Tag Archives: Pronunciation

Does NPR have a hiring impediment?

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Louisa Lim National Public RadioNATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO- I can laugh at speech impediments with the best of them. But I’m less comfortable if there’s no laugh track. Specifically, when it’s a speech-challenged news reporter, I utterly object to being made to decipher from mispronunciation. On the radio, poor diction is as unacceptable as inaudible recording, and disabled- enunciation is as appropriate as a paraplegic delivering your piano. Take NPR’s Louisa Lim.

Give someone a job they can handle, but don’t celebrate equal opportunity without consideration for the task required.

Louisa Lim can’t pronounce her Rs. Might not someone have thought to counsel Lim fwom puhsuing a caweeuh on the wadio? Dropped Rs represent an alphabet 1/26th deficient. More, if you adjust inversely by Scrabble point value.

Monte Python’s Pontius Pilate of Life of Brian was mocked by the chorus for not being able to say his R’s. And yes, his Roman audience found the hilarity unending. It’s why he was urged to release Bawabas and not Jesus. Gilda Radner similarly mocked Barbara Walters. Mispwonouncing her Rs didn’t keep Bahbwa Wahwah from a lengthy career, but that’s the point I’m coming to.

If speech impediments were congenital, it would still be no reason to exhibit them center-stage like cultural accents.

Aren’t most speaking disorders remedied in the primary grades, given extra attention from speech therapists? Why do the exceptions seem to become Communications Majors? It’s as if students who have reason to work on their locution, end up becoming the professionals.

But choirs don’t tolerate tone-deafness, why would broadcasters burden themselves with mis-speakers?

Louisa Lim can’t say R, but she’s only one of a majority of female voices on NPR hobbled by flawed presentation. Don’t you find that strange? Considering that Amy Goodman’s delivery is criticized for being shrill. It’s as if NPR thinks strong feminine voices would come across as too authoritative, unless a physical weakness is empirically discernible. Would this explain why most the female voices on NPR are nasal, or supported by the weakest lung capacity? Their tiny voices sound like they could extinguish themselves without the next breath. Audiences like it too obviously.

Accents too, foreign and domestic, work to temper the projection of authority. Male presenters traditionally have sported commanding voices. Today, those who don’t moderate for sporting events most often have voices in the higher registers, or modulate their voices with rises in pitch which communicates timidity.

The Bray of Pigs

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pig troughAmerica, from The Bahia de Cochinos of my youth to the Bray of Pigs today! What haven’t I seen in my brief time here in the USA on Planet Barf?

Today certainly should be declared the Bray of Pigs. Much rides on whether the Pig With Lipstick ‘wins’ or the Donkey With Lipstick does bray the best? BRAY My online dictionary describes it as such…

bray1 /bre?/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[brey] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. the loud, harsh cry of a donkey.
2. any similar loud, harsh sound.

If and when Macho Man Joe loses to Fascinating Womanhood tonight, we certainly will hear a lot of liberal donkeys braying… and even praying. Add to this event, the passage of ‘Bailout at the times the pigs actually merit a Jail In, and certainly we do have a Bray of Pigs situation. This legislation is designed to sink the world economy, not save it. Common folk be damned, pigs to the trough! The world’s in a muck… and it’s hard to stomach the smell.

Columnist Joe Bageant sums it up in this way…

We will pay because George Bush worked hard for all those Ds in school and became20the first MBA president. We will pay because our media has internalized the capitalist system so thoroughly they can only talk in Wall Speak. We will pay because the only language we have to describe our world is that of our oppressors because we have been taught to think in Wall Speak. We will pay because we hitched our wagon to last stage capitalism and even though the wagon has now two wheels over the cliff and roars forward, we don’t know where the brake handle is located. And because we don’t know any better or understand any possible resistance to the system because we have been kept like worms in a jar and fed horse shit.

And as we all know, worms do not rise up in revolt.

That takes a backbone.

Taken from his Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers The Bailout in Plain English

Shtrength, Shtrong, Shtreuth!

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Streuth! Where did an “sh” sound introduce itself into pronunciations of “str?” Is it Cracker Ebonics like “libary” or “aks” expecially? Who says “SHtrong” beside southern idiots like the current president? I now hear the god-awful mispronunciation on the lips of sub urban TV people, news reporters on location, even from the sports sidelines. Proper English is determined by usage, so nuclear will become nucular if enough yahoos say it’s so.

Today I noticed the hackneyed “shtr” coming from the pseudo soldier voice-over on the army commercials, talking about SHtrength: SHtrong, Army SHtrong.

Have you seen it, the new ad which begins by saying: “Webster defines STRONG as” [etc, etc… BUT] “With all respect to Webster, there’s strong and then there’s ARMY STRONG.” No, and he likely hadn’t heard of Army SHTRONG either.

Pronounced re-branding

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What’s up with sudden re-pronunciations in the news? I just heard a prosecutor listing the charges against Jack Abramoff. She read his name as though she had not heard it a thousand times in the news, begining with an “ah” instead of the familiar American diphthong “ay”. Abracadabra, not Abraham.
 
Playing the bad guyOne person’s tomayto to another’s tomahto wouldn’t seem to mean anything. But isn’t there something fishy about re-branding Abramoff as a two-bit hood?

When you or I go to court, we don’t need anyone to tell us to dress to make a good impression. Here it seemed more important to play the boogeyman, rather than the smiling lobbyist who many might recognize in pictures posing with politicians.

Padilla
For three years the press has been talking about enemy combatant detainee Jose Padilla. His name was always accorded Hispanic heritage. That’s Jose with the “j” pronounced as an “h” like San Jose, and Padilla with the “illa” at the end as in quesadilla.

Suddenly newscasters are adjusting themselves to a new pronunciation. Now it’s Padilla like the pickle. Like a Texan would say armadillo, like vanilla.

Padeeya was the guy being held for three years without the government deciding what charges to bring, without due justice, without constitutional protections normally accorded American citizens. They’ve been trying to move his case into the civil courts, but have been thwarted by those courts. Now with the collusion of the Supreme Court, the administration has been able to effect this move. Hence his name in the news. His new name.

The media is telling us that this correction is being offered by Padilla’s own lawyers. Interesting. Why aren’t they asking that his first name be anglicized as well? Why not Josey, like Outlaw Josey Wales instead of No Way Jose?

CNN claims that Padilla’s lawyers call them to complain each time CNN mispronounce his name. That would be interesting indeed. A man cut off from contact with the outside world, from most of his rights as a citizen, even from adequate contact with his lawyers, is granted access to the television stories about him? And Padilla’s lawyers, is that what they’re doing with their time?

This instruction has probably come down from the same people who dictate that embedded reporters refer to certain Iraqi detainees as “Dr. Germ,” “Mrs. Anthrax” or “Chemical Ali,” appelations concocted entirely for American ears.