A WORD ON SOME PUBLISHERS

I heard of a distinguished, pure-minded English publisher who adapted

John Steinbeck's novel. The Grapes of Wrath, so skilfully that it became a

charming little family book on grapes and other fruits, with many

illustrations. On the other hand, a continental publisher in London had a

French political book. The Popular Front, translated into English. It became

an exciting, pornographic book, called The Popular Behind.

THE LANGUAGE

when I arrived in England I thought I knew English. After I'd been here

an hour I realized that I did not understand one word. In the first week I

picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven

years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I would never know it

really well, let alone perfectly. This is sad. My only consolation being

that nobody speaks English perfectly.

Remember that those five hundred words an average Englishman uses are

far from being the whole vocabulary of the language. You may learn another

five hundred and another five thousand and yet another fifty thousand and

still you may come across a further fifty thousand you have never heard of

before, and nobody else either. If you live here long enough you will find

out to your greatest amazement that the adjective nice is not the only

adjective the language possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first

three years you do not need to learn or use any other adjectives. You can

say that the weather is nice, a restaurant is nice, Mr Soandso is nice, Mrs

Soandso's clothes are nice, you had a nice time, and all this will be very

nice. Then you have to decide on your accent. You will have your foreign

accent all right, but many people like to mix it with something else. I knew

a Polish Jew who had a strong Yiddish-Irish accent. People found it

fascinating though slightly exaggerated. The easiest way to give the

impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an

unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your

sentences with the question: 'isn't it?' People will not understand much,

but they are accustomed to that and they will get a most excellent

impression.

I have known quite a number of foreigners who tried hard to acquire an

Oxford accent. The advantage of this is that you give the idea of being

permanently in the company of Oxford dons and lecturers on medieval

numismatics; the disadvantage is that the permanent singing is rather a

strain on your throat and that it is a type of affection that even many

English people find it hard to keep up incessantly. You may fall out of it,

speak naturally, and then where are you? The Mayfair accent can be highly

recommended, too. The advantages of Mayfair English are that it unites the

affected air of the Oxford accent with the uncultured flavour of a

half-educated professional hotel-dancer.

The most successful attempts, however, to put on a highly cultured air

have been made on the polysyllabic lines. Many foreigners who have learnt

Latin and Greek in school discover with amazement and satisfaction that the

English language has absorbed a huge amount of ancient Latin and Greek

expressions, and they realize that (

a) it is much easier to learn these expressions than the much simpler

English words;

(b) that these words as a rule are interminably long and make a simply

superb impression when talking to the greengrocer, the porter and the

insurance agent. Imagine, for instance, that the porter of the block of

flats where you live remarks sharply that you must not put your dustbin out

in front of your door before 7.30 a.m. Should you answer 'Please don't bully

me,' a loud and tiresome argument may follow, and certainly the porter will

be proved right, because you are sure to find a dause in your contract

(small print, of last page) that the porter is always right and you owe

absolute allegiance and unconditional obedience to him. Should you answer,

however, with these words: 1 repudiate your petulant expostulations,' the

argument will be closed at once, the porter will be proud of having such a

highly cultured man in the block, and from that day onwards you may, if you

please, get up at four o'clock in the morning and hang your dustbin out of

the window. But even in Curzon Street society, if you say, for instance,

that you are a tough guy they will consider you a vulgar, irritating and

objectionable person. Should you declare, however, that you are an

inquisitorial and peremptory homo sapiens, they will have no idea what you

mean, but they will feel in their bones that you must be something

wonderful. When you know all the long words it is advisable to start

learning some of the short ones, too. You should be careful when using these

endless words. An acquaintance of mine once was fortunate enough to discover

the most impressive word notalgia for back-ache. Mistakenly, however, he

declared in a large company: 'I have such a nostalgia.' 'Oh, you want to go

home to Nizhne-Novgorod?' asked his most sympathetic hostess. 'Not at all,'

he answered. 'I just cannot sit down.' . Finally, there are two important

points to remember:

1. Do not forget that it is much easier to write in English than to

speak English, because you can write without a foreign accent.

2. In a bus and in other public places it is more advisable to speak

softly in good German than to shout in abominable English.

Anyway, this whole language business is not at all easy. After spending

eight years in this country, the other day I was told by a very kind lady:

'But why do you complain? You really speak a most excellent accent without

the slightest English.'

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 943