<B>The British Council's language clinic with "Dr Danny" </B>

?Hello and welcome once again to the English Language Clinic. Last week I wrote about the idea of ?good English pronunciation?, under the title "shibboleth not shibboleff"; but what is a ?shibboleth?? The word ?shibboleth? is used to describe a feature of speech (including the use of particular idioms, clichés, vocabulary and pronunciation) which helps to establish the identity of the individual who is speaking, or to distinguish one identity from another. Use of this word can be traced back to the Hebrew Bible (the Torah), and therefore, later, the Christian Old Testament.

The book of Judges contains the story of the Ephraimites and the Gileadites. Following a civil war, the Gileadites blocked the river Jordan, which separated the two groups.

Any Ephraimite who tried to cross the river was killed; but how did the Gileadites know who was a friend and who was an enemy? In the Ephraimite dialect, what would be pronounced as ?sh? (as in shoe or ship) by the Gileadites was pronounced as ?s? (as in soup or saw). Once the Gileadites recognised this the process of determining friend from enemy became simple. Anyone wishing to cross the river was asked to say a single word; ?shibboleth?. If the word was pronounced ?sibboleth? the person was killed immediately! (Whenever I hear this story I feel sorry for any unfortunate Gileadites with speech impediments.)

It is, of course, true that pronunciation gives information about your identity, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Remember, the key to good pronunciation is being easy to understand. Try saying these three pairs of words; can you hear the difference between the words in each pair? First ? Thirst; Fin ? Thin; Free ? Three. Now try this last pair of words; Shibboleff ? Shibboleth.

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