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.11As examples of the very worst offenses that can be committed, the following areoffered: Pray, accept my thanks for the flattering ovation you have tendered me. Yes, says the preposterous bride, I am the recipient of many admired andhighly prized gifts. Will you permit me to recall myself to you? 12Speaking of bridesmaids as pretty servitors, dispensing hospitality, asking anyone to step this way. 13Many other expressions are provincial and one who seeks purity of speech should,if possible, avoid them, but as offenses they are minor:Reckon, guess, calculate, or figure, meaning think.Allow, meaning agree.Folks, meaning family.Cute, meaning pretty or winsome.Well, I declare! Pon my word!Box party, meaning sitting in a box at the theater.Visiting with, meaning talking to.14There are certain words which have been singled out and misused by theundiscriminating until their value is destroyed.Long ago elegant was turned froma word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery. Refined is on the verge.But the pariah of the language is culture! A word rarelyused by those who truly possess it, but so constantly misused by those whoGet any book for free on: www.Abika.com ETIQUETTE IN SOCIETY, IN BUSINESS, IN POLITICS AND AT HOME49understand nothing of its meaning, that it is becoming a synonym for vulgarity andimitation.To speak of the proper use of a finger bowl or the ability to introduce twopeople without a blunder as being evidence of culture of the highest degree isprecisely as though evidence of highest education were claimed for who ever cando sums in addition, and read words of one syllable.Culture in its true meaning iswidest possible education, plus especial refinement and taste.15The fact that slang is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting.Coarseor profane slang is beside the mark, but flivver, taxi, the movies, deadly (meaning dull), feeling fit, feeling blue, grafter, a fake, grouch, hunch and right o! are typical of words that it would make our spoken language stiltedto exclude.16All colloquial expressions are little foxes that spoil the grapes of perfect diction,but they are very little foxes; it is the false elegance of stupid pretentiousness that isan annihilating blight which destroys root and vine.17In the choice of words, we can hardly find a better guide than the lines ofAlexander Pope: In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:Be not the first by whom the new are tried,Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 18PRONUNCIATIONTraits of pronunciation which are typical of whole sections of the country, oraccents inherited from European parents must not be confused with crudepronunciations that have their origin in illiteracy.A gentleman of Irish blood mayhave a brogue as rich as plum cake, or another s accent be soft Southern or flatNew England, or rolling Western; and to each of these the utterance of the othersmay sound too flat, too soft, too harsh, too refined, or drawled, or clipped short, butnot uncultivated.19To a New York ear, which ought to be fairly unbiased since the New York accentis a composite of all accents, English women chirrup and twitter.But thebeautifully modulated, clear-clipped enunciation of a cultivated Englishman, onewho can move his jaws and not swallow his words whole, comes as near toperfection in English as the diction of the Comédie Française comes to perfection inFrench.20The Boston accent is very crisp and in places suggestive of the best English butthe vowels are so curiously flattened that the speech has a saltless effect.There isno rhyming word as flat as the way they say heart haht
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