Accents―Grave, Acute

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 808, 21 January 1955, Page 11

Accents―Grave, Acute

\ HILE listening to several talks this year, it was borne in upon me how much colour and personality are given to a voice by a distinctive accent. We don’t often hear on our radio the two local extremes-the primary school nasal whine, or the affected, fake-British drawl, which Aucklanders know as the "Remuera lisp." Most of our talks and announcements are given in that neutral, average educated voice, which is clear enough, but tends to be characterless. For me, one of the attractions of BBC programmes is that one never knows quite what accent one is going to hear, whereas a working-class character part in an NZBS play means that a certain able gentleman is going to do his Cockney bit again. So it was pleasing, quite

early in the New Year, to hear Roy Leywood’s reading of Sidney Knight’s Gloucestershire Exile, This strange, moving piece, less like a poem than a piece of ripe prose, would not have been half as effective without Mr. Leywood’s admirably controlled accent, so thoroughly in character, By contrast, Professor Daniells’s interesting talk on Canadian Humour enabled us to hear the educated Canadian voice, less patronising, I think, than the accent of the British don, softer than the American, more harmonious than the New Zealand. Geoffrey Blake-Palmer, in a perceptive talk on What Is Maturity? and Sarah Campion discussing her Cambridge with her usual wit and insight, gave us both sexes of the English voice at its most agreeable. And Barry Linehan, imitating Hugo Bishop, in The Saint at Rotorua, one of Radio Roadhouse’s most inspired moments, provided a neat parody of the languid clubman manner. In addition, the rich Irishry of The Silver Tassie, the Lancashire of Hobson’s Choice, and Wilfrid Pickles’s Yorkshire in The Good Companions, splashed about a variety of vocal colours beside which the careful neutrality of New Zealand _ speakers seemed like a washed-out grey. The one exception was Owen Jensen speaking most entertainingly on that musical queer fish, Erik Satie. Mr. Jensen has an accent unmistakably of this land, yet its distinctive quality can only be described as Jensenist. Which suggests that, after all, while accent and dialect may add interest to a voice, what counts ultimately is personality, which is by no means the inevitable accompaniment of

a "nice" voice.

J.C.

R.