Oh, Why Can't the English?
Oh, Why Can't the English?
Perhaps I am feeling rather cross today. At any rate, I took grim satisfaction when I found this quote from Friedrich Von Schlegel: “Every man of education should make it his unceasing concern to preserve his language pure and entire, to speak its beauty and perfection.”
I certainly can’t be the only one disgusted with the slang of today! Really, why can’t most of us speak proper English? Where has the beauty and courtliness of our language disappeared? I am half-persuaded that someone dies an agonizing death every time a teenager drawls, “Yeah, that’s, like, so cool, man.” (And since when have we forgotten how to use the dictionary and thesaurus? And doesn’t everyone at least have a spell-check on their computer?)
Here is the final indignity: SAT essays and business resumes (the latter, I presume, written by schooled adults) written with text-messaging jargon. Where has the world gone? I must confess, though, that I hardly reach my own ideal, and am currently on a quest to wean myself from such words as (and I really am blushing!) “cool,” “neat,” and “yeah.”
I shall leave it to Professor Higgins of “My Fair Lady” to conclude with his apt assessment of the matter:
An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he speaks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian,
The Greeks have taught their Greek.
In France, every Frenchman knows his language from “A” to “Zed.”
(The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.)
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning,
And the Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening.
- But speak proper English, you’re regarded as a freak!
Oh, why can’t the English! - why can’t the English learn to speak?
Lyrics: “Why Can’t the English?” from “My Fair Lady” (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), a Broadway musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion,”
Photograph: Eliza. © Warner.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007