Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

A Good Keen Man [1]

A Good Keen Man [1]

Sir: The letter of your correspondent, J. Holdom, about Mr Crump’s deviations from standard English, depressed me deeply. Not that Mr Crump will be worried. He will no doubt continue to speak in the way that most New Zealanders outside the Civil Service (and a few inside) do speak; and to write in the same vigorous dialect. But your correspondent is a schoolteacher, and he no doubt will also continue in his self-appointed task of trying to make young men and women observe some totally imaginary standard of speech. That is what depresses me. I remember a friend of mine with a strong, rich North Country accent, asking me whether he shouldn’t try to eliminate it, for social reasons. Of course I told him I thought it would be a tragedy. Why should Mr Crump not continue to possess a New Zealand brogue? Dialect and vivid metaphor commonly go hand in hand. And the word ‘boozer’ as an expressive alternative to ‘pub’ is a variant imported from the common speech of England. I use it myself in conversation; and may some day use it in a poem or a play or a talk on the radio. Your correspondent, like so many misguided members of his profession, seems to want to put the language in a strait-jacket.

1961 (254)