American Language Supplement 2
Page 5
In the early days of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a government monopoly, most of its announcers and commentators affected a somewhat extreme form of Oxford English. There were, in consequence, a great many protests from listeners in the North of England and in Scotland and Ireland, to whom this dialect was as strange, and indeed as offensive, as it would have been to Americans. In response to their protests the BBC appointed, in 1926, an Advisory Committee on Spoken English headed by the Poet Laureate, Dr. Robert Bridges, organizer in 1913 of the Society for Pure English4 and a diligent student of speechways. The other members were Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Logan Pearsall Smith, Daniel Jones, A. Lloyd James and George Bernard Shaw. On the death of Bridges, in 1930, Shaw succeeded him as chairman, and in 1933 the committee was considerably enlarged. It has since included representatives of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and among its members have been H. C. K. Wyld,1 S. K. Ratcliffe, Rose Macaulay, Lord David Cecil, Lady Cynthia Asquith, Lascelles Abercrombie and I. A. Richards. It now includes four so-called consultant members, all of them professional phonologists. When the BBC wants advice about the pronunciation of a given word or group of words it is submitted to these consultants, and they formulate their recommendation. This recommendation is then considered by the full committee, which, if it agrees, relays it to the BBC, which in turn announces what it is, thus giving all interested persons a chance to approve or protest before it is put into effect. The consultants have leaned, generally speaking, to the Southern form of English, but some of the members of the general committee, e.g., Shaw and Bridges, have been tart critics of it, and in consequence modifications of it have been tolerated. Beginning in 1928 the BBC has printed a number of pamphlets listing the committee’s recommendations.2 Candidates for jobs as announcers are selected very carefully and put through rigid examinations. Each is asked to read, before a microphone, a short news bulletin, an S.O.S. in French, a programme of music in French, German and Italian, and a piece of literary prose. There is a professional phonetician in attendance, and he reports to a board of BBC officials as to whether
1. the candidate’s voice is of good microphone quality;
2. it is free of speech defects, however small;
3. his pronunciation is likely to be intelligible to all listeners;
4. he reads the foreign languages tolerably; and
5. he reads intelligently.
One of the consultants, the late A. Lloyd James, professor of phonetics at the School of Oriental Studies, London, reported that “most candidates fail in this test.” Many, he said, are rejected “because their English accent is … too much like what is sometimes called haw-haw” i.e., the extreme form of the Oxford accent. “The standard of performance in foreign languages,” he added, “is usually exceedingly low, even in the case of university men with degrees in modern languages.” The most expected of them, when it comes to German and Italian, is that they should know “more or less how intelligent people who talk about music and have a general knowledge of what is passing in the world pronounce the names of German and Italian composers, authors, politicians and scholars.” But “during a period of three years, during which at least fifty candidates were heard, all but one were floored by Gianni Schicchi.”1 Those who pass this test are taken on as probationers and put to school to experts in English and the various foreign languages. If, after three months, they seem to be giving satisfactory service they get permanent jobs. About half of them have been through public schools (in the English sense) and either one or the other of the two older universities.
