May 9, 2018
by Graham
4 Comments
We’re all used to the confusion between the words ‘diffuse’ and ‘defuse’ as verbs, caused by the pronunciation of the latter with the KIT vowel rather than the more etymologically correct FLEECE. If we were to introduce a hyphen into … Continue reading
February 3, 2018
by Graham
0 comments
On the Today programme this morning on BBC Radio 4, Nick Robinson interviewed my successor in the Pronunciation Unit, Catherine Sangster (who is now in charge of pronunciation for the Oxford Dictionaries) about the problems of pronunciation. This piece arose … Continue reading
January 15, 2018
by Graham
1 Comment
I can claim no expertise in either the languages or the peoples of the area of the Bay of Bengal littoral. Today, 15 January 2018, the BBC has been highlighting the plight of the Rohingya people with a series of … Continue reading
November 14, 2017
by Graham
4 Comments
This post has very little to do with language. My opinion of Emma Dabiri, mentioned in my last post, has nose-dived since I wrote that. I’ve now watched the last of the series of ‘Britain’s Lost Masterpieces’, which featured a … Continue reading
May 9, 2017
by gpointon
3 Comments
Thank you Alec for alerting me to the number of mispronunciations American broadcasters have come up with for the new French president’s name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGgHy3BLloY Has anybody come up yet with any jokes about the meaning of his name? Perhaps a … Continue reading
April 12, 2017
by gpointon
0 comments
I had started to think that someone in the BBC hierarchy had issued an edict that the Syrian president’s name should be pronounced by all journalists in accordance with the Pronunciation Unit’s recommendation, with stress on the first syllable of … Continue reading
February 2, 2017
by gpointon
7 Comments
Whenever I hear a word that is new to me, or is used in a new way, I now take the precaution of looking in the OED before claiming in these posts that it is either a mistake or a … Continue reading
January 18, 2017
by gpointon
4 Comments
Following my last post, there seems to have been a spate of malapropisms perpetrated (not perpetuated!) by eminent people on radio and television. The leader of the populist British political party UKIP, Paul Nuttall, described Donald Trump as an anglophobe … Continue reading
November 4, 2016
by gpointon
11 Comments
In a recent post, Jane Setter wrote about the possible future loss of the dental fricatives (/θ, ð/) from English, in favour of /f,v/. I also wrote not so long ago about the confusion between these two pairs of fricatives … Continue reading
September 12, 2016
by gpointon
8 Comments
I don’t usually watch the BBC’s science programme “The Sky at Night”, but last night I accidentally caught the beginning, and was hooked for the full half hour. What struck me, apart from the science, was the number of ways … Continue reading