Spoken English and Broken English - NOTES

Spoken English and Broken English            

    Bernard Shaw

                Bernard Shaw in his Spoken English and Broken English, an audio speech given to foreign speakers of English discusses the challenges of speaking English like a native speaker. He gives some examples to expose the oddity of English language.

                  According to Shaw a non – native speaker of English is likely to be perplexed by the varieties of Dialects, accents, and intonations, spellings, slang, lexical and grammatical difficulties of English. According to him a non native speaker should not try to impress a native speaker, for him imitating a native speaker is ridiculous.

                   According to the author there is no correct and perfect English, there is presentable and intelligible English. He says that no two British people speak exactly alike. He advises foreign speakers to pronounce English language in their own genuine way.

Bernard Shaw gives some examples to show the varieties of dialects and pronunciation of English. He argues that even the eduacated committee who was assigned to assess the voice quality of actors do not utter the two simplest and commonest words in English such as ‘yes’ and ‘No’.

                  According to Shaw we all have company manners and home manners. He argues that even the educated people speak differently in various contexts. He says that people adopt different speaking styles in formal, informal and familiar situations, in formal situations we will be more conscious of our language, in that context we all prefer sophisticated language.

        According to Shaw we should be aware of the language we use in informal context, he warns foreigners not to be too polished and pedantic in unofficial circumstances. He instructs foreigners to speak presentable English, he instructs them to speak comprehensible English.

                     According to Shaw majority in London speak English differently, so he counsels foreigners to use simple English. He advocates foreigners to learn English from broken English, without bothering too much about grammar rules. He also suggests that using English in private conversation with cultivated native speakers should not be ostentatious. Bernard Shaw in his writing career expressed his concerns about the peculiarity of English; being a well known satirist he never missed the opportunity to criticize the idiosyncrasies’ of the English language.