Conversation: Its Faults and Its Graces

Part Iii. Is a Reprint From the Fourth English Edition of "a Word to the

Wise, or Hints on the Current Improprieties of Expression in Writing and Speaking," by Parry Gwynne, a few passages not applicable to the habits of American society being omitted. Part IV. is composed of selections from two little English books, entitled, "Never too late to Learn: Mistakes of daily occurrence in Speaking, Writing and Pronunciation corrected;" and "Common Blunders in Speaking and Writing."

PART I.. An Address

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEWBURYPORT FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL,

DECEMBER 19, 1846,

BY ANDREW P. PEABODY.

YOUNG LADIES,

You have made me happy by your kind invitation to meet you, and to address you on this anniversary. A day spent in this room at your annual examination, nearly two years ago, was a season of privilege and enjoyment not readily to be forgotten. I had previously entertained a high regard for your instructor. I then learned to know him by his work; and, were he not here, I should be glad to extend beyond a single sentence my congratulations with you that you are his pupils.

I have said that I accepted your invitation with gladness. Yet, in preparing myself to meet you, I find a degree of embarrassment. This is for you a season of recreation,--a high festival; and I am accustomed to use my pen and voice only on grave occasions, and for solemn services. I know not how to add to your amusement. Should I undertake to make sport for you, my awkwardness would give you more mirth than my wit. The best that I can do is to select some subject that is or ought to be interesting to you, and to endeavor to blend a little instruction with the gayer and more lively notes of the occasion. The lesson shall be neither tediously long nor needlessly grave.

I propose to offer you a few hints on conversation. How large a portion of life does it fill up! How innumerable are its ministries and its uses! It is the most refined species of recreation,--the most sparkling source of merriment. It interweaves with a never-resting shuttle the bonds of domestic sympathy. It fastens the ties of friendship, and runs along the golden links of the chain of love. It enriches charity, and makes the gift twice blessed. There is, perhaps, a peculiar appropriateness in the selection of this topic for an address to young ladies; for they do more than any other class in the community towards establishing the general tone and standard of social intercourse. The voices of many of you already, I doubt not, strike the key-note of home conversation; and you are fast approaching an age when you will take prominent places in general society; will be the objects of peculiar regard; and will, in a great measure, determine whether the social converse in your respective circles shall be vulgar or refined, censorious or kindly, frivolous or dignified. It was said by a wise man of antiquity,--"Only give me the making of songs for the people, and I care not who makes the laws." In our unmusical age and land, talking occupies the place which songs did among the melody-loving Greeks; and he who could tune the many-voiced harp of the social party, need crave no higher office or more potent sway.

Permit me now to enumerate some of the characteristics of graceful, elegant, and profitable conversation, commencing with the lower graces, and passing on to the higher.

Let me first beg you, if you would be good talkers, to form and fix now, (for you can do this only now,) habits of correct and easy pronunciation. The words which you now miscall, it will cost you great pains in after life to pronounce aright, and you will always be in danger of returning inadvertently to your old pronunciation. There are two extremes which you ought equally to shun. One is that of carelessness; the other, that of extreme precision, as if the sound of the words uttered were constantly uppermost in the mind. This last fault always suggests the idea of vanity and pedantry, and is of itself enough to add a deep indigo hue to a young lady's reputation.

One great fault of New England pronunciation is, that the work is performed too much by the outer organs of speech. The tones of the voice have but little depth. Instead of a generous play of the throat and lungs, the throat almost closes, and the voice seems to be formed in the mouth. It is this that gives what is called a nasal tone to the voice, which, when denied free range through its lawful avenues, rushes in part through the nose. We notice the nasal pronunciation in excess here and there in an individual, while Englishmen and Southerners observe it as a prevailing characteristic of all classes of people in the Northern States. Southerners in general are much less careful and accurate in pronunciation than we are; but they more than compensate for this deficiency by the full, round tones in which they utter themselves. In our superficial use of the organs of speech, there are some consonants which we are prone to omit altogether. This is especially the case with g in words that end with ing. Nine persons out of ten say singin instead of singing. I know some public speakers, and many private ones, who never pronounce the t in such words as object and prospect. Very few persons give the right sound to r final. Far is generally pronounced as if it were written fah. Now, I would not have the full Hibernian roll of the r; but I would have the presence of the letter more distinctly recognized, than it often is, even by persons of refined and fastidious taste.

