THE SPREAD OF THE COCKNEY ACCENT.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Is it not time that a serious effort should be made to cope with a matter of national import, the spread of that vile perversion of the English tongue, the Cockney accent P A few years ago it used to be confined to what house-agents describe as " the top-hat area " ; now it has made the Home Counties its own, and extends as far as the Essex, Kent, and Sussex coasts. Cannot the matter be taken in hand by his Majesty's Inspectors of Schools P They, of all people, are best fitted to combat the disease, for it is undoubtedly through the agency of the elementary schools that this repulsive phenomenon is being extended and perpetuated. I was disgusted beyond measure recently, when passing a picturesque village school in rural Sussex, to hear issuing through the open window a solo and chorus of "yte and two myke ten." These children come from homes where good, wholesome rural English is spoken, yet under the pretence of that blessed word " education " they are being carefully drilled in a debased pronunciation of their mother-tongue, redolent of "The Hyngel," " The Neg's 'Ead," and "The Helephant and Cawstle." Those who live and.work in London probably regard this phenomenon as something like the weather and the poor, but country people may be pardoned for demanding that the evil shall not be allowed to spread. Strong action should be taken in the Normal Training Colleges and in all intermediate and elementary schools. Teachers should be told, roughly if necessary—for your Cockney is a self-sufficient young person—that the first thing they have to do is to learn to speak King's English. Very soon in the South of England there will be no one left to call a " spyde " a spade.—I am, Sir, &C.,
RUSTIC MORALIST.
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