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The Voice and Diction of Conversation - part
2
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Therefore, while everybody should try sensibly to reduce his speech peculiarities, he should not be too concerned over those which nature, let us say because of his foreign extraction or background, will not let him overcome entirely. In this connection it might be well to recall Henry van Dyke's comment,
A brogue is not a fault. It is a beauty, an heirloom, a distinction. A local accent is like a landed inheritance; it makes a man's place in the world, tells where he comes from . . . within limits, the accent of a native region is delightful.
What seems to be really more important than uniformity, and in the nature of speech more possible, is a certain level of refinement of diction. Even a foreigner, while he cannot overcome a certain accent, can yet speak English with an accent that sounds as if he is a gentleman. There is a way of pronouncing English which makes a person sound "cheap" and uncouth, and a way which sounds as if one paid one's taxes and did not live on the water front. Many radio programs suggest the difference probably very much better than written words can describe it. The careful conversationalist can listen to them and learn. The diction which in England is notorious for sounding "cheap" is the London Cockney; in America, it is the East Side New Yorker's erl for oil, and goil for girl. According to Bernard Shaw, "People know very well that certain sorts of speech cut off a person for ever from getting more than three or four pounds a week all their life long — sorts of speech which make them entirely impossible in certain professions."
Part of this is due to grammar and vocabulary, but much more, and the most difficult part to analyze, is due to a mode of pronunciation and a timber of voice. In his play, Pygmalion, Shaw shows how lowly born Eliza is trained away from her crude-sounding Cockney diction to the cultured articulation of better society. Perhaps reading this play might be as good as anything for developing an understanding of what is meant by talking in a pleasing level of refinement. Courses in phonetics and elocution give hundreds of rules and exercises. Here only a few practical short cuts to diction acceptable in good conversation can be indicated.
The simplest road to respectable diction is not to drop consonants which according to the dictionary should not be dropped and to make sure that the accented vowels are given their full, resonant value. The difference in culture between "Watchu wan fdinner?" and "What do you want for dinner?" is that of the Bowery and Fifth Avenue. Substituting n for the digraph ng in coming and going is all right in popular songs, but it is still an index of unrefined speech. As to vowels, it is a common observation that the most cultured Englishmen and noticeably refined Americans tend to pronounce the a wherever at all possible like that in father. This suggests a generalization that refined speakers generally will tend to give their vowels a fuller, broader value rather than a thin or flat one. Perhaps one can say that refined speakers will not let their a's slip altogether into e's, their can't and plan and hat will never sound like ken't and plen and het. Their o's and u's will retain some of the same value as in French, German, and Italian. In short, a good speaker will give resonance, real sound, to the accented vowels. As for the secondary syllables, he will clearly de-emphasize them, unaccent them, but he will not slur or drop them.
Related terms include how to speak portuguese and business speaking.
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