James, Arthur Lloyd (1884–1943)

Arthur Lloyd James was described by Time Magazine in 1941 as, “…one of the greatest living authorities on the English language and its pronunciation”¹. He was a Phonetician, an expert in phonetics, which meant he was a linguist who specialised in the sounds of speech and their pronounciation. He was born in Pentre in 1884. He went to study at Cardiff University and then to Cambridge.

He became a lecturer in phonetics at University College London in 1920, and then professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1933. During his academic life there are indications that he was influenced by Daniel Jones, a great phonetician of the time who also taught at UCL².

James is chiefly remembered for his Historical Introduction to French Phonetics (1929) which can still be found in print today, as well as for his work with the BBC.

In 1926, just four years after the founding of the BBC, its managing director, John C. W. Reith formed an Advisory Committee on Spoken English whose task was to make recommendations on policy and on the pronunciation of contentious words. Amongst its many prestigeous members of the time, they chose Arthur Lloyd James to be its honorary secretary and he worked alongside his old mentor Daniel Jones. The High Beam Encyclopedia notes that their task was far from simple. “There was from the earliest years an element of tension and disagreement among those responsible for shaping language policy as well as among the listeners, some of whom took BBC usage to be authoritative while others did not“³.

Still, James seems to have been quite diplomatic, “Lloyd James noted in the BBC Handbook (1929) that recommending certain pronunciations to announcers ‘is not to be regarded as implying that all other pronunciations are wrong: the recommendations are made in order to ensure uniformity of practice, and to protect the Announcers from the criticism to which the very peculiar nature of their work renders them liable’”⁴.

Some of the things he was famous for when working for the BBC include teaching its announcers to pronounce Cholmondeley in two syllables (chumly) and Llanfairpwllgyngyllgogerychwryndrobwllllantsiliogogogoch in liquid labials (pronounced Hlan-fair-poohl-gooin-gill-gogery-coorin- dro-boohl-hlant-seeleo-gogo-goch). ^{5 – [Its Railway porters just call it Hlanfair P. G.]}

In 1935, under the leadership of Lloyd James, the advisory committee published its recommendations for place-names and family names in six volumes that served as an internal BBC standard for many years⁶. He also made several lasting contributions to the English language which would have impacted the wider world including writing the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on pronunciation. He is also cited as the man responsible for the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” which was given to Nazi Propagandist William Joyce after Lloyd James reportedly had criticised BBC announcers for being “too haw haw” in their diction⁷.

At the start of the second world war the committee was suspended, although both James and Jones remained advisors to the BBC for the rest of their lives. It was never formally reactivated, but during the 1940s the group became known as the BBC Pronounciation Unit. During the war, Lloyd James was engaged by the Government to train R. A. F. pilots to speak clearly by radio telephone. At some stage also he married a concert violinist named Elsie Owen.

Sadly, Lloyd James committed suicide on 12th April 1943, after killing his wife, as a result of a depressive psychosis brought on by the war. In an article by Time Magazine which described his gruesome end he is described as “one of the greatest living authorities on the English language and its pronunciation“. In 1935 he is said to have made the following statement in the Broadcast Word: “A language is never in a state of fixation, but is always changing; we are not looking at a lantern-slide but at a moving picture”.

For in indication of the calipre of the members of the Advisory Committee, its members included:

Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate.

Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, an English actor who was considered the finest Hamlet of his time, noted for his elocution and ascetic features.

Logan Pearsall Smith, the naturalized American scholar, essayist and critic.

the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw

And later,

Alistair Cooke, the British-American journalist and broadcaster.

C. T. Onions, the English grammarian, lexicographer and editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Harold Orton, a university lecturer and dialectologist, best remembered as co-founder of the Survey of English Dialects.

Professor Henry Cecil Wyld, a noteworthy lexicographer.

References

¹ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801213,00.html

²http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Jones_(phonetician)