"Why Can't the English?" is a song featured in the 1964 film My Fair Lady with music written by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. As the opening song of the film, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) sings about the English' terrible accents, and uses Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn)'s accent to show Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) how her way of speaking “keeps her in her place”.
Lyrics[]
Higgins:
Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter
Condemned by every syllable she utters
By right she should be taken out and hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue
Eliza, spoken:
Aaoooww!
Higgins:
Aaoooww!
Heavens, what a noise!
This is what the British population
Calls an elementary education
Pickering, spoken:
Come, sir, I think you picked a poor example
Higgins:
Did I?
Hear them down in Soho square
Dropping "h's" everywhere
Speaking English anyway they like
You sir, did you go to school?
Man:
Wadaya tike me for, a fool?
Higgins:
No one taught him 'take' instead of 'tike'!
Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse
Hear a Cornishman converse
I'd rather hear a choir singing flat
Chickens cackling in a barn
Just like this one here
Eliza, spoken:
Garn!
Higgins
I ask you, sir, what sort of word is that?
It's "Aaoooww" and "Garn" that keep her in her place
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now
Should be antique
If you spoke as she does, sir
Instead of the way you do
Why, you might be selling flowers, too!
Pickering, spoken:
I beg your pardon!
Higgins:
An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get
Oh, why can't the English learn to
Set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears
There even are places where English completely disappears
In America, they haven't used it for years!
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian
The Greeks are taught their Greek
In France every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed"
The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly
Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning
The Hebrews learn it backwards
Which is absolutely frightening
But use proper English and you're regarded as a freak
Why can't the English
Why can't the English
Learn to speak?
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