A standard of spoken English: From the archive, 15 July 1916

Is it desirable for everybody to speak English in the same accent?

That admirable watchdog of the English language, Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia University, discusses once again, in the "North American Review," the possibility of attaining a universal standard of pronunciation for our mother tongue. France has done it for hers; Italy and Spain have done it, and Germany, very late in the day, made an attempt to submerge her dialects in a common speech for the educated Teuton. What can we do? It is conceivable that we could establish a standard, and, having done it, make a person brought up in Glasgow or Lancashire talk like a Londoner, and all of them speak so that no one could tell that they had not come from either New York or New South Wales? The answer is, it is not possible; and even if it were the English-speaking peoples would not want to do it. Most of them delight in the endless variations of spoken English, and if they think about the matter at all they recognise that pronunciation is only one element of an exceedingly complex process in which pace and pitch and cadence all play their part. Professor Matthews, like the rest of us, has in his mind an ideal of perfect English. He would say that it cannot be described, but you know it when you hear it; and he has heard fine speakers from both sides of the Atlantic whose speech "was English pure and simple, not betraying itself as either British or American." They must be excessively rare; indeed, so decisive are the geographical influences that even when no differences of pronunciation are discernible the subtle distinction created by distance almost invariably remains. It is certain, however, that most of the great speakers of the past would have scorned the idea of an academic standard. Gladstone and Bright kept to the last the marks of their northern origin, and we may hazard the guess that they would have been horrified at hearing a speech from Lincoln or Daniel Webster in the accent of Oxford. Regional variations, we may be sure, will not disappear; but it is plain that the schools and other modern influences tend to wear down the greater dialectical differences. The special danger of this country is, however, not the single standard, but something altogether different: a uniform speech for the specially educated, and one of infinite variation for the majority of the nation. And that means a serious obstacle to the establishment of genuine democracy.