Words & Woids

The speech of Huey Long is "a splendid example of the lower middle classes of the Lower Mississippi Valley." Raymond Moley speaks purest Ohioan. Franklin Roosevelt is "a fine example of an educated American," using few localisms and little of the vestigial British accent typical of his class.

So last week said William Cabell Greet, 35, a tweedy, little, sandy-haired Columbia University professor whose great enthusiasm is U. S. speech. He had obtained records of radio speeches by the Louisiana Senator, the President, the editor of Today, many another New Dealer, to add to a linguistic library which now includes 2,500 disks recording the speech of Maine farmers, Southern mountaineers, Barnard girls, Thomas A. Edison, Herbert Hoover, Al Smith and Calvin Coolidge ("perfect Connecticut Valley").

A pioneer seven years ago in using the phonograph to preserve U. S. regional dialects, Professor Greet has roamed the land, taught his methods in summer school at Columbia. Last week it was announced that he will supervise a full graduate course there this autumn, in a new "Language Room" equipped with recording instruments, disks, phonographs, charts and a phonetics exhibit. In addition, each & every Columbia freshman will be required to make three phonograph records during the year, by which his speech defects may be corrected. These records will comprise an extempore recitation on a subject like "How I Spent the Summer," and the reading aloud of a simple, tragic tale which Professor Greet uses in his speech test.

Grip, the Rat is a story packed with words pronounced differently in different localities. It begins: "Once there [thar, theah] was a young rat [ret, rate] who couldn't make [mek, mack] up his mind. Whenever the other [udder, othah] rats asked [eskt, ast] him if he would like [lake, lack] to come out [oat, aout] with them [dem], he would answer [enser, ahnser], 'I don't know [ah doan-no, I dunno],' and when they said, 'Would you [wouldja] like to stop [stawp] at home [hum, hown]?' he wouldn't say 'yes' or 'no' either [eyether, ether]. He would always [allus] shirk [shoik] making a choice [cherce]."

The tale goes on to show how Grip lost his life because of his vacillation. A condensed version for use at Columbia and Barnard contains such words as "horse" (harse in Maine, hoss in Boston, hawse in Texas) and ''fear and horror." in pronouncing which the speaker may drop an "r" out of one word or the other but seldom both. At the end is added an irrelevant passage which Professor Greet wrote after a trip through Virginia. People from around Richmond may be expected to read it thus: "The cyah frightened the cow in the gyarden. The girls in the haose were scaird. The drivuh of the cyah ahead lost control and destroyed paht of the wall. The fiehce bull chahged with an awful bellah."

Asked last week to comment on the controversy as to whether Southerners ever use ''you-all" in the singular,* Professor Greet said that the expression is usually collective, but sometimes resembles the French vous, as when a Negro servitor might say to a single person, with no sense of intimacy: "Kin ah call a cab fo' y'awl?" Southern-born, Professor Greet speaks with a faint accent, by no means resembles an "elocution" teacher, says: "We want to make Americans speak like Americans, not like a cross between Walter Hampden and an Englishman."

*A current ditty much sung by crooners contains the lines: Pardon my Southern accent ... I love y'all. This month the Kiwanians of Augusta, Ga. solemnly resolved to start a crusade against the singular use of "you-all" in Northern books, magazines and cinema.

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