Saying It Right

How important is correct speech? Does it matter how we talk just so long as we are understood? We are adults, after all, and making a pretty good living. Why should we bother with a book like this?

Hons, as our Celia Rivenbark would address her readers, don't worry. Be happy.

But if you aspire to be a schoolteacher, or a lawyer, or a senator, or an evangelist, or a college president, or a speechwriter for the president of The United States, you know that correct English is very important, even essential.

Prince Charles visited this country some years ago and left with this comment: "Americans are becoming unintelligible." (Yes, yes, the British are often hard for us to understand.)

We don't want to become "unintelligible" to people of our mother country. We want to meet the standards of Professor Higgins. (Sorry, I can't believe I said that.) No doubt Professor H. would give up on most of us before we could "get" it.

We should talk more about language. Forget that we haven't been in a classroom in years. A renewed interest in grammar need not be academic.

SLANG and COLLOQUIALISMS

Slang is welcome in most households, but it has to use the back door. We let it in because it can be fun. I smile every time I hear "laid-back." For a fleeting moment I hear Jimmy Buffet singing Margaritaville. Teachers are expected to discourage slang, but they are often heard using it themselves.

And everybody enjoys colloquialisms. These expressions, as well as slang, can be confusing to the uninitiated; but they are how we communicate with one another on a daily basis.

We understand, however, that slang and colloquialisms are unsuitable in certain situations. On the witness stand we are told to answer Yes or No -- not Yeah or Nope. And we do not hear a presiding judge say, "Okay."

A cop series called Due South featured a Canadian mountie who spoke formal English. He never said "Okay." He said, "Understood." His language was always formal, even erudite. Most unusual. And we loved hearing him. Oratory may be unfashionable today, but we still find delight in our great language when we hear it at its best.

Colloquial speech is about all that most of us can manage, and some do better with it than others. There is a talent, I believe, for speech. Intelligence seems to go along with the glibness. Many of our young people have both talent and intelligence. If they are motivated, they can achieve a mastery of English to equal that of the Due South mountie.

Slang is not understood by everybody. Not everybody knows "snafu," but a President once used it on television. Another former President said he was "out of the loop," and I wondered if he meant Chicago. Better for high officials to use formal language, is it not? Less possibility of causing a misunderstanding.

Usually foreigners have trouble with our idioms and fad words, and we have trouble with theirs. Let us all be patient and helpful.