Friday January 11, 2008
Why can’t the English ...?
By KEITH HARRIS
MY Fair Lady was a hugely successful musical which first appeared on the New York stage in the mid-1950s and was later made into an equally successful movie in 1964.
The musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, tells the story of a flower seller (Eliza) in London’s Covent Garden market who is transformed into a lady by a short-tempered but good-hearted professor of English (Higgins). The action takes place in the 1890s.
Eliza Doliitle is a Cockney who uses expressions like “Garn!” (short for “go on with you” which means “I don’t believe a word of it”) and “Cor blimey!” (“aiiiyaaa!”). When Professor Higgins hears her, he turns to his friend Colonel Pickering and says:
Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter
Condemned by every syllable she utters.
By right she should be taken out and hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.
It has to be remembered that in 1890s England, there were distinct classes in society. Simply put, the Upper Class comprised the aristocracy (Queen Victoria and her Lords and Ladies) and those who were, either by birth, education or wealth (so long as they spoke English with the proper accent), regarded as being capable of leading the lifestyle appropriate to the wealthy; the Middle Class belonged to those who were comfortable financially, but who were not wealthy enough or educated enough or who lacked the appropriate English accent to qualify for the Upper Class; and the Lower Class were those like Eliza for whom there was little chance of rising above their station in life.
As Higgins points out to Pickering:
Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique.
If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why, you might be selling flowers too.
“This verbal class distinction” took a long time to change. In the 1950s, for example, to work as a radio or television announcer or as an air stewardess in Britain, it was essential to have an “Upper Class accent”. And it’s still around today, but now it is very marginal and only practised by people who are out of touch with the real world!
Higgins goes further to say:
An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he speaks he makes some other man despise him.
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get,
Oh, why can’t the English learn to set a good example
To people whose English is painful to our ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There are even places where English disappears,
And in America, they haven’t used it for years.
In those long gone days when Britain was the centre of the world (and British people thought the sun would never set on the British Empire), there was an arrogance, especially among the Upper Classes, which led to British people looking down on anyone whose English was “painful to the ears”.
Higgins’ friend, Pickering, bets Higgins that he can’t make a lady of Eliza and Higgins accepts the bet. And the result, of course, is a Cockney flower seller who speaks and behaves like a lady.
If we apply that story to today’s world, we can say that learning to speak English properly can change your life!
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