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Show 126 HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS OF INTERPRETATION pupil to get away from himself, to hide behind someone else. He will gain abandon, and abandonment is always the a of the reader's alphabet. Will Dialect Corrupt Good English? Public school teachers If are fearful that dialect will corrupt the speech of their pupils. all their earnest efforts cannot give the grade child good speech, if their labor is in vain to overcome the speech habits formed in the home environment, a little variation cannot hurt much. Dialect may help to focus the pupil's attention on his own speech faults; this is quite often the case. 1 Miss Johnson maintains in her book on Dialects that, "Some dialects that declare authorities decry the use of dialect. They ruin the A merican language; the idea is to get rid of them. What they are really decrying are colloquialisms, vernaculars, and na tive carelessness. I should dislike to see the use of dialect dis couraged for any such reason. My testimony would, indeed, all be I have been interested to note that students on the opposite side. dialects to invariably take much more pains to study beginning in this new form than they sometimes enunciate and pronounce did in their own language. They are quick to see this somewhat humorously, when their attention is called to it. I find that their ears more quickly catch slovenliness in our speech after some little use of dialects, and in not a few cases their native speech has been definitely improved." I can say such has been my experience and would say "Amen" to Miss Johnson's testimony. Dialect, whether we want it or not, has come to stay in our literature, so why be ashamed of our "Country-cousin" (as Riley calls it) in the field of letters? In order to be enjoyed, to be under stood and appreciated, dialect even more than any of the other forms of literature, must be heard. The deaf cannot read dialect, because they do not know how it sounds and therefore do not recognize the variation from the accepted English. In order to write dialect the author must hear the language; so perhaps that is why dialect writers can read their own writings well, while other writers are proverbially abominable readers of their own 'work. Since dialect is a part of our field, and a very vital one, the oral 1 Gertrude Johnson, Dialects for Oral Interpretation-The Century Co. |
