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.

Hmm … Some of you may want to go back and read my second post, as well as the first.

Thanks @QwestSprout. But the thing is, as I don’t have to be professionally neutral about this, I really do mind when words lose their specificity in pronunciation. In fact I’m professionally biased towards the poetry and character of words that retain some individuality. (I’ve just thought of an example but it’s so good I might find a use for it in real life!) It’s miserable for me when particularity or distinctiveness is erased.

My central London relatives used to say noo. The one I particularly remember was born late 19C early 20C

Please can you give an example, then I can look it up on iplayer.
Noo is normal for Norfolk (NFN!).

I think some people genuinely don't know how to pronounce certain words anymore. Some of the younger presenters on radio 6 are bad for this. One really jumped out at me, but I can't remember what it was. And I know part of it is seeing the word a x not actually hearing it.

May-or is one I hear a lot, but i think this is the American influence. I think there may be regions of the UK that may still use the old pronunciation, but I'd never heard it on the bbc until a couple of years ago.

If you're from Renfrewshire then you are correct.

I'm quite happy with regional variations. 🙂 What irritates me is when people pronounce some words in a regional dialect when that dialect is clearly not their own.

Thank god for that. I was starting to think I was in an alternative universe 😂 I can't mentally wrap my head around sticking a y in Hugh or Houston.

Ah, see, I would never say 'hoo'; always Hyoo. But I wonder if that's because most Huws I know are Welsh Huws and rhyme with Pugh. We're saying 'Pyoo' right?

Which Radio 4 presenters are doing it, @TheMarriageOfAirAndFrock ? I'm not sure what first thing this morning means, I've had it on since 5.30.
I've had a quick listen to the News and the start of Today, and only heard Sean Farrington say new as noo. He's from Wolverhampton so it's probably his accent. I suspect that Adrian Chiles says 'noo' too.

It's accent not dialect. I'd object if they were using dialect without there being a good reason for doing so.

If you feel strongly, complain to the BBC.

New is [njuː] - it rhymes with pew not poo.

Huw isn't [hjuː], it's [hɪu:]

I’m not saying Pyoo!

Edit : or Hyoo

@BestIsWest , it's not Pyoo.
It rhymes with the eau in beauty.

I don’t pronounce it Pyoo. I was referring to the pp who implied we were! It rhymes with Pew and Huw in my south Wales accent. No ‘Y’ sound in there (that I can hear).

And that depends if you say Beauty with a ‘y’ sound. I don’t, some accents do.

@BestIsWest , if I wrote beauty as if it was a Welsh word, I'd write it as 'biwti'.
I'd say Pugh as 'piw' and Puw as 'puw', Hughes as 'hiws' and Huws as huws.

A friend from Abertawe/Swansea says 'Duw' as 'diw' (like English 'due/dew') but he has a strong accent and doesn't speak much Welsh.

Huw sounds like hill when someone with the London accent that sounds L as W says it.

@PleasantPedant yes, agree re what you say and ‘Hill’ describes it well. I believe it’s known as the /iu/ diphthong.

The difference between ‘You’ and ‘Ewe’ as pronounced locally is marked.

I’m from near Swansea. Although in the village my (Welsh speaking) mum comes from You is pronounced like ‘Ewe’. As in ‘ Where ‘iw goin’ ?’ And I couldn’t begin to describe how they pronounce ‘going’.

I find it interesting how some non rhotic speakers don't pronounce the r in words yet add them where there isn't an r eg lawr and order.

Some southern Scottish accents also have the w for l pronunciation. You'll often hear footballers talking about a player having great skiws or being very skiwfuw.

I gave the IPA in a pp, @BestIsWest . (Huw isn't [hjuː], it's [hɪu:]).
"Donkey's years" makes me smile - I say year as [jɪə] or [jəː]. The accent where I'm from would strike some as strange but I try to use the standard pronunciation so that people understand me.

I's say you as iŵ and ewe as iw.

@RaraRachael , It's the intrusive R. Linking and intrusive R - Wikipedia.
It's strange how people can say drawring but not drawer.

You can tell it by how things were spelled before spelling became standardised by dictionaries — people wrote the way things sounded to them, and as they often didn’t move around much, that would reflect their specific accent and dialect. Some of those sounds have since gone silent (sword, knight etc). Loanwords are also useful. With literature, you can also tell a lot from what words rhymed then and don’t now (Chaucer rhymed deaf with life. His characters would pronounce sight to rhyme with our modern ‘seat’, meet as we pronounce ‘mate’.

OU with David Crystal on performing Shakespeare with original pronunciation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

The fact is, Henry V when originally performed would have sounded far more like a West Country accent than Larry Olivier’s cut-glass RP.

Jane Austen always spelled tomatoes ‘tomatas’ and arrowroot “arraroot’, suggesting that’s what they sounded like in a middle-class Hampshire accent of her day.

@RaraRachael Yes, I’m also fascinated by intrusive r usage.

Yes, to noticing may-or all the time. I've always said mair. Maybe I never knew the correct way to pronounce it.

I used to say choomeric and, some time in 90s, it changed to tur-meric.

Not sure I follow your comment about young people saying chewsday. That is how it's pronounced in most places in the UK, isn't it?

I say mayor as /meər/. I say layer as [ˈleɪə].

No. It's [ˈtjuːzdeɪ].

Yes and in Northamptonshire leicestershire and Buckinghamshire (as a pp mentioned) too. So large swathes of the Midlands, many of whom OP may not otherwise see as having an accent massively different from theirs.

I'd have to take you back several centuries and explain how different vowel sounds developed in the different forms of English

This sounds fascinating!

that Boise, Idaho was pronounced ‘Bwoz’. Place names are a total minefield.
I also got confused with Des Moines - not day mwan ?

Yet La Jolla is still pronounced the Spanish way La Hoya.

I suppose it's because it was Spanish territory more recently than Boise and Des Moines.

I had a very similar problem with Theydon Bois. I'd only ever seen it written on tube maps. The one time I had to say it I made a complete tit of myself saying it as Theydon Bwa.