SPEECH! SPEECH!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 8

SPEECH! SPEECH!

by

A. R.

D. FAIRBURN

ROM time to time onslaughts are made on New Zealand habits of speech-by teachers or visitors to these shores as a rule, but even in one recent instance, in tse editorial columns of a newspaper. There are two things to be said at the outset about these critical attacks: first, that they are fully justified, and secondly, that they have no effect whatever. One would think it would be a simple matter: demonstrate to a man that he is saying "foine" instead of "fine," and he at once corrects his pronunciation, as he might wipe a piece of egg or porridge off his chin when his attention was drawn to it. But this doesn’t work. The mangling and maiming of vowels would seem, in practice, to be more like-what? Nail-biting? .No, the analogy breaks down. Nail-biting is an involuntary habit. Nobody says, or implies, "I’m going on biting my nails, just to show you!" That, more or less, is the sort of attitude New Zealanders adopt, one feels, when they cling to their bad habits of speech in the face of continual criticism. What is the explanation? Partly, I think, an innate feeling that the way a man speaks is an essential part of himself, and that to tamper with it is a sort of dishonesty, like putting the big strawberries on the top of the box, or an affectation, like wearing stovepipe trousers. Just so, we might imagine, one might object to giving too much attention to the cultivation of a moustache, or to taking lessons in the art of love-mak-ing. A certain healthiness and honesty of spirit underlies the New Zealander’s refusal to brush up his vowels and consonants. Nevertheless, he is mistaken. If he can clear his mind of cant, and regard the whole matter in a detached and unselfconscious way, he will see that a

pleasant habit of speech is one aspect of good manners-and good manners do not imply affectation. On the contrary, they imply simplicity, naturalness and restraint (but not constriction). From another point of view, the use of one’s voice is like the use of one’s bodysomething in which one cultivates a certain degree of efficiency through exercise, without making a fetish of it. This revulsion against what is taken to be affectation and "dog" has, I suggest, another aspect, which is a by-pro-duct of our unresolved colonialism. It arises from a self-conscious reaction towards England and Englishness. For the New Zealander, the speech of English people divides itself up into two sections: (1) The various local dialects, which are regarded as being without any special significance; the strongest feeling a New Zealander has towards Cockney or Lancashire speech is one of faint superiority, tinged with amusement; (2) "educated English" speech, which makes the New Zealander feel "uncomfortable. He is conscious that a major social distinction, between upper and lower classes, is being manifested, and he instinctively disapproves of this situation. But he is not aware of the many fine distinctions maintained by Englishmen within the "educated" class, as ways of distinguishing members of sub-groups, repelling gate-crashers, and keeping clear the complicated anatomy of the English caste system. To his ear they all seem alike, and they all seem to be "trying too hard." . The New Zealander’s instinct is right once again, up to a point, A great many "educated Englishmen" do speak with some sort of affectation. More often than not, they are unaware of doing so, because it is the result, not of individual initiative, but of conformity to the manners of a social group. Looked at

from the inside, it seems to the Englishman to be quite natural to do this. To the outsider--the New Zealander who is not strongly conscious of social dis-tinctions-it appears to be affected and "prissy." ‘ Amongst the varieties of "educated English" we find a large number of subtle

variations in intonation and pronunciation. Some do nearly as much violence to the language as does New Zealand speech. But the New Zealander, to whom they all sound alike, tends to have one _ reaction-a fear of imitating them, of thus being guilty of "putting on dog." (Fear breeds, in due course, a measure of hostility.) He therefore clings to his own habits. The only thing an intelligent and self-reliant New Zealander can do in the face of this situation is to be as objective as possible about it. Here is a list of typical pronunciations which he no doubt regards as being abhorrent:

fah repawtid Chemblin todeh attityawd sairious pwodoction pawleece Greht Broot’n eee fire reported Chamberlain today attitude serious production police Great Britain

Agreed that these are enough to set even artificial dentures on edge, Somewhere behind them lurks a desire to be exclusive, to draw aside the hem of the garment-in short, some species of social snobbery. There is another kind of pronunciation adopted by New Zealanders (especially women) who consciously ape what they take to be the superior English manner: praygremme = programme feeth, hape and ~ . cherrity = faith, hope and charity

neh-oo | no mai tahn hahse my town house Admittedly this sort of thing conduces to nausea. But if one dislikes both of the above types of pronunciation, what is one to say about this sort of thing as a possible alternative? Ht tempercher = temperature biologeeee = biology flazz or fleowz = flowers neow = now ice high =. I say absloot = absolute crule = cruel twunny = twenty kymmunity = community yez = years Wullington = Wellington Choosdee = Tuesday feature = future jewing = during wolld = wild To react from one to the other of these extremes is ridiculous. There is such a thing as Standard English, which lies apart from all such inflation or deflation of the currency of the spoken word. What more direct, simple, unaffected way of speaking have we heard than that of the Duke of Edinburgh? I have been talking as if pronunciation were the heart of the matter. Intonation is even more important, but it is too difficult to deal with in cold print. All that need be said here is that the 2xponent of the N’Zillan accent might well abandon his sing-song, slightly hangdog, corner-of-the-mouth way of speaking, which suggests partial or complete paralysis of the larynx, and learn something from the more clear-cut, confident and forthright manner of the "educated Englishman."