As I have said, the committee has included, from time to time, members who were by no means enamoured of Oxford English. So long ago as 1910, sixteen years before he was recruited, Dr. Bridges had described this dialect as “a degraded form of English.”2 What chiefly aroused his indignation was its slaughter of the final r in such words as danger, pleasure, character and terror. Not only, he pointed out, was the consonant obliterated, but the verbs preceding it were given the nondescript sound often described as neutral, such as appears, for example, in thuh for the. Thus danger became something on the order of danguh and pleasure became pleasuh. “Many of these corrupted vowels,” he said, “are still carefully pronounced in the north of the island.3 We have only to recognize the superiority of the northern pronunciation and encourage it against London vulgarity, instead of assisting London jargon to overwhelm the older tradition, which is quite as living.4 If one of the two is to spread at the expense of the other, why not assist the better rather than the worse? A Londoner will say that a Scotchman1 talks strangely and ill: the truth is that he himself is in the typical attitude of vulgar ignorance in these matters.” He seems to have been outvoted in many of the decisions of the BBC committee, and in 1929 he printed a somewhat elaborate criticism of its first list of pronunciations.2 In support of this criticism he recruited an advisory committee of his own, including Lord Balfour, Lord Grey of Fallodon, Earl Russell, H. G. Granville-Barker and C. T. Onions. But the end result was not of much importance, for though one or another of these advisers objected to 99 of the 322 pronunciations listed, only 29 of them were opposed by two or more of the committeemen, and none was opposed by all five. Shaw seems to have had no part in this effort to police policemen. He occasionally broke into the newspapers with general assaults upon Oxford English,3 but it was seldom possible to make out just what he objected to. Another Irish playwright, St. John Ervine, was a great deal more forthright. In a series of articles contributed to London newspapers from 1926 to 1938,4 he argued that the Oxford pronunciation was, in large part, no more than glorified Cockney. “The English,” he said in one of these diatribes,
are a lazy lot, and will not speak a word as it should be spoken when they can slide through it. Why be bothered to say extraordinary when you can get away with strawdiny?… Many of the Oxford Cockneys are weaklings too languid or emasculated to speak their noble language with any vigor, but the majority are following a foolish fashion which had better be abandoned. Its ugliness alone should make it unpopular, but it has the additional effect of causing confusion.
In another paper he quoted with approving gloats a piece of doggerel by an Ulster poetess named Miss Ruth Duffin, entitled “A Petition From the Letter R to the BBC,” in part as follows:
O culcha’d rulahs of the aia,
Listen to my humble praya!
There was a time when I knew my place,
But lately I have fallen from grace.…
I used to be alive in modern,
But now I find it rhymes with sodden.…
I cannot beah to heah of waw.
It irritates me maw and maw.
Anathemar on him who slays
His native tongue in suchlike ways!
Lawds of Culchah, lend an eah
And my sad petition heah.
Rescue me from this disgrace
And I shall be, aw neah aw fah,
Your slave the Letter R (or Ah).
Various other Britons, including not a few 100% Englishmen, have taken equally vicious hacks at the Oxford dialect. Some of them, e.g., Wyndham Lewis, Sir John Foster Fraser, Richard Aldington, Dr. J. Y. T. Greig and H. W. Seaman, are quoted in AL4.1 I add a few more at random:
Gomer LI. Jones, of the National Council of Music, University of Wales: There is absolutely no comparison, in my opinion, between the virility of American and the emasculated insipidity of “standard English.”2
James Howard Wellard: Genuine Oxonian simply cannot make accentual concessions. It keeps on with its impeccable bleating, whatever the company or whatever the circumstances. “But, my deah chap, dewnt you ralize …” It can be imitated quite well by placing a small round stone beneath the tongue, thrusting in the chin, and enunciating the words with a painful meticulousness.3
Campbell Dixon: Nine British films out of ten are unacceptable to America.… What maddens Americans is the thin,
high-pitched bleat that a certain type of person associates with culture and a great many others with effeminacy. It would be a shock to a number of actors and actresses to know how many people in this country heartily agree with America.4
Nathaniel Gubbins: The American accent is … not nearly so funny as the dull buzzing that passes for conversation in rural England, the self-conscious “refinement” of Kensington Cockney, the strangled accents of English parsons, and the shrill screaming of the English upper class.5
George Bernard Shaw: Over large and densely populated districts of Great Britain [the Oxford accent] irritates some listeners to the point of switching off, and infuriates others so much that they smash their wireless sets because they cannot smash the Oxonian.1
