February 08, 2022
9. Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension
(In every country in the world
in which
literature holds a place, the
name of George Bernard Shaw is
well known. No
other writer, except, perhaps, Shakespeare, has earned such world-wide fame. The
following text, which the
literary genius prepared
and spoke on a
‘gramphone’ recording for the
Linguaphone Institute, is
loaded with characteristic
Shavian wit, but with serious purpose behind it all. The provocative ideas are couched in a simple
but sparkling rhetorical style)
I am now going to suppose that you
are a foreign student of the English language; and the that you desire to speak
it well
enough to be
understood when you travel in the
British Commonwealth or in America, or when you meet a native of those countries.
Or it may be that you are yourself a native but that
you speak in a provincial or cockney dialect of which you are a little ashamed,
or which perhaps prevents you from obtaining some employment which is open to
those only who speak
what is called
“correct English”. Now, whether
you are a foreigner or a native, the first thing I must impress on you is
that there is no such thing a ideally correct English. No two
British subjects speak
exactly alike. I am a member of a
committee established by the British Broadcasting Corporation for the purpose of deciding how
the utterances of speakers
employed by the Corporation should be
pronounced in order that they
should be a model of correct speech for the British Islands. All the
members of that Committee are educated persons whose speech would pass as
correct and refined in any society or
any employment in
London. Our chairman
is the Poet Laureate, who is not
only an artist whose materials are the sounds of spoken English, but a
specialist in their pronunciation. One of our members is Sir Johnston Forebes
Robertson, famous not only as an actor but for the beauty of
his speech. I
was selected for
service on the
“Committee because, as a
writer of plays I am accustomed to superintend their rehearsals and to listen
critically to the way in which they are spoken by actors who are by profession trained speakers (being myself
a public speaker of long experience). That committee knows as much as anyone
knows about English speech; and yet
its members do not agree as to the pronunciation of some of the simplest and
commonest words in
the English language.
The two simplest
and commonest words in any language are “yes
and “no”. But no
two members of the committee
pronounce them exactly alike. All that can be said is that every member pronounces them in such a way
tha t they
would not only
be intelligible in every English- speaking
country but would stamp the speaker as cultivated person as distinguished from
an ignorant and illiterate one. You will
say, “well’ that is good enough for me” that is how I desire to speak. “But
which member of
the committee will
you take for
your model? There
are Irish members, Scottish
members, Welsh members, Oxford University members,
American members; all recognizable
as such by their
differences of speech.
they differ also according to the country in which they were born. Now, as they all speak differently,
it is nonsense to say that
they all speak correctly. All
well can claim is that they all
speak presentably, and that if you speak as they do, you will be understood in
any English-speaking country and accepted as person of good social standing. I wish I could offer you
your choice among
them as a mode; but for the moment I am afraid
you must put up with me-an Irishman.
As a public speaker I have
to take care that every word I
say is heard
distinctly at the far end of
large halls s containing
thousand of
people. But at
home, when I have to consider only my
wife sitting within six feet of
me at breakfast, I take so little pains
with my speech that very often
instead of giving me the expected
answer, she says “Don’t mumble; and don’t
turn your head
away when you speak I can’t hear a word you are
saying.” And she
also is a little careless. Sometimes I ha ve to say “What?” two or three times during our meal; and she suspects me of growing deafer
and deafer, though she does
not say so, because, as I am now over seventy, it might be
true.
No doubt I ought to speak
to my wife as
carefully as I should
speak t o a queen, and she to me
as carefully as
she would speak
to a king.
We ought to; but we don’t. (Don’t,” by the way, is short for “do not”.)
We all have company manners and home
manners. If you were to call on a strange family and to listen through the ke
yhole – not that I would suggest for a moment that you are capable for doing
such a very unladylike or
ungentleman like thing; but still – if, in you enthusiasm for studying languages
you could bring
yourself to do it just for a few seconds to hear how a family speak to one another when there is nobody else
listening to them, and then walk into
the room and hear how very
differently they speak in your
presence, the change would surprise you. Even when our home
manners are as
good as our company manners – and of course they
ought to be much better
– they are always different;
and the difference is greater is speech than in anything else.
Suppose
I forget to
wind my watch, and it stops, I have
to ask somebody to tell me the
time. If I ask a stranger, I say “What O’clock is it?” the stranger hears every syllable distinctly. But if I ask my wife, all she hears
is ‘cloxst.’ That is good enough
for her; but it would not be good enough for you. So I am
speaking to you now much more carefully than I speak to
her; but please don’t tell her!
I am now going to address myself especially to my
foreign hearers. I have
to give them another warning of quite a different kind. If
you are leaning
English because you intend to travel
in England and wish
to be understood
there, do not try to speak
English perfectly, because, if you
do, no one will understand you.
I have
already explained
that though there is
no such thing
as perfectly correct English, there is presentable English which we call
“Good English”; but in London nine hundred and ninety nine out of every
thousand people not only speak bad English but speak even that very badly. You
may say that even if they do not speak English well themselves they can at
least understand it when it is well spoken. They can when the speaker is English; but when the speaker is a
foreigner, the better he speaks, the harder it is to understand him. No foreigner can ever stress the syllables and make the voice
rise and fall in question and
answer, assertion and denial, in
refusal and consent, in
enquiry or information,
exactly as a native does.
Therefore
the f irst thing you
have to do is to speak with a strong foreign accent, and speak broken
English: that is, English
without any grammar. Then every English person to whom
you speak will at
once know that you are a
foreigner, and try to
understand you and be ready to help
you. He will not expect you to be polite and to use elaborate
grammatical phrases. He will be interested in you because
you are a
foreigner, and pleased by
his cleverne ss in making out your meaning
and being able to
tell you what
you want to know.
If you say “Will you have the goodness, Sir, to direct me to the railway terminus
at Charing Cross,” pronouncing all the vowels and consonants beautifully, he
will not understand you, and will suspect
you of being
a beggar or a confidence
trickster. But if you
shout, ‘please! Charing
Cross! Which way!” You will have no difficulty. Half a
dozen people will immediately overwhelm you with directions.
Even in private intercourse
with cultivated
people you must
not speak too well: Apply
this to your
attempts to learn
foreign languages, and
never try to speak them to well: and
do not be afraid to travel. You
will
be surprised to find how little you need to know or how
badly you ma y pronounce.
Even among English people, to
speak too well is a pedantic
affectation. In a
foreigner it is something worse then an affectation: it is
an insult to the native who cannot
understand his own language when it
is too well spoken. That
is all I can tell you:
the record will hold no
more. Good- bye!
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