Why are Radio 4 presenters mispronouncing ‘new’?

[TheMarriageOfAirAndFrock]

First thing this morning I heard ‘nuuu’, rather than ‘neeeyouw’ (compressed) which is the word I’ve been familiar with for 6 decades.

And it’s ’s not just R4 - I’m hearing a lazy pronunciation of this word everywhere these days.

See also: "toonah" or "choonah" (tuna). Makes me wince. Is it a Transatlantic thing?

It isn't just transatlantic - there are large parts of the UK where it is the normal pronunciation in the local accent. The BBC stopped insisting on RP years ago.

Yod-dropping and yod-coalescence are common across many accents in the UK, and as to the why I'd have to take you back several centuries and explain how different vowel sounds developed in the different forms of English. To complain about this is like complaining people no longer routinely pronounce WH as if the letters were reversed (HW, or ʍ if you read IPA) - sometimes a change that starts in one dialect spreads to others.

My grandmother always said nu and stu . She was from Buckinghamshire and was born in 1912. I was talking to a bloke my age at a meeting, noticed he said nu and found out he was from Bucks too. But it has been known for years that Americans can't pronounce Stewart but say Stooart.

Love a bit of linguistics!

it’s not lazy op. It’s just a different phoneme.

They’re not mispronouncing anything - different accents come with different ways of saying things.

Its not just recently (I was about to type “It’s not nuu”).

We have the BBC Horrible Histories DVDs from 2009 where Jim and Martha say it all the time!

Americans also say Hooston not Hyooston- I’m from an area where Hyooston is a common surname which I guess is where the city name came from

BBC also say buck instead of boook-annoying

Yesh. I find it annoying.

The BBC doesn't say anything in one particular way. They moved long ago from a standard pronunciation towards having more regional accents, thankfully.

I was also wondering if the OP would be upset at BBC presenters using short a vowel sounds for bath and France.

I've always heard this pronunciation of 'new' from some UK speakers. I think you must have just become recently sensitised to it, OP.

I’m happy to withdraw ‘mispronouncing’! 😅 And of course I don’t object to people using their natural accents / dialects.

I suppose what I’m noticing specifically is people whose pronunciation is (shorthand) pretty much like mine using ‘nuuu’ when it sounds incongruous coming out of their mouths. Why is that happening now, @QwestSprout?

@MyOtherProfile - no, I don’t mind hearing a short vowel ‘bath’! Even though I’m very much a ‘baaaarth’ person.

Relieved to hear it 😀

Off the top of my head without going to look at a load of papers:
All languages simplify over time in many ways - e.g. originally we had one word that meant heart, mind, spirit and courage, but over time we added more words and those other meanings split off leaving the original word to semantically drift until it ended up as 'mood'.
Simplification takes many forms, but one of them is pronunciation, leading us to -

NRP - which stands for Non Regional Pronunciation - has historically been a sort of classless variety of English that eschews dialectal markers, including those of RP. This sort of spread around in the 20th century and was used by broadcasters to replace RP (received pronunciation).

Then a variety called Estuary English (coming from Southeast England funnily enough from the London area) started to become more prevalent and take over. This variety borrows some of its phonemes from Cockney English which is why we get more glottal stops, and yod dropping and some other things I can't think of right now.
Most linguists would agree Estuary English is now NRP, that one has overtaken the other.

Edit - the reason for the spread is technology in that everyone can now watch TV and videos and shorts online, and also we have far greater population movement now so it's much easier for changes to spread than they used to be.

So that's why these pronunciations have spread, and returning to the idea of simplification, it's simply easier to pronounce tune and lute without the /j/ phoneme. People are like water, we will always take the path of least resistance.

OOH an expert! can you tell me the origins of Americans strongly pronouncing the 'R' in words? ( Can't think how to word it). Is it from Scottish and some English dialects in the early waves of immigrants from our shores?

Perhaps they were influenced by Marjorie Dawes of Little Britain. “We have a noooooooo member!”

And I think Boris Johnson was disappointed that the new variant was named Omicron, instead of Nu. The clown probably wanted to say “Alas, we have a nuuuuuuuuuuuuu variant”.

The word you're looking for is rhotic - the pronunciation of r in all positions in words.

Yeah you're pretty spot on. A few hundred years ago practically every area of England had rhotic accents, but again due to simplification, it started to disappear from English dialects (Scotland it stayed more) just as we started thinking about sending people over to the New World. There are various things - particularly vocabulary - in American English dialects that have long fallen out here but they kept because at the time they left they were still using.

There's a very useful map we use for teaching that shows just how much rhoticity fell out in England over the 20th century, it goes from areas all over the country coloured in to just a few areas in the south west within a few decades.

Here is the explanation.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaEkdUQOGYD/

Thank you so much @QwestSprout . I didn't know we mostly all had rhotic accents centuries ago. I wonder how we know now, as there were obviously no recording instruments back then.

Fascinating subject, thanks again!

Me too! Especially when it sounds like burke. I never hear, e.g., ‘shook’ pronounced ‘shirk’.

EDIT - sorry I quoted you incorrectly! I was responding to @Corianda who mentioned book!

I've noticed on British podcasts many people have started using the American pronunciation of certain words. I'm not sure whether it's intentional (to appeal to a wider audience) or just because these types of people tend to be very steeped in American media.

"Adult" is the latest one I've noticed has flipped to American pronunciation.

I’m from Norfolk and this is a hugely common feature of the Norfolk accent. There’s an electrical store here called Hughes which is routinely pronounced as ‘Whose’ rather ‘Hyughes’.

Nick Grimshaw says Nu-z not ny-ews. It annoys me. It doesn't make sense as I think he's a northerner?

My son's generation are having a real mashup with pronunciation though. It's the YouTube generation. He doesn't know the difference between UK and USA pronunciation...well not until I tell him and then he gets cross with me! 😂

But do you call blokes named Hugh ‘Hoo’ or Hyoo?
(Because I think Hoo doesn’t sound quite right. Although it might be OK in a West Country accent. )