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:

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

Bombay pronounced Mumbai in the Olde Portuguese manner

terrorist pronounced militant in the Newspeak manner