PYGMALION - A Professor of Phonetics - Preface to Pygmalion

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Skyler

The preface to Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion presents the author’s motivation for making a phonetician the hero of a popular play, arguing that English speech is uniquely difficult for both learners and native speakers. It recounts Shaw’s interest in late 1870s phonetics and discusses influential figures such as Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, and Henry Sweet, highlighting their character, impact, and conflicts with academia. The text also explains shorthand, including Sweet’s “Current Shorthand,” and contrasts it with Pitman’s more organized, accessible system.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages126

Reading Time3 h 14 min

AccessFree to download

Preface to Pygmalion

A Professor of Phonetics

Phonetics reform and key figures

Shorthand: Current Shorthand vs. Pitman

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. PYGMALION BERNARD SHAW 1912 ACT 1 ACT 2 ACT 3 ACT 4 ACT 5 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 skullcap, 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 ofthem all athis job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an illnatured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly. Those who knew him will recognize in my third act the allusion to the patent Shorthand in which he used to write postcards, and which may be acquired from a four and six-penny manual published by the Clarendon Press. The postcards which Mrs. Higgins describes are such as I have received from Sweet. I would decipher a sound which a cockney would represent by zerr, and a Frenchman by seu, and then write demanding with some heat what on earth it meant. Sweet, with boundless contempt for my stupidity, would reply that it not only meant but obviously was the word Result, as

FAQs

Why does Shaw introduce a phonetician as a central character in Pygmalion?

Shaw argues that English is hard to teach and learn properly, and he frames a phonetic enthusiast as the reformer England needs. He uses this interest to justify the hero of the popular play.

Which phonetics pioneers does the preface mention and how are they portrayed?

The preface names Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, and Henry Sweet. Ellis and Pagliardini are described as people it was impossible to dislike, while Sweet is presented as highly able yet dismissive of academic dignitaries.

How does Shaw compare Sweet’s shorthand with Pitman’s shorthand?

Shaw explains that Sweet’s “Current Shorthand” is meant to express sounds accurately and legibly, but in practice becomes an inscrutable cryptogram due to Sweet’s contempt for popular systems. He contrasts this with Pitman’s success, supported by organized teaching resources and a market that Sweet could not replicate.

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Skyler