Shaw George Bernard. Pygmalion

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and AP English Test Preparation.PREFACE TO PYGMALION
A PROFESSOR OF PHONETICS.
As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I
have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language,
and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no
man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to
open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to
Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic
enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There
have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past.
When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteenseventies,
Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living
patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for
which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and
Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to
dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he
was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His
great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job)
would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to