"WHY CAN'T THE ENGLISH LEARN TO SPEAK?"

… “Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks have got their Greek … Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning, and Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening … but why can’t the English learn to speak!? …” sung by Professor Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady as he was trying to take Eliza Dolittle off the streets, get rid of her Cockney accent and turn her into ‘a lady’

English is arguably the most mis-pronounced language in the world. As pointed out by Professor Higgins, it is not even spoken properly in England where it comes from!

But what is ‘properly’?

When I was studying as an actor, we were taught what was called, at the time, Standard English (also known as Received Pronunciation). It was supposedly the pronunciation of English as used by educated, well-spoken people. It was also taught to actors because it was essential that an audience could tell exactly what you were saying – particularly if you were performing something like Shakespeare, which is not easy to follow anyway.

But this has developed the reputation of being snooty or posh (it still has that connotation today). In fact, when I was in Australia for a couple of years, a cousin of mine (living in Australia) informed me that I spoke too posh and the Australians didn’t like the posh English.

As it happened, my way of speaking English created no hindrance at all. I made wonderful Australian friends and enjoyed my time there enormously. ?But the fact is that we often don’t make any effort to speak this language ‘properly’. And by that, I mean simply in a way that is easy to understand.

When I was doing what is called ‘accent correction’ work for a call centre training facility, a young Zulu man told me that at school his English teacher said to him not to worry about how you say it, just speak it anyway.?Would that teacher have been okay with me speaking Zulu like an Englishman – ie with all the wrong pronunciation, emphasis and sounds?

While it might be a little difficult to define proper English, there are certainly ways that we shouldn’t speak it. And I believe that anyone learning the language (or any language) should do so with a view to being clearly understood. This requires the effort to learn the language properly and speak it as clearly as one can, using correct pronunciation.

My son married a German lady and they have two daughters who speak excellent German and excellent English – they are 8 and 5 years old!?Neither my Afrikaans nor Zulu are very good but I will use words from those languages in stories to them just because that is a really important part of their South African heritage.?

While English is the so-called official language in South Africa (certainly in business etc) it is actually the home language of about 9% of the population.?I am one of the 9% - born into an English-speaking home.?I am not English; I am an English-speaking South African.?We might get hot under the collar about the language of the colonist etc (and I fully understand that reaction and agree with it) but it is one of those situations where ‘it is what it is’. Why would we NOT try to speak English as well as we can – as well as we might speak Zulu, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Southern Sotho, Tswana, Northern Sotho, Venda Swati and Ndebele?

Speaking more than one language is such a gift. And one that many South Africans have. I take my hat off to South Africans who speak English and 2 or 3 or 4 other languages as well.?So, let’s learn to speak it well – and we do that through speaking the language, reading the language, listening to the language and enjoying the language!