From The Times, October 26, 1923
A certain amount of sympathy may be felt with the complaint which Sir Philip Burne-Jones raises in his letter today against what he calls the “super-cockney” jargon which may be heard in the streets of London. It is to be feared that among “the youth of this town”, as Mr Serjeant Buzfuz would say, there are some atrocious speakers, and it is no wonder that the refined ear is occasionally horrified.
Nevertheless the state of London pronunciation is perhaps not so bad as Sir Philip would imply. The London dialect — if indeed it is a true dialect and not a product of several — is on the lips of large sections of the public noticeably less aggressive than formerly; in other words, education, which Sir Philip invokes, is beginning to tell, though the task before it is still difficult, and it would be unfair if its increasing effort to inculcate good habits of speech were ignored.
Even were speech better taught than it is, there would inevitably remain in a large urban population a residue whose jargon would be practically unintelligible to unaccustomed ears. A few hours in school are not enough to counteract home and street influence, and it is a common observation that, though children may be taught to speak tolerably well in school, they soon relapse into their own lingo when they are out of it. They become, in fact, almost bilingual.
Some allowance, also, must be made for “messenger boys and the like”, who seldom listen attentively to an educated voice. Had the two boys whom Sir Philip overheard been addressed by him, they would perhaps have spoken better; on the other hand, the lawlessness of youth may have led them to do their worst with a speech which was never really that of their forefathers.
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Nor must it be forgotten that speech is never stationary; it is subject to an unceasing evolution, and the educated accent of one century is not that of another. Because van boys speak vilely to one another, or even to their linguistic superiors, that is in itself no reason for utter pessimism. In London there must have always been classes whose speech was beyond redemption.
To correct debased speaking is not one of the recognized tasks of education. Nor is bad speech the only cause of a language’s degradation; bad writing is probably quite as harmful.
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