -obedient legs in time to the music. Lacking Hooperating, it was impossible to gauge audience response and listeners may have been as uncooperative as cinema audiences when words are flashed on the screen to be shouted in chorus, and the only fun the audience derives is from the announcer’s blissful unconsciousness of the fiasco. Mrs. Fancourt, however, had more chance of getting cooperation from her housewife, since she succeeded in her first two talks in putting forward a convincing case for ‘more careful and more melodiaé speech, and once convinced of the necessity for

"sighing about the house and talking to yourself" the solitary housewife is unlikely to have to suffer the sneers of the unconverted. However, I thought Mrs. Fancourt’s third talk, "Vowels and Consonants," far less helpful than the preceding ones, largely because she sacrificed clearness in an effort to avoid technicality, and found difficulty in cramming the whole scale of vowel and consonant sa into her brief 15 minutes. Mrs. Fancourt’s best weapon in her fight for better speech is her very pleasant and melodious speaking voice.