Speak Proper!

[Luigi Tefloni]

Channel surfing just now - landed on QVC for the first time since I last calculated the donkey's age. Caught a new-ish presenter, Laura Fleming. Full of enthusiasm, as you'd expect, but as she approached climax over the Danni Minogue range of petite fashions, she kept telling us that she was so "exci'ed" and that the product range was so"exci'ing". Three or four times in the first couple of sentences you could hear the letter "t" hit the floor before being used.

I admit, I'm an old fuddy-duddy when it comes to speaking proper - you can tell because only people of a certain age use the phrase "fuddy duddy" - but surely even the tat-peddlers of shopping tv could use all 26 letters of the alphabet.

This also happens with BBC presenters now, and the BBC was the one media organisation whose staff could speak the Queen's English. It used to be just footballers who would fill their sentences with "like", "obviously", "you know", "literally" etc etc. Now, it seems like it is a badge of honour to be celebrated.

Stop..., like, NOW!

 

[Toril]

Dropping the “t“ is sometimes down to a regional accent although I don’t know if that’s the case with Laura, but just in case ……

The “mispronunciations“ that I always notice are”somethink, anythink, etc” instead of using the “g“ at the end and also “should of” instead of “should have.” Maybe it’s the teacher in me.

 

[Brissles]

Or 'sumfink', 'anyfink'. 'fir'y free'.

In many cases its not regional accent, its just laziness. Who remembers Sue Lawley - who shared a teatime programme with the likes of Frank Bough back in the 70's? Well, she was an out and out Birmingham lass with a really pronounced accent, and had elocution lessons to soften her accent, because as a newsreader she needed the whole of the UK to understand her, not just her home area. So it can be done.

 

[candycane]

My dad worked in the media and he had elocution lessons early on in his career to eradicate his very strong northern accent. He always said if you can't speak or spell properly you won't get very far - seems he was wrong!

CC

 

[stratobuddy]

On the BBC I've heard loads of different pronounciations of Vladimir and Kiev.

You'd think they could get their act together and say them in the same way.

The BBC used to have a pronouciation unit for that.

 

[Sazza]

On the BBC I've heard loads of different pronounciations of Vladimir and Kiev.

You'd think they could get their act together and say them in the same way.

The BBC used to have a pronouciation unit for that.

To be fair the pronunciation of Kiev has changed since the war started hence the spelling change to Kyiv.

 

[stratobuddy]

To be fair the pronunciation of Kiev has changed since the war started hence the spelling change to Kyiv.

We always say PARIS not PAREE like the French do, so we could have kept to KIEV and not KEEV. There are loads of foreign places where the local pronunciation is cmpletely different to ours eg Copenhagen.

 

[Radiomike]

Bad grammar is one thing, and a real bugbear of mine. There’s no excuse for it.

But don’t confuse it with regional accents. Coming from Belfast, I think it’s great that we can hear such a diversity of voices from right across the UK. Some of the announcers on our local BBC have really lovely soft, warm accents that are perfectly easy to understand.

I studied a bit of linguistics a few years ago and remember being taught that “The Queen’s English” - or Received Pronunciation (RP) - is actually just a regional accent in itself, peculiar to a small part of South East England.

Sure, some accents take a little more getting used to than others, but I’m delighted that the days when people were supposed to talk like they’d a plum in their mouth are long gone. Can you imagine what they’d have tried to make Lorraine Kelly or Eamonn Holmes sound like? Or, even on QVC, Anne Dawson, Simon Biagi or Miceal?

 

[Sazza]

We always say PARIS not PAREE like the French do, so we could have kept to KIEV and not KEEV. There are loads of foreign places where the local pronunciation is cmpletely different to ours eg Copenhagen.

They are trying to say it like the Ukranians say it, not how the Russians say it. They want to support Ukraine.

 

[Luigi Tefloni]

Dropping the “t“ is sometimes down to a regional accent although I don’t know if that’s the case with Laura, but just in case ……

The “mispronunciations“ that I always notice are”somethink, anythink, etc” instead of using the “g“ at the end and also “should of” instead of “should have.” Maybe it’s the t

Dropping the “t“ is sometimes down to a regional accent although I don’t know if that’s the case with Laura, but just in case ……

The “mispronunciations“ that I always notice are”somethink, anythink, etc” instead of using the “g“ at the end and also “should of” instead of “should have.” Maybe it’s the teacher in me.

I accept the regional accent explanation, and I'm not saying that all presenters should have the old-fashioned plummy posh accents. The "k" at the end of "something", "anything" and "nothing" also drive me to fits of shouting-loudly-at-the tv-even-though-I-know-nobody-can-hear-me! Could be old age, of course!

 

[stratobuddy]

I accept the regional accent explanation, and I'm not saying that all presenters should have the old-fashioned plummy posh accents. The "k" at the end of "something", "anything" and "nothing" also drive me to fits of shouting-loudly-at-the tv-even-though-I-know-nobody-can-hear-me! Could be old age, of course!

Are you sure they can't hear you? Stands to reason, if their voice comes out of the TV, then if you shout at it they are bound to hear you, surely?

I regularly spoke back into my radio speaker, when I was 6.

