The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-06-19
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HASKIN, Director.
Washington, d. G.
OUR UNsPEAKABLE SPEECH.

guage. English in America, it APP
pears. is degenerating frightfully.
We are in danger of becoming abso-
lutely inarticulate. But not if those
storm centers of militant culture, the
| Women's clubs, can help it. The Illi-
nois Federation of Women's clubs al
ready has an AmericanSspeech COM
mittee, and II has launched a move
ment, or perhaps we should say, mi
tiated an endeavor, to purge our ma
tional speech of the horrors of slang,
bad English and slurred pronunci-
alton.
There are many who hope that the
ladies will deal mercifully with slang.
1t is by slang that our language grows
and becomes our own. BY its slang
you may surely know that it is a live
language. AS for grammar, if the
ladies' can do anything to drive it into
the academic confines where it is sup
posed to stay, they deserve applause.
Some of the popular changes in the
school book grammar are logical and
merely slipshod. And certain
amount of agreement in grammar is
undoubtedly a help to human inter-
course.
AS to pronuciatio. all 100 per
cent Americans are back of the club
women. Let us by all means learn
TO open our mouths and speak out
Let us park our chewing gum before
we begi to converse. Let US give our
great language the full melody of its
sonorous cadences.
Comprehensive Train Announcers.
Think of having a bell hop page
you, a train announcer call trains, an
elevated guard ask you to step lively,
all in dulcet and understandable
| tones. The morale of the whole ma
ton would move up several degrees,
nerves would relax, smiles would ap-
pear, courtesy would abound, and
everything would be sweet and lovely.
The better-speech movement has al
ready accomplished much in the one
year in which it has had the help of
the Illinois Women's club. The idea
is to get the schools, churches and big
stores to cooperate with the clubs in
we'll organized campaign against
slangy and slovenly diction. The cam
paign is usually introduced by holding
a Better Speech Week. During this
week posters made by the artists and
school children of the town appear in
gans as Good English Can Never
Die. Don't Try to Murder Itr' BET
ter Speech for Better Americans"
| Poor Speech Means Poor Wages"
| Ministers aid the campaign by making
addresses on the subject. Shop keep
| their mother tongue. And OF course
the schools are most active. The chill
dren sign pledges promising to speak
the language beautiful, they give ale
gorical plays showing the awful fate
of slang singers, they organize do
Without clubs" in which each mem
Der agrees to do without some such
pet expression as Say, listen" or
Some kid" or law. cut it out" In
one town where the school children
were allowed to fine all offenders
against grammar their activities net
I
Mrs. Katherine Knowles Robbins
says that wonders can be done by ap-
i preaching children in the right way.
| But one must be very careful not to
| approach them in the wrong way. 1t
! is a strange but true fact that cor
rect speech is looked upon as sort of
n disgrace among the young. The
| boy who eschews slang and respects
his vowels and "ing's'' usually has his
| life made a burden by his schoolmates.
! The girl who uses a cultivated accent
] is usually regarded as a prude. 1t is
the jazzy maiden with the loud voice
and the jargon of the streets who Is
| popular with her contemporaries.
| "Our young people are using the
| language of the underworld" says
Mrs. Robbins, and its effect upon
| their characters is far-rea ching and
! induces a cheap vulgar attitude of
mind. 1t is but a step from laXity
| of speech to laxity of morals. Think
of our grandmothers mentioning the
shimmy for instance" Mrs. Robbins
| shuddered and changed the subject.
at is not only for the sake of our
children that we should work for bet
! ter speech" she continued. I'VE
have a certain responsibility for our
| foreign population.
The Poor Immigrant Again.
Besides making the foreigner a
better citizen better speech will give
| him richer life, by giving him finer
I means of self expression. The
Lithuanian girl who lost her coat in a
| hospital during the recent epidemic
gave a pathetic example of the made
quacy of a limited voca bulary. For
three days she wandered up and down
the hospital halls moaning, Gee, ma
plusha coata, &c ma plusha coata,
Gee, GEEr Gee was the only word
America had given her to express
feeling.
LAS a matter of fact we aren't much
better off than the Lithuanian girl.
! Cute, swell and fierce seem to be the
only three adjectives in the language
as far as the growing generation is
! concerned. Good speech is decadent
1 in America. It is our boast that we
are satisfied with nothing but the
best when it comes to the convent
ences and luxuries of civiliza ton. But
| apparently We are satisfied with a
very inferior brand of language. Our
! speech is becoming not only less
beautiful but less efficient"
Many business houses thru the
country are realizing the value of the
better speech movement as an aid to
efficiency. Among these is the Mar
shall & Ilsey Bank of Milwaukee. For
three years they have held classes in
grammar and literature for the young
women employees in the bank, know
! ing that a stenDgraDher with a real
interest in English will be more valua-
BILE to them as well as to herself The
bank contributes half the time de-
voted to the class from working hours
and the stenographers give the other
half.
THE object of these classes is to
! get young women to read, talk over
! and finally study the best in Itera-