Thursday, October 19, 2006

The BBC's not so "secret" pronunciation guides

According to this morning's Telegraph a "secret guide that has helped generations of BBC newsreaders pronounce difficult words and odd-sounding names is to be made public for the first time." Now. I'm presuming they are talking about this, which is, indeed, a new publication.

However, the idea of BBC pronunciation is most certainly not some closely guarded secret as far as I can recall. Between being a shelf stacker and working in a bank, I worked in a University library, and BBC pronunciation dictionaries were commonplace. Must've had problem filling column space at the Telegraph today I guess (last week they printed the same story twice on opposite pages).

2 comments:

swan's egg said...
19 Oct 2006 10:31:00  

Instead of worrying about not distorting the English Language, the BBC ought to put greater effort into not distorting the facts!

Voyager said...
19 Oct 2006 11:20:00  

Bombay pronounced Mumbai in the Olde Portuguese manner

terrorist pronounced militant in the Newspeak manner


 

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