Spell it like you say it… wonderful!
It reminded me of when we needed to get cornices for finishing off our ceiling and our supplier kept calling them cornishes. It’s enough to make you wake up with a cold sweat in the middle of the night, with visions of lines of roaches and rats putting on napkins as they greedily eye your pastry-lined ceiling.
Having acquired most of my vocabulary from reading, I sometimes get pronunciation horribly wrong, and my wife laughs cruelly. When I try broach the subject of the emotional pain she’s causing, she gives me that withering “I’m not your mother look” (which I’m sure she and her friends practice when they have a sleepover or go away for a ladies’ weekend).
I taught English and French for a good twenty years, but I’m not a linguistic snob. This cannot be said of the French. They established the Academie Francaise in 1635, to define and protect the French language. They have 40 elected members who are called “the immortals”, which tells you all you need to know. The vigorous attempts to keep the language pure from the corrosive effects of foreign devils, like English words, have proved about as effective as spitting into Hurricane Hilda (I can hear past “immortals” oxymoronically turning in their graves).
As for the English, they also have their linguistic champions. The brilliant writer George Bernard Shaw was equally meticulous about the English language, but for the sake of clarity more than snobbery. He bemoaned antiquated spelling that had long lost connection with how words are actually pronounced.
In his will, he left prize money for a competition to create a new alphabet, with at least forty letters to uniquely match the 40 possible English sounds. The prize money was claimed and the 48-letter Shavian alphabet exists, but getting it adopted is another spitting into the wind.
In addition to his Nobel Prize for literature, Shaw won an Academy award for the adapted screenplay of his play, Pygmalion, in the 1938 movie by the same name. We all know this work as the 1964 remake, My Fair Lady, which won 8 Oscars.
We’ve worn out that record in our home. When I hear Heidi belting out, “Just you wait ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait”, then I know I might be in trouble, and I tread carefully.
One of the most brilliant songs, “Why can’t the English”, has Professor Henry Higgins (i.e. George Bernard Shaw) lamenting:
“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 are taught their Greek.
In France every Frenchman knows his language from “A” to “Zed”
(…the French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce in properly.)
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you’re regarded as a freak.
Why can’t the English,
Why can’t the English learn to speak?”
As I consider this box with its “lemington” sticker, I can also hear Shaw turning in his grave, but I “smaak” it.
