AIBU to think that the BBC should employ newsreaders who know how to pronounce words correctly?

[Dawndonna]

I have put up with 'contra verse y' for years, recently it has been 'pie ra cy' and 'pry va cy'. This morning, I heard 'in gin u a' for ingenue. I turned it off.

Yeah, I know it's trivial, but it annoys the hell out of me!

Saying piracy with an extra uh sound in the middle sounds like how pirates should say it. With a couple of ooooh arrrrhs on the end for good measure.

The one that used to annoy me in London was people talking about Convent Garden instead of Covent Garden.

And I was always taught that you used an when words sounded like they started with a vowel - so, for example, you would say a hotel but an 'otel. Whether or not you should be dropping hs on words is a whole different argument! This rule also explains how come you talk about a unicorn (sounds like it starts with you) but an umbrella (sounds like it starts with um).

Curry - do you seriously not know anyone who pronounces drawing and Wednesday correctly?

I'm really surprised. I mean, surely some people must get them right. [hsmile]

I've got another one - 'sixth'

Maybe it's a Scotish thing but I know lots of people (myself included) who pronounce Wednesday Wed-ns-day. OK the middle "e" is not pronounced.
But likewise Scots always say their "r"s like "waterr" or "paperr".

Scottish even!! Tsk.

Ah yes - "sics"

Still sitting here saying words out loud to check.

I DO say DrawRing and I say Mon-de Tues-de Wends-de Furs-de.

For a small fee I will promise not to come round your houses and talk at you :o

wicketkeeper Naomi is a huge big bear of mine. Drives me mad.

I say sicsth place, unlike the English sicth. This is because I am Irish, and have a dental plosive as a "th" instead of a fricative, making this articulatory transition feasible. Where there is a dental fricative, it is really very difficult to pronounce an alveolar fricative (s) followed by an interdental on (th) hence the production "sicth". It's not that one is accurate and the other inaccurate, both pronunciations are simply the easiest thing for people from one particular area to say.

oh, yes, sixth!
most people say sikth or six
or down here, it's more likely to be sikf.

i don't think it's that hard to say siksth.

interesting thought working

Moira Stewart (is that her name?) who reads the news on Chris Evans on Radio 2 always always says Bell-fast instead of Belf-ast. Drives me round the bend. I was so annoyed I texted one morning to tell them the error of their ways. I was ignored. [hsmile]

Bell-fast instead of Belf-ast

The fact that she says 'farst' instead of 'fast' annoys me. [hsmile]

If you have a fricative for both, it's actually pretty hard to co-articulate, particularly when transitioning from the velar /k/ of siks. You would need to produce both the /s/ and the /th/ at precisely the same second, on the same airstream, transitioning the tongue from the alveolar ridge (bumpy bit behind your teeth) to between your teeth. If you slow it down, it's possible and certainly in terms of what people think they are saying/hearing, they will believe they are producing the /s/ and the /th/ as two separate phonemes because they intend to mark it. In the same way we say hambag instead of handbag, but most people believe they are saying ha/n/d/bag. However, in the speed of the average speech stream, it is very hard to separate out those phonemes because of the structure of that word.

Incidentally if you have a 'f' substitution for th it's even harder as you need to make that same transition from /s/ on that bumpy ridge to placing the teeth against the lip.

p
m
s
l

at piracy like piriton. Tosh.

Commu-nial instead of communal winds me up. As does mis-chee-vious instead of mischievous.

And don't get me started on haitch...

i have jsut been going "six-th six-th sixth"
I think i push the cks out and then end the word with the th.
the ck is more at the centre of the tongue, rolling into the s at the front of the the tongue, then the th on the tongue-between-teeth.

Pr - eye - vacy rather than privacy does annoy me. We are not fecking Americans, why have so many of us started talking like them, all of a sudden? Nothing wrong with speaking US English if you are American but FGS, it's extremely irritating in Britain by native English speakers.

Pry- Minister. They all do that.

And as for that bloody sill weather girl (although to be fair, it is on ITV) on Daybreak who talks about lower temperatures "in exposure." Would I be unreasonable to email to complain? It's driving me MAD.

working to me, you sound like the devine Prof Brian Cox. I would love to be able to understand what you are saying, but it all goes straight over my head. Your posts look like English, but I don't understand a word of it! [hgrin]

working you have just taken me back to two terms of phonology classes.

Oh, yes. Naomi. When I was small and went to Sunday school, it was Nay - o - mee. Now a foreign influence has infiltrated and it's ny - o - mi.

I'm a pedant who could write an essay here but I have to say that I was born up north near Newcastle and my mother called it Newcarstle. It's only a modern whim to call it Newcassle. Yes, they call it Newcassle there but, as an example, we are not in France so we call its capital Paris, not Paree. In our language, we call Cologne 'Colone' not 'kerln'.

As far as I'm concerned, Bath is Barth, not Baath. I was youth hostelling in the Lake District 100 years ago and there were some Germans in a hostel in there who talked about going to Carlizlee (Carlisle). There was a joke some time ago about someone in London asking for directions to Kayapsidee (Cheapside).