English Spoken Here

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 12

English Spoken Here

THE STORY OF ENGLISH, by Mario Pei; Allen and Unwin, English price 21/-.

(Reviewed

by

I.A.

G.

NGLISH, spoken by 250 million of the earth’s inhabitarts is numerically the second language of the world. But no one (not even the 450 million speakers of Chinese) will convince the 250 million that English is other than the leading language. Mario Pei in this fascinating atid well-written book tells its story in three parts, the past, the present and the future. The past-the linguistic history of English-used to’ belong exclusively to the philologists. But one of the most interesting movements in recent years has been the popularisation of the findings of two hundreds of years of philology. Men and women, who are repelled by such terms as vowel-shift and mutation, will listen with rapt attention to the histories of words and sounds if they are presented with the minimum of technical language. Pei is a populariser and a good one. He has the background of philology for the job but he wears his learning lightly and his history of how our language came to be what it is, a mighty tongue with a word-hoard of a million words, is told with accuracy but with never a dull page. Pei’s section on the present is concerned with the many problems that puzzle thoughtful people everywhere. And the number of these thoughtful people is very considerable. Slang. and its place, officialese and gobbledygook, the problem of dialects, the problem of "Standard English," the problem of contractions and many others are all given a fresh and sensible treatment. Pei-is an American, and I suspect that English was not his first tongue. Speakers and writers on the English language whose original tongue was not the language they now use can have a great advantage over native scholars. They see-and sometimes solve -- problems that the native speaker does not even notice. It is always’ well to remember that the best grammar of the English language was written by a Scandinavian. In many ways the most interesting section is that on the future. The author considers the likelihood that English will eventually become a world language, faces fairly and squarely the difficulties, from politics to non-phonetic spelling, that tend to prevent its further spread, but in the end cannot help but be impressed by the momentum which seems to be increasing every day. But although Pei is forced by the evidence to come down heavily on the side of English, he sounds a note of warning which we’ should all heed: as English spréads over the whole world as a medium for commerce and administration, as it tioves to new areas where a minimum knowledge is essential for successful living; an increasing responsibility is thrown on those of us in the British Commonwealth and "Aimerica for whom English is a native tongue. It is for the native speakers of English (and speakers here include — writets) to see that this remarkable tool of communication with its rich history and heritage does not suffer by their own handling. We owe it to our language to use words with grace and precision.

Any old language is not good enough, even if it appears to do the job. You can turn a screw with a chisel because you are too lazy to look for the screwdriver. But what happens to the chisel?