November 28, 2020
by Graham
3 Comments
It’s interesting to read that the French are adding “accent discrimination” to their equality laws. In Britain, we seem to be getting past the stage of despising people for the way they speak. When I joined the BBC in 1979, … Continue reading
September 22, 2020
by Graham
3 Comments
We’re all accustomed to the many ways that the letter combination ‘ough’ is pronounced in English, depending on the word: cough, rough, though, through, thought, Slough, and the whimsical hiccough. But the letters -gh- by themselves are only pronounced in … Continue reading
August 12, 2020
by Graham
2 Comments
I went to my GP surgery this morning for a standard blood test, but because of the current pandemic, there was a notice stuck to the inside of the door’s window giving me instructions on how to behave. As I … Continue reading
August 5, 2020
by Graham
0 comments
I’m reading “Shaw’s Music” (i.e. George Bernard Shaw’s music criticism) at the moment (three volumes, each of nearly 1000 pages), and came across a comment he made in 1891 that he could easily have written yesterday. “There is nothing that … Continue reading
June 3, 2020
by Graham
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This word has achieved a lot of prominence in the last three months, but it is being used in a way that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t – yet – recognise. Shield as a verb in English goes back a … Continue reading
May 11, 2020
by Graham
0 comments
My friend Alec is taking the opportunity of being locked down to catch up on some reading he’d been intending to get round to for the last fifty or so years, and has reached D H Lawrence. In “Lost Girls”, … Continue reading
March 7, 2020
by Graham
2 Comments
This seems an unlikely heading for a post from me – how can this possibly have any interest for pronunciation nerds? Until this week, I have only heard a single pronunciation for this – the ‘obvious’ one: koROHna(virus). (I’m sorry … Continue reading
February 17, 2020
by Graham
0 comments
Jim Daley (https://www.jimdaleywrites.com/) has written an interesting piece on the discovery of a piece of birch gum chewed by someone in Denmark 5700 years ago. At the end of the piece he says, by way of light relief, “Fortunately, no … Continue reading
February 14, 2020
by Graham
3 Comments
We’re all going to have to get used to this, apparently, odd name in the coming months as Pete Buttigieg tries to become the next president of the US. I think it’s an interesting case, not because the name itself … Continue reading
January 23, 2020
by Graham
0 comments
Alec Bamford has reported: “Anyone with lingering doubts about the BBC’s blatant left-wing bias should have been listening to Gary O’Donoghue’s reporting on the impeachment story in the World News on the evening of 21 January. Before he corrected himself, … Continue reading