 

[Luigi Tefloni]

Are you sure they can't hear you? Stands to reason, if their voice comes out of the TV, then if you shout at it they are bound to hear you, surely?

I regularly spoke back into my radio speaker, when I was 6.

Actually, now you come to mention it.....I was doing a crossword the other day, and needed an answer. Instead of typing the details into the search engine, I used the microphone facility and spoke to Google. My nice laptop spoke to me with the answer........and without a thought, I automatically replied "thank you". So at least my laptop thinks I may be a polite person, even if my tv thinks I'm a foul-mouthed yob!

 

[loveallthingsitalian]

Mr L makes fun of me as I always say please and thank you and speak very clearly to Alexa whereas he just barks orders to it. He is a very polite person but I have found since Alexa he tends to speak to me in that manner but rest assured he gets pulled up sharpish.

Unfortunately lazy diction is excused as regional accents.

 

[stratobuddy]

Mr L makes fun of me as I always say please and thank you and speak very clearly to Alexa whereas he just barks orders to it. He is a very polite person but I have found since Alexa he tends to speak to me in that manner but rest assured he gets pulled up sharpish.

Unfortunately lazy diction is excused as regional accents.

I find Alexa is getting worse and worse at understanding me. It used to be very accurate, and my theory is that since I first got one, there are now so many that the server can't cope. Alexa is also built into so many things these days, such as TVs and tablets.

For those who don't know, when you say something to "her" she doesn't do anything except pass it on to the "cloud" (in reality miliions of computers). The cloud then interprets what you said, finds the answer, converts it to speech and sends it back to Alexa. This is done via the internet, and may have travelled across the world and back to give you your answer. Hardly worth the effort based on the quality of her jokes if you ask her to tell one Try it

 

[puffin48]

Channel surfing just now - landed on QVC for the first time since I last calculated the donkey's age. Caught a new-ish presenter, Laura Fleming. Full of enthusiasm, as you'd expect, but as she approached climax over the Danni Minogue range of petite fashions, she kept telling us that she was so "exci'ed" and that the product range was so"exci'ing". Three or four times in the first couple of sentences you could hear the letter "t" hit the floor before being used.

I admit, I'm an old fuddy-duddy when it comes to speaking proper - you can tell because only people of a certain age use the phrase "fuddy duddy" - but surely even the tat-peddlers of shopping tv could use all 26 letters of the alphabet.

This also happens with BBC presenters now, and the BBC was the one media organisation whose staff could speak the Queen's English. It used to be just footballers who would fill their sentences with "like", "obviously", "you know", "literally" etc etc. Now, it seems like it is a badge of honour to be celebrated.

Stop..., like, NOW!

I so agree with you. I have only seen her once and that was enough. What has happened to the 't' these days. It seems to have been dropped by so many youngsters vocabulary. Its just plain laziness in my opinion.

To be fair the pronunciation of Kiev has changed since the war started hence the spelling change to Kyiv.

Kiev is the Russian pronunciation so we have changed to Kyiv

 

[PennyPitStop]

Bad grammar is one thing, and a real bugbear of mine. There’s no excuse for it.

But don’t confuse it with regional accents. Coming from Belfast, I think it’s great that we can hear such a diversity of voices from right across the UK. Some of the announcers on our local BBC have really lovely soft, warm accents that are perfectly easy to understand.

What is grammar rules just don't stick in your head? I've tried and tried to learn and relearn grammar rules for both Welsh and English but they don't stay around for long.

But if you want me to explain how logarithms work, easy. An eight page Maths prof full of caclus bring it on. Explain the Normal Distribution I learnt it for A level 40 years ago and still can give it a fair go. Solve a Rubicks cube of course I can. Just don't ask me what a past participle is and I won't even ask you how many ways you can conjugate a verb in Welsh and I can even remember the English word for treiglad which has to be the most evil part of grammar where you change the front end of a word up to three different ways so four spellings of the same word depending what something is doing, it's colour or size or who owns it. So yes there are lots of reasons people have bad grammar, but 2+2=4 always, or 100 is you can do binary.

Maths is fun and logical.

 

[boffy]

Well you would hate my East London accent. I loathe it. Specially when Its been recorded. Its a particular nusiance now as I live in North West London. Where most people speak with a nice posh neutral tone. Including My children.

 

[maymorganlondon]

We always say PARIS not PAREE like the French do, so we could have kept to KIEV and not KEEV. There are loads of foreign places where the local pronunciation is cmpletely different to ours eg Copenhagen.

KEEV is the Ukrainian pronunciation KIEV is the Russian. Given the current situation, I am fully behind rolling back the Russification of Ukrainian place names, or anything else in Ukraine. Just how I feel, and I learned Russian at school (can barely speak it now almost 40 years later).

In terms of English accents, surely there is a way to keep the main features of the accent rather than us all sounding "posh"?
Glottal stops (or to those prone to them glo'al stops) are widespread in many parts of the UK, and it's hard to eradicate unless there's a good reason... like being more inclusive of deaf lip readers and those learning English as a foreign language.

 

[stratobuddy]

I noticed on the TODAY programme this morning that they were saying KIEV.

 

[loveallthingsitalian]

I quite like Bradley Walsh but dear Lord I want to slap him when says “what was you….”