I Misheard the News Today. Oh Boy...
Why is it that on-air newscasters seem completely unable to pronounce things properly? (I exempt from this only Andy Rooney, whom I appear to be rapidly becoming, only female and younger and with better hair.)
Over the past few weeks, I have heard ever so many wrongly pronounced proper names and, yes, even general vocabulary words, and I tell you it’s making me queasy.
And it’s not just low-rent local newscasters (looking at YOU, Channel 11 New York), either—it’s just as frequently the big fancy high-priced nightly news anchors and reporters and morning-show hosts (looking at YOU, WABC), who are certainly paid enough money to find these things out, or, if they're just too darn lazy, to hire someone who can.
In the interests of correct pronunciation, then: It’s…
Ralph Lauren: LORE-in, not Lore-ENN (that would be Sophia, the Lore-ENN-ly pronounced surname). Just listen to an RL TV spot, for God's sake...
Mount Mer-AP-pee, not Mount MER-uh-pie (Merapi: scary erupting volcano in Indonesia)
sue-DOH-ku, not sue-DOO-koo or SUE-doo-koo (sudoku: those little numeric crossword puzzles currently in vogue; I checked with Japanese friends, just to be sure)
Van Wyck Expressway: It’s Van WIKE, not Van WICK (do you say Van Dick for “Vandyck”? No! You say Van Dike! Donkeys.) (That would be DONK-kees, not DUNK-kees. Unless you're Chef Gordon Ramsey.)
When I was on a book tour in England some years back, I did some BBC TV and radio interviews, and as I was escorted to the various studios in the different broadcast facilities, I noticed on bulletin boards in the corridors many, many lists of correct pronunciations of abstruse and just problematic proper names.
I was pleased and impressed, to say the least, and there seems to be no reason that US news departments couldn’t follow suit. (That’s SOOOT, rhymes with boot. Not SWEET. Just FYI.)
GET IT RIGHT, you lazy sods! If you can’t spell or pronounce things, that’s what minions are for. Let them find out. And then DO it. Thank you.
I’d go into the manifold and egregious misspellings in the chiron supers (those identifiers that appear on screen to let us know who's speaking or where the pictured place is) and the closed-captioning (oh Mother of God! The horror! The horror! Save us, St. Pedantica, patron saint of orthography!), but I would like to keep my blood pressure at a normal level…
Over the past few weeks, I have heard ever so many wrongly pronounced proper names and, yes, even general vocabulary words, and I tell you it’s making me queasy.
And it’s not just low-rent local newscasters (looking at YOU, Channel 11 New York), either—it’s just as frequently the big fancy high-priced nightly news anchors and reporters and morning-show hosts (looking at YOU, WABC), who are certainly paid enough money to find these things out, or, if they're just too darn lazy, to hire someone who can.
In the interests of correct pronunciation, then: It’s…
Ralph Lauren: LORE-in, not Lore-ENN (that would be Sophia, the Lore-ENN-ly pronounced surname). Just listen to an RL TV spot, for God's sake...
Mount Mer-AP-pee, not Mount MER-uh-pie (Merapi: scary erupting volcano in Indonesia)
sue-DOH-ku, not sue-DOO-koo or SUE-doo-koo (sudoku: those little numeric crossword puzzles currently in vogue; I checked with Japanese friends, just to be sure)
Van Wyck Expressway: It’s Van WIKE, not Van WICK (do you say Van Dick for “Vandyck”? No! You say Van Dike! Donkeys.) (That would be DONK-kees, not DUNK-kees. Unless you're Chef Gordon Ramsey.)
When I was on a book tour in England some years back, I did some BBC TV and radio interviews, and as I was escorted to the various studios in the different broadcast facilities, I noticed on bulletin boards in the corridors many, many lists of correct pronunciations of abstruse and just problematic proper names.
I was pleased and impressed, to say the least, and there seems to be no reason that US news departments couldn’t follow suit. (That’s SOOOT, rhymes with boot. Not SWEET. Just FYI.)
GET IT RIGHT, you lazy sods! If you can’t spell or pronounce things, that’s what minions are for. Let them find out. And then DO it. Thank you.
I’d go into the manifold and egregious misspellings in the chiron supers (those identifiers that appear on screen to let us know who's speaking or where the pictured place is) and the closed-captioning (oh Mother of God! The horror! The horror! Save us, St. Pedantica, patron saint of orthography!), but I would like to keep my blood pressure at a normal level…
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 5:28 PM
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