Let me next beg you to shun all the ungrammatical vulgarisms which are often heard, but which never fail to grate harshly on a well-tuned ear. If you permit yourselves to use them now, you will never get rid of them. I know a venerable and accomplished lawyer, who has stood at the head of his profession in this State, and has moved in the most refined society for half a century, who to this day says haint for has not, having acquired the habit when a schoolboy. I have known persons who have for years tried unsuccessfully to break themselves of saying done for did, and you and I for you and me. Many well-educated persons, through the power of long habit, persist in saying shew for showed, while they know perfectly well that they might, with equal propriety, substitute snew for snowed; and there is not far hence a clergyman, marvellously precise and fastidious in his choice of words, who is very apt to commence his sermon by saying, "I shew you in a recent discourse." A false delicacy has very generally introduced drank as the perfect participle of drink, instead of drunk, which alone has any respectable authority in its favor; and the imperfect tense and perfect participle have been similarly confounded in many other cases. I know not what grammar you use in this school. I trust that it is an old one; for some of the new grammars sanction these vulgarisms, and in looking over their tables of irregular verbs, I have sometimes half expected to have the book dashed from my hand by the indignant ghost of Lindley Murray. Great care and discretion should be employed in the use of the common abbreviations of the negative forms of the substantive and auxiliary verbs. Can't, don't, and haven't, are admissible in rapid conversation on trivial subjects. Isn't and hasn't are more harsh, yet tolerated by respectable usage. Didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't, make as unpleasant combinations of consonants as can well be uttered, and fall short but by one remove of those unutterable names of Polish gentlemen which sometimes excite our wonder in the columns of a newspaper. Won't for will not, and aint for is not or are not, are absolutely vulgar; and aint, for has not or have not, is utterly intolerable.

Nearly akin to these offences against good grammar is another untasteful practice, into which you are probably more in danger of falling, and which is a crying sin among young ladies,--I mean the use of exaggerated, extravagant forms of speech,--saying splendid for pretty, magnificent for handsome, horrid for very, horrible for unpleasant, immense for large, thousands or myriads for any number greater than two. Were I to write down, for one day, the conversation of some young ladies of my acquaintance, and then to interpret it literally, it would imply that, within the compass of twelve or fourteen hours, they had met with more marvellous adventures and hair-breadth escapes, had passed through more distressing experiences, had seen more imposing spectacles, had endured more fright, and enjoyed more rapture, than would suffice for half a dozen common lives. This habit is attended with many inconveniences. It deprives you of the intelligible use of strong expressions when you need them. If you use them all the time, nobody understands or believes you when you use them in earnest. You are in the same predicament with the boy who cried WOLF so often, when there was no wolf, that nobody would go to his relief when the wolf came. This habit has also a very bad moral bearing. Our words have a reflex influence upon our characters. Exaggerated speech makes one careless of the truth. The habit of using words without regard to their rightful meaning, often leads one to distort facts, to misreport conversations, and to magnify statements, in matters in which the literal truth is important to be told. You can never trust the testimony of one who in common conversation is indifferent to the import, and regardless of the power, of words. I am acquainted with persons whose representations of facts always need translation and correction, and who have utterly lost their reputation for veracity, solely through this habit of overstrained and extravagant speech. They do not mean to lie; but they have a dialect of their own, in which words bear an entirely different sense from that given to them in the daily intercourse of discreet and sober people.

Continue reading Conversation: Its Faults and Its Graces free in the Wunder reader →