Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
To expect that so ample a cause as this should find any support among
the festering confusion of the old politics is to expect too much. There
is no party for the English language anywhere in the world. We have
to take this problem as we took our former problem and deal with it as
though the old politics, which slough so slowly, were already happily
excised. To begin with, we may give our attention to the foundation of
this foundation, to the growth of speech in the developing child.
From the first the child should hear a clear and uniform pronunciation
about it, a precise and careful idiom and words definitely used. Since
language is to bring people together and not to keep them apart, it
would be well if throughout the English-speaking world there could be
one accent, one idiom, and one intonation. This there never has been
yet, but there is no reason at all why it should not be. There is
arising even now a standard of good English to which many dialects and
many influences are contributing. From the Highlanders and the Irish,
for example, the English of the South are learning the possibilities of
the aspirate _h_ and _wh_, which latter had entirely and the former very
largely dropped out of use among them a hundred years ago. The drawling
speech of Wessex and New England--for the main features of what people
call Yankee intonation are to be found in perfection in the cottages of
Hampshire and West Sussex--are being quickened, perhaps from the same
sources. The Scotch are acquiring the English use of _shall_ and _will,_
and the confusion of reconstruction is world-wide among our vowels. The
German _w_ of Mr. Samuel Weller has been obliterated within the space
of a generation or so. There is no reason at all why this natural
development of the uniform English of the coming age should not be
greatly forwarded by our deliberate efforts, why it should not be
possible within a little while to define a standard pronunciation of
our tongue. It is a less important issue by far than that of a uniform
vocabulary and phraseology, but it is still a very notable need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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