The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Pygmalion

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Posting Date: May 28, 2009 [EBook #3825]
Release Date: March, 2003
First Posted: September 29, 2001
Last Updated: January 19, 2005

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PYGMALION ***

Produced by Eve Sobol. HTML version by Al Haines.

PYGMALION

BERNARD SHAW

1912

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: In the printed version of this text, all
apostrophes for contractions such as "can't", "wouldn't" and "he'd"
were omitted, to read as "cant", "wouldnt", and "hed". This etext
edition restores the omitted apostrophes.

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 eighteen-seventies, 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 popularize his subject,