Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

A Straight Deal by Owen Wister
page 116 of 147 (78%)
accent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American,
ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?
His tongue has a different mother!

I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences should
have come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter of
fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literate
and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of the
other's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they by
their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not all
Americans and not all English do in their enunciation conform to these
types.

One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautiful
cathedral and its serene and gracious close. "Star-scattered on the
grass," and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitary
or in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the inn
I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman in
evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and he
returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was stopping
expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find a
scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, he
looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that I
explained to him my nationality.

"I shouldn't have known it," he remarked, after an instant's pause.

I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, I
think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same old
mother-tongue!
DigitalOcean Referral Badge