I might extend considerably the quotation of such blasts, but it would probably serve no useful purpose, for they come from Boeotia. Nearly all the accepted speech experts of England stand up bravely for Oxford English, or for something closely resembling it. Dr. Daniel Jones, professor of phonetics at University College, London, describes it complacently as the Received Pronunciation, and says that it is the form “usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English people who have been educated at the public schools,”2 among “those who do not come from the South of England but who have been educated in these schools,” and “to an extent which is considerable though difficult to specify from natives of the South of England who have not been educated at these schools.”3 He disclaims any intent to depict it “as intrinsically better or more beautiful than any other form of pronunciation,” but all the same he is for it.4 So is his pupil and disciple, Peter A. D. MacCarthy, lecturer in phonetics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.5 So, too, though with certain prudent reservations, was his late colleague on the BBC board, A. Lloyd James, professor of phonetics at the same.6 So, again, is T. Nicklin, warden of Hulme Hall, Manchester.7 So, yet again, is Dr. R. W. Chapman, secretary to the delegates of the Oxford University Press and an active member of the Society for Pure English.1 So, to make an end, was the late Henry Cecil Wyld, professor of the English language and literature at Oxford, and author of many books on the history of English speech.2 Wyld said that it might be called Good English, Well-bred English or Upper-class English, but preferred to call it simply Received Standard English.3 He described it as “easy, unstudied and natural,” with “sonorous” vowels, each of them clearly differentiated from all the others, diphthongs of high “carry-power and dignity,” and consonants which need no bush. It is the speech, he said, of
speakers who do not need to take thought for their utterance; they have no theories as to how their native tongue should be pronounced, nor do they reflect upon the sounds they utter. They have perfect confidence in themselves, in their speech, as in their manners. For both bearing and utterance spring from a firm and gracious tradition. “Their fathers have told them” – that suffices. Nowhere does the best that is in English culture find a fairer expression than in R.S. speech.4
Wyld, so far as I know, never ventured into the American wilderness, but Jones made the trip in 1925 and James in 1936. Jones came over to give a course in phonetics at Smith College, and seems to have made a hit with the ladies of the faculty, for one of them testified afterward that he was very polite about American English and “never antagonized the most tender-minded of us.”5 James was imported by the Rockefeller Foundation, which was then consecrating “some of its dollars to the cause of improving English diction.”6 He conferred with the authorities of “both major broadcasting chains,” listened to the pronunciation of Hollywood actors, and investigated the possibility that short-wave broadcasting, still a novelty in 1936, might eventually iron out the differences between English and American pronunciation. “Everybody,” he said, “seems to be terribly afraid of standardization of the spoken language.… But modern communications demand standardization. Our railway gauges are standardized, our voltages are standardized. The motor industry could not have achieved its energy or have brought us the benefits we have enjoyed from it without standardization.” But by standardization he apparently meant a considerable degree of submission to the English standard, and there is no record that he got any encouragement for this, or that his visit had any other substantial effect. He said:
In Britain our better class schools and our universities make it one of their cardinal principles to train people for the public service. It is from their graduates that we have long been accustomed to draw our parliamentarians and to staff our Civil Service, and it is from this reservoir of talent that the BBC has selected its announcers and commentators. Such an idea does not seem to hold quite so prominent a place among the American people as with us.1
What such trainees speak is obviously a class dialect, and the fact had been noted by nearly all the British phoneticians, including James himself. Writing a year before his American trip he had said:
Here, as in every other aspect of social behavior, although much latitude is allowed, there are some things that simply are not done. You may show a fine independence by wearing Harris tweeds on occasions that are generally regarded as unsuitable, but you dare not wear brown shoes with a morning coat. So you may scatter your intrusive r’s as you please, but you had better not call the brown cow a bre-oon ce-oo, or ask for a cup of cowcow. It isn’t done, and that is the end of the matter.2
Two years later he returned to the subject, as follows:
It is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the child who speaks broad Cockney to pass into the Higher Civil Service or to become a shop assistant in a smart West End shop, despite the fact that he may become a man for a’ that, and notwithstanding that she may become a very estimable woman for a’ that.3
