Here is a lament by Professor Higgins, (who should have known better than to use the word "hung " in that particular context) on the lack of parity in spoken English.

Henry,   'Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter,
Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered.
By law she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.'

Eliza,  'Aaoooww!

Henry, ( imitating her)  'Aaoooww!
Heaven's! What a noise!
This is what the British population,
Calls an elementary education.

Pickering  'Oh, Counsel, I think you picked a poor example.

Henry  Did I?
Hear them down in Soho square,
Dropping "h's" everywhere.
Speaking English anyway they like.
You sir, did you go to school?

Man  'Wadaya tike me for, a fool?'

Henry,  No one taught him 'take' instead of 'tike!
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!
Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse,
Hear a Cornishman converse,
I'd rather hear a choir singing flat.
Chickens cackling in a barn Just like this one!

Eliza  'Garn!'

Henry  'I ask you, sir, what sort of word is that?
It's "Aoooow" and "Garn" that keep her in her place.
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.
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.
An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other
Englishman 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 your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian; the Greeks have taught their
Greek. In France every Frenchman knows
his language from "A" to "Zed"
The French never care what they do, actually,
as long as they pronounce in properly.
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards,
which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Why can't the English,
Why can't the English learn to speak?

Tallulah Tam wrote:

Here is a lament by Professor Higgins, (who should have known better than to use the word "hung " in that particular context) on the lack of parity in spoken English.

(By the way, doesn't Higgins' sentence "I'd be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling than to ever let a woman in my life" sound queer, too?)

Speaking of different British accents, can anybody tell me whether George Harrison's accent is different from that of the other Beatles? Althouhg I notice similarities it seems a little different to me, both singing and speaking. I cannot tell whether it's a matter of how he pronounces certain sounds, or of the intonation of the whole sentences, but I like his accent more than the others' (or more than anybody else's).

Thanks!

Hi Tallulah Tam,

Yes, as you suspected, the line I copied belongs to a song (I won't go so far as to say it's "sung" by Rex Harrison), as in the case of the hung sentence, and I think both of them were written by Alan Jay Lerner for his and Loewe's "Pygmalion" (I don't remember seeing these song lines in Shaw's text). I suppose that it could be called poetic licence, but it sounded kind of ungrammatical to me. Equally as is reiterative, isn't it? But also, I cannot see any point in the word than, considering that as should take as, shouldn't it? (To add just one more thing, I had never seen willing for before, although that doesn't mean anything, it may be correct even though I don't know it )

Going back to the matter of Higgins' beloved Received Pronunciation, I've always wondered whether what we see in "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady" is really possible. I'm not thinking of Britons trying to disguise their natural accents, but of foreigners learning their RP so well as to pass for natives. I feel tempted to try to find my own 'Enry 'Iggins as the only solution for my @·&%$# English accent (no particular word intended, just the idea).

By the way, if I'm not wrong, Rex Harrison is as Scouse as the other Harrison I mentioned above. The only film in which I've heard his real voice is precisely "My Fair Lady", and obviously he needs Received Pronunciation for it. But how did he normally speak? I suppose that part of an actor's job involves using different accents for different characters, but I wonder whether Rex Harrison spoke scouse in normal life. It could be a bit shocking!