Compton Mackenzie
HIS brutish word smog' has driven me into playing with the idea of founding a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the English Language. The English have -a kind of superstitious belief that if the name of something be changed a corresponding change will affect the reality. For instance, if you call warders prison-officers ' an important step will have been taken towards the reformation of prison life.
" The thickest and darkest fogg on the Thames that was ever known," Evelyn wrote in his diary on December 15th, 1670, and now nearly 300 years later we hope to persuade people not to burn coal fires on a cold winter's day by calling a London fog a smog.'
I find that this portmanteau word was stitched together as far back as 1905. In the Globe of July 3rd could be read: "The other day at a meeting of the Public Health Congress Dr. Des Voeux did a public service in coining a new word for the London fog, which was referred to as smog,' a com- bination of smoke ' and fog.' " H. L. Mencken, Mills defiantly patriotic book The American Language, says in his chapter on Briticisms that in 1926 the Weather Bureau in Washington formally adopted the English smog.'
So presumably between 1905 and 1926 weather experts.had been trying to popularise this wretched Briticism ' under the impression that they were performing a public service.
• However, before the Society attacks the problem of neologisms or had grammar it will make a desperate effort to preserve the right pronunciations of certain words which are in peril of being destroyed by popular usage. No attempt will be made to restore pronunciations now hopelessly lost. Samuel Rogers could leave the breakfast-table in disgust when one of his guests spoke of balcony ' instead of ' balcony,' but then the issue was not decided.
The BBC had a great opportunity some years ago when they gathered together a committee to give an authentic ruling about pronunciations which it pledged itself to adopt. Among those advisers were Bernard Shaw and Logan Pearsall Smith, neither of whom was an authority on spoken English. Bernard Shaw, contrary to his own belief, had a brogue, and in the speech of Pearsall Smith the crossbred accent of Harvard and Oxford was mated with the crossbred accent of Bloomsbury and Philadelphia. In justice to Pearsall Smith, I must admit that I never heard him claim to be a pundit of pronunciation. Shaw, on the other hand, lacked modesty in this regard. Con- vinced that he had discovered the secret of Cockney phonetics. he composed a series of synthetic Cockney characters of dreary or comic unreality according to one's prejudices: I find them without exception dreary. to rejoice at the absolution which I as a half-drowned French priest was about to give the Deemster's son, I might substitute thousands' for millions.'
" It would be easier to get the emotional effect with the broad vowel, Mr. Caine," I urged.
From the dress circle where he was watching the rehearsal. Hall Caine, winded for a moment by my youthful audacity, at last managed to gasp incredulously : " Are you trying to teach me how to write ? "
After abolishing ominous ' that BBC committee perversely decided to condemn ' Opus,' which was holding its own and declare for. Opus.' Why was 4Opera ' not changed to Opera ' at the same time ? 'Deficit ' could still have been saved for correctness, but this Committee voted for defficit.'
by such a barbarism adding a deeper gloom to the financial outlook.
'Eros as in earring or earwig is now the BBC's authoritative name for the Greek god of love. Bernard Shaw did not appre- ciate the difference between epsilon ' and eta' and he would probably have called omega' ommega,' but there were others on that committee who did know the difference and their surrender was abominable. The excuse for saying ThEtis ' instead of Th6tis ' is that, the Navy pronounces the name of the sea-goddess thus, but I can remember when the Navy pronounced Bellerophon' as Billy ruffian.' To my dismay I note a growing inclination among English people to copy the uncivilised American pronunciation of eego ' for ego ',: this tendency will be on the first agenda of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to English, even though it is a Latin word, because the abuse of Latin inevit- ably leads to the abuse of English. So too !kill be decorous' and sonorous' for decorous' and sonorous.' I was shocked to hear that admirable actress Miss Gladys Young broadcasting sonorous' to millions the other evening: it turned the noble adjective from a trumpet into an alto saxophone. " Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds," Milton wrote. I suspect that the fault may have lain with some BBC producer, because the other day when I said decorous' in rehearsing a broadcast I was asked if I did not mean d6cOrous.' The latter pro- nunciation is admitted to the OED as a secondary alternative, but it will be the duty of the Society to press for its expulsion in future editions.
The word vitamine ' was invented in 1912 by Casimir Funk: it has already become vittamin ' in common parlance. It is difficult to work up a fervid crusading zeal on behalf of a mongrel like vitamine.' Nevertheless, if we surrender to vittamin ' as we have surrendered to vivvitection ' we Shall soon be hearing people talk about vittal," vittality and vittalize.: Anxious gentility is always frightened of the long Gladiolus ' offers a warning. In the 1911 edition of the Concise OED the pronunciation is given correctly as ' with gllidi-Olus ' as a possible alternative. In the 1933 edition of the shorter OED the correct pronunciation has disappeared and the barbarous `gladiolus' is given as the alternative. Before we know where we are the OED will be allowing the odious mispronunciation controversy' for controversy.' Zebbra ' for zebra ' is gaining ground every day, and it is almost too late for anybody who does not wish to be accused' of an' affected purism to say quandary.'
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