Los Angeles herald., 1910-06-26
AFFECTAT|ONS Of
ACCENT ABSURD|TY
Michigan Professor Makes OBJ
ServationS During Afternoon
Tea of Girl Students
TYPE OF TALK Is A "P0SER"
Says Young Women Try to Com
bine PronunciationS of Their
ACquaintanCeS
TYPE OF TALK IS A "PoSER"

ANN ARBOR, June 25.--It was
no less an authority than a professor
in Michigan university who declared
not long ago that he was sick of af-
fectation in pronunciation" one of the
best loved men in the great school, he
has seen thousands upon thousands of
men and women go out from his class
es in the course of his long academic
career, says the Detroit Free Press. In
my early day, when l was a young in
structor, affected speech, even among
young ladies, was rare, he told some
of his students.
"Then came a wave of it that swept
all over and reminded me of those silly
foppish French days of the 'Precieuses
Ridicules, immortalized by Moliere
when the bourgeois element began to
put on airs that set the whole world
a-laughing. Now good pronunciation
is to be cultivated, just as pretty mod
ulations of the voice are much to be
desired both in men and women, but
when it comes to these obviously
strained-after apings of somebody
else's English, 1 think it is time to
show people how utterly ludicrous they
appear.
1.-THE fact is, in some forceful slang
that appeals to me very much for it's
terse power of descriptions, these peo-
pie don't get away with their airs-not
one bit. Not long ago my aversion for
this sort of thing got the better of my
discretion and of my good manners, l
fear, at a charity afternoon tea.
well, there were a lot of Detroit
girls among them, and as 1 stood off
for a while listening to them, l mar
veled where they had acquired their
accents. Certainly they didn't sound
like Michigan, nor like anything within
many miles of the middle west. To tell
you the truth, I couldn't make out
what they did sound like and I've done
bit of travelling in this and other
countries in my day. But this type of
talk was poser for me.
"There were a number of broad as
some of them quite the broadest l had
ever heard. There were few RS except
when now and then someone less alert
than her sisters let drop good healthy
one. At last one of the prettiest of
| them, a slender, sweet eyed young
thing, that might have been a Rossetti
model, fell to my lot. l never heard
such talk. She was mighty nice to me,
too, getting the choicest little cakes for
me and some very fragrant tea in a
pretty cup, and fixed to suit a king.
But her accent! You're a Michigan
girl?' l asked. oh, yes, indeed she
beamed. 'Fathah awnd grawnfathah
were bawn heah.' But you haven't
lived here much? ventured. oh, yes.
only a couple of yeahs that l was east
at school,
so there it was; two years east at
school had done the mischief. She met
a dot of New Workers and southerners
and no doubt some English people
there, and so she tried to fix up little
more elegant accent for herself, with
the distressing result, There is no such
pronunciation in all the English lam
guage as 'awnd for and nor 'haWnd'
for hand If a child is sent away in
its earliest youth it can naturally ac-
auire the accent of IT'S new environ
ment, but when it comes to a grown
Michigan girl in a couple of years get
ting an entirely new version of mother
English, it does seem a little miracu-
lous-don't you think?"