How does this persona even manage to chew food?
BBC’s “Secret Guide” To Pronunciation
A secret guide that has helped generations of BBC newsreaders pronounce difficult words and odd-sounding names is to be made public for the first time.
The Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation, which is published next week, is an updated version of the tome used by the BBC since the days when radio presenters wore dinner jackets.
It includes the correct way to pronounce foreign names, such as Sven-Goran Eriksson, the former England manager, (sven yoer-an ay-rik-son) as well as Faria Alam, his former lover, (fuh-ree-uh uh-lam).
More than 16,000 words, phrases and difficult-sounding names and places are included in the £14.99 book, a version of which has been part of the BBC’s training for presenters and newsreaders. In 1926, Lord Reith, the first director general, decided that the BBC would always get it right whether it was pronouncing the names of visiting dignitaries or the battlegrounds of far-flung wars. He created the Advisory Committee on Spoken English whose members included George Bernard Shaw and Robert Bridges, the poet laureate.
This sounds about as secret as a Masonic handshake, but I found it worth noting.
Very sensible.
Hmmm. Is it Lord Reith like ree-th or like rye-th?
I’m sure it’s handy for TV newsreaders to be able to ring up the BBC pronunciation unit and ask, for example, how whoever the current England soccer manager is says his name and so on. Not that they always bother in practice: for some unfathomable reason BBC newsreaders always to use to guess that the ex-Chilean dictator’s name must be pronounced as if it were French – don’t they know most of South America is Spanish speaking?
Some probably phone the unit when they’re not sure about words; others clearly just guess. And in any case how does anyone know when to ask – people who don’t know might *think* they do.
But the article is essentially about the book not the unit, and whether it would be worth anyone’s while to buy the book is another matter.
Is it really worth £14.99? That’s $28. The bulk of it will be a list of standard British English pronunciations for words deemed “difficult” and pronunciations for British placenames and family names. This – at £8.02 (half the price) –
http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Pronouncing-Dictionary-Daniel-Jones/dp/0521459036
– would do just as well.
But maybe it will be a good money spinner. Most dictionaries won’t cover proper names, and with the status of English as a world language there are probably some foreign students who might think it valuable to have a special dictionary to tell them how to say Gloucester, Dalziel, Caius College, and all the rest of it. Handy for getting the right train ticket perhaps. 🙂
Actually when the American radio/television networks had some standards thet also employed pronunciation guides similar to the BBC’s. NBC’s was the gold standard for pronunciations guides. Of course that was when editors actually were employed to edit content; it appears even newspapers fail in this regard currently.
Reminds me of some BBC reporting on the teacher strike in Oaxaca, Mexico a few months ago. The BBC news anchor pronounced the name of the state correctly (wa-HA-ka), but the reporter in Mexico City got it wrong (oh – ax – ah)! Apparently he hadn’t seen the guide.
I was going to say something but I would sound like a slut.
What I would like to know is if the BBC is so bloody concerned about pronouncing proper names correctly, why don’t they get english right first. That is the native language of the BBC, right?
BBC News continues to grate on one’s nerves with their habit (about 50% of the time) of lapsing into ending-in-vowel bastardinazion. That is, the practice of regularly switching the pronunciation from the correct vowel ending and replacing it with an “er” sound.
It will probably be argued by a BBC apologist that is just a quaint British colloquialism. But pronouncing the same word in two succeeding sentences two different ways? It makes it sound like the news reader has been told to correct the habit and then quickly lapses back into the same lazy pronounciation, many times within the very same sentence!
What an example? There are hundreds everyday on the BBC news programs. Cuber, Havaner, Americer, Bosnier, Russier, Canader, Australier, Aisier, Florider, Africer, Indier, Bahamer, Bermuder, Arizoner, Montaner, Alasker, ad nauseum.
Maybe the BBC should put every english word for a place name ending in an “a” in their little pronounciation guide. Changing this practice would really help them sound a little more credible.
And for heaven’s sake, BBC – be consistent. Don’t change the pronounciation of the very same word by the very same speaker within one sentence! It makes the speaker sound ignorant. Geez!