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 d e n i a l , i n r e f u s a l a n d
c o n s e n t , i n e n q u i r y o r in f o r m a t io n , e x a ct l y a s a n a t i v e d o e s .

T h e r ef o re t h e f i rst t h i n g y o u h a ve t o 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!