Wyld, in 1920, had described what he called Received Standard English as “the product of social conditions,” and had shown how its origins went back to the Sixteenth Century, when, for the first time, “difference was recognized between upper-class English and the language of the humbler order of people.”1 It was, he said, by no means a regional dialect, despite the fact that it was often called Southern English. It was actually spoken by the upper social class, with inconsiderable local modifications, all over England. “Perhaps the main factor in this singular degree of uniformity,” he went on, “is the custom of sending youths from certain social strata to the great public schools. If we were to say that Received English is Public School English we should not be far wrong.”2 Palmer, Martin and Blandford, in 1926, described it as “a special sort of dialect that is independent of locality,”3 and H. C. Macnamara, in 1938, as “the language necessary for all English boys who aspire to be archbishops, field-marshals, Lords of Appeal, butlers and radio announcers.”4 Macnamara’s mention of butlers was a true hit, for the fashionable English pronunciation falls very short of being learned. Indeed, some of its characteristics suggest the paddock far more forcibly than they suggest the grove of Athene. Nor does every Englishman of high position affect it. One of those who departs from it very noticeably is the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII.5 Even Winston Churchill, though he kept close enough to it in his heyday to enrapture American Anglomaniacs, ameliorated its rigors sufficiently to avoid alarming the plain people.1 Roosevelt II, whose native speech was a somewhat marked form of the Harvard-Hudson Valley dialect, toned it down with similar discretion when he spoke to his lieges, and his caressing rayon voice did the rest.2
The nature of the differences between Wyld’s Received Standard English and the prevailing General American have been discussed at length by various authorities, but by none more comprehensively than by Palmer, Martin and Blandford in their before mentioned “Dictionary of English Pronunciation With American Variants.”3 They distinguish twelve major variants and fourteen minor ones, and for the 20,000-odd terms (including inflections and derivatives) that they list in their vocabulary they note differences in more than 5,000. Their twelve major variants may be reduced to six classe
s, as follows:
1. The English o in such words as hot, box and stop becomes, in General American “a vowel more or less approximating” the broad English a of ask and path.
2. This English a is replaced by a flat a in both of these words, and also in many others, e.g., half, brass and last.
3. The r following vowels, whether or not it is itself followed by consonants, is pronounced more clearly than in English.
4. There is a difference between the English u in such words as hurry, worry and thorough and the prevailing American u.4
5. The -ary at the end of a word has a clear a sound, whereas the English reduce it to the neutral vowel or omit it altogether.
6. So with -ory.
Palmer and his collaborators also note many minor variants, e.g., the English pronunciation of clerk as clark, of ate as et (a vulgarism in the United States), of lieutenant as leftenant, and of schedule with its first syllable showing the sh of she. They also note the regional differences to be found in the Boston-New York area and in the South. Finally, they show that it is sometimes difficult to find any logical pattern or general tendency in a major variation between English and American speech. Thus, if we take the sentence, “Mr. Martin of Birmingham,” and ask an Englishman and an American to speak it, the Englishman will reduce the -ham of Birmingham to a sort of ’m but pronounce the second syllable of Martin distinctly, whereas the American will reduce Martin to Mart’n but give a clear pronunciation to the -ham. Here Englishman and American head both ways, and without apparent rhyme or reason.1 It would not be difficult, indeed, to make up a short list of words in which the General American pronunciation is what one might expect to find in Standard English, and vice versa. This is true even in the matter of stress, where there are plenty of exceptions to the stronger American tendency to throw the accent forward. But in general the prevailing tendencies in the two forms of the language are pretty well maintained, both in the values given to letters and in the placing of stress. Thus when an American hears laboratory or doctrinal with the accent on the second syllable and artisan or intestinal with the accent on the third,1 he gathers at once that he is not listening to a compatriot. In this field even the most colonial-minded Bostonian commonly speaks American. He may sometimes go beyond the English themselves in his dealing with the a, as for example, in drahmatize, which has a flat a in English, though drama has a broad one, and gas-mask, in which gas is not gahs in England but plain gas, though mask is mahsk; but he seldom ventures to the length of putting the accent on the last syllable of etiquette or the third syllable of fantasia, or the second of rotatory and miscellany.2