Phoneticians as Reformers 01

Late 19th century London must have already been a melting pot of people of all over the country. After the Enclosure and the Industrial Revolution, many people who used to be farmers living in the countryside moved to the cities and settled as the working class. You could imagine all kinds of dialects spoken there. From the preface of "Pygmalion", we can see the grief of Shaw towards the English and the language of his days.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They cannot spell it because they have nothing to spell it with but an old foreign alphabet of which only the consonants - and not all of them - have any agreed speech value. Consequently no man can teach himself what it should sound like from reading it: and it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.

Henry Higgins of "My Fair Lady" also sings as above his irritation towards the English in "Why can't the English?"

What Shaw idealized must be "one common language", universalized in grammar, in sound, and phonetically sincere in writing. He further writes in the preface of his play:


The reformer we need most today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of the play.


Shaw considered phoneticians not just as scholars, but as reformers of language; professionals who can save the language from "evils".

to be continued.