WELL SPOKEN
How marvellous it seems, you young Announcers, that each place should have its Name spoken trippingly on the tongue- Rzhev, or Mal') Yaroslavetz. Polysyllabic be the siege, Sesquipedalian the sally, Its name is borne to every liege Impeccable accentually.
The sheltered journalist, remote Within his print-protected stronghold, Cares not if tongue (or teeth, or throat) Of foreign place-names takes a wrong hold ;
And if he should slip up and fall
In some hard orthographic winter, He really does not mind at all For he can blame it on the printer.
But you brave men must face adept Battalions of linguistic snipers Whose expert ears will not accept An easy compromise, like Wipers ; But who would to the Press protest That they will suffer pain stomachic, Unless Bardia's rightly stressed, Unless Sarawak's amphibrachic?
May you soon have to state, with ease, How Russians passed in their reprisal. That consonant-congeries Of the last war (and this) Przemysl, And have to clear your throats each day In the news-bulletins, to state your War-shattered cities' long array Of a more guttural nomenclature!
J. B. N.
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