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Essay on "Spoken English and Broken English"

Introduction

                George Bernard Shaw is a well known writer. He prepared and spoke on the topic ‘Spoken English and Broken English’ on a gramophone recording for the Linguaphone institute. In his speech the provocative ideas are couched in a simple but sparkling rhetorical style.

Advantages in learning to speak well

                Bernard Shaw says that when we travel in the British Commonwealth or in America or when we meet a native of these countries, we have to speak English well for enough understanding. If we speak in a provincial or cockney  dialect it may prevents us from obtaining some employment which is open to those only speak what is ‘correct English’.

No such thing ideally correct English

                No two British subjects speak exactly alike. Even educated persons, the Poet Laureate and trained speakers do not pronounce of some of the simplest commonest words in the English language exactly alike. Members of the committee who are selected as models of correct speech speak differently. They differ according to the country in which they were born.

Confession of Bernard Shaw  

                Bernard Shaw confesses that he himself does not speak English in the same way. When he speaks to audience, he speaks carefully. If he were to speak carefully to his wife at home, she would think he was going mad. As a public speaker he has to take care that every word he says is heard distinctly at far end of large halls containing thousands of people. At home he speaks to his wife like mumbling. His wife also a little careless and so he sometimes has to say “What?”

Advice to foreign students of English

                 Do not try to speak English perfectly because native speakers of English won’t understand. In London nine hundred and ninety nine out of thousand people not only speak bad English but speak even that very badly. No foreigner can ever stress the syllables and make the voice rise and fall in questions and answer, assertion and denial, in refusal and consent, in enquiry or information, exactly as a native does. Therefore the first thing they have to do is to speak with a strong foreign accent, and speak broken English.

Conclusion

                Bernard Shaw criticizes that it is an insult to the native speaker of English who cannot understand his own language when it is too well spoken.