MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON IHAVE often felt that of all languages the English language must be the most difficult to learn. Even as our political institutions and our social manners, it is based, not so much upon clearly defined rules, as upon a highly intricate convention. The intricacy of this convention is not always apparent to ourselves ; but to a foreigner it appears as complicated and as meaningless as the maze at Hampton Court. No other language that I know of reflects so clearly, both in vocabulary and intonation, the numerous class distinctions into which our still stratified society is divided. I admit that in every language there exists a difference between the accent and vocabulary of the educated classes and those of the proletariat ; a porter from Menilmontant does not speak the same sort of French as that so exquisitely spoken by the Duc d'Aumale. Yet no other language, unless it be Chinese, possesses so many subtle and humiliating grada- tions. A trained elocutionist can detect whether an individual was educated at Eton, Harrow, Malvern or a Council School ; he can note whether a man has lived much in Northern Ireland or in Wales; and he can appreciate the subtle differences which proclaim a man a student of Oxford, Cambridge or the combined English Universities. Even to the untutored ear there is a subtle class distinction in the pronunciation of such words as " real " or " controversy " or " colleague." I have heard it said, with what truth I know not, that candidates for the post of B.B.C. announcers are asked to read a slip on which are written the words, " This is a real reel of cotton." If they fail to mark the distinction, then they fail to qualify as exponents of B.B.C. English. Other shades of pronunciation, such as our em- ployment of U sounds and our use of the unrutilated R, must to the foreign student be sources of endless complexity and distress. To give the precise intonation to the word " here " must be as difficult for a foreigner as it is for us to pronounce the German schwer. These gradations of accent are an evil in our modern society ; they cause quite unnecessary feelings of inferiority and irritation ; and they are a real impediment to the creation of a classless and unified community.
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The subtle vowel sounds of which any language is composed depend for their correct pronunciation upon certain adjustments of the larynx and the lips ; as such they can rarely be acquired after childhood. I have observed, moreover, that English children who have had the benefit of a French nurse or governess will, on reaching school, take immense pains to forget their French accent for fear of becoming conspicuous or of showing off. Yet—such is thg force of labial or laryngal habits contracted in childhood—these very children, on leaving school, will quite soon recapture the intonation of their early years. In my own schooldays practically no attempt at all was made to teach us to pronounce these languages correctly ; they taught us French and German with the same sturdy indifference to, or ignorance of, the spoken words with which they taught us Greek and Latin. Today this has all changed. The gramophone, the linguaphone and the wireless have enabled us to soak our ears in the intonations of a foreign tongue. There is no reason today why a person who has never set foot in France or Spain should not acquire a fluent and valuable command of French or Spanish. A few sensible hints might assist his listening. It is a great help, for instance, to be told that the French diphthong ai, as in j'aime, possesses a short rather than a long note. It is a help also to realise that the French scan their syllables quite differently. We say " Cal-ais," " Par-is " or " cat-al-ogue." They say " Ca-lais," " Pa-ris," and " ca-ta-logue." I was never told this simple fact. It took me many years of mis- pronunciation to find it out.
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Not that any nice English boy or girl should aspire to " speak French like a Frenchman." That would be a most affected thing to do. Bismarck was not talking utter nonsense when he advised one of his Ambassadors " always to mistrust an Englishman who speaks French well." It is very bad for people to be bilingual ; it produces a dichotomy in the mind ; it is apt to give these bilinguists an ex- aggerated conception of their own ability ; and it is a source of irrita- tion and distress to their friends. But it is in truth an agreeable and formative thing to be able to speak and read a foreign language with complete ease and to reach that level of competence which enables one to understand and to be understood without any conscious mental effort. It is for this reason that I feel such sympathy for the foreign student who struggles to achieve this level of competence in the English language. He has to cope in the first place with a pro- nunciation which bears but little relation to the written word ; and he has to understand the vast difference which exists between literary English and the English of conversation, between the scholarly and the demotic. If he be a wise foreign student he will studiously avoid all attempts at slang, since slang is the most volatile of all verbal fashions and the slang of 1947 will be outmoded or even incompre- hensible to the conversationalist of 1962. Yet even if he avoids these incidental pitfalls, what huge chasms of difficulty will open for him along his hard and narrow path! I have been reading this week an admirable little book entitled English. A Handbook for the Foreigner. It is written by Erich Lewy and Walter Percival, and is published by Longmans Green and Co. It is an illuminating book.
* * * * When one reads this manual one becomes aware of the utterly illogical structure of our language. It might be thought, for instance, that the use of the definite or indefinite article was one of the simplest of all constructions. But not at all. The authors of this handbook point out, for instance, that in colloquial English we say, " What fun! " but do not say, "What a fun! ". Now why do we not say, " What a fun! "? I have no idea at all. Foreigners who speak our language imperfectly make more mistakes about the use of the definite and indefinite article than about almost any other of our intricacies. I do not blame them ; the whole matter seems to be governed by a convention and not a rule. What terrible problems must assail the foreign student in regard to our use of prepositions, our odd handling of the possessive case, and our use of the same word to mean different things ! But all this can be as nothing to the utterly illogical manner in which we employ prepositions as suffixes. I am not by any means a grammarian and I may be using the wrong term. But surely no other language (not even German) has such wild fun with its prepositions. Imagine yourself a foreign student having, on principles of grammar and syntax, to explain and re- member why the following simple phrases mean something wholly different : " To take a girl out " ; " To take a girl in " ; " To take
someone up " ; " To take someone off " ; " To take someone down." Imagine that some foreign student asks you earnestly to explain the
use of the preposition " off." How could you, with any accuracy, answer such a question? You would be unable to answer it. And indeed I doubt whether even a grammarian could give a short and
comprehensive explanation. I am glad therefore that I am not an Iranian or Czechoslovak student of the age of eighteen who has been sent to London to master the intricacies of our English tongue.
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London is not kind or hospitable to the foreign visitor. In Con- tinental capitals he can sit for hours at some cafe and feel that he is a part of the community around him ; in London his sad feet echo upon the pavement and lead him past frontages which are closed and cold. Mr. Lewy and Mr. Percival warn the foreign student against our reserved manners and our " unenterprising " food. They suggest that there is some rich and homely inner secret which, when once a student has mastered the language, bp will be privileged to penetrate. But will he? What impression can the foreign student, in his hostel or his boarding house, derive of our calm private ways? All that he sees are great crowds shuffling patiently ; for him there are no crumpets or country lanes. From time to time he will be asked to a party. He will stand around munching sandwiches and sipping tea. And he will walk away, as his feet echo on the cold pavement, with the belief that our hearts are as impenetrable as our language.
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