BBC Oneness - idents and presentation

The OED gives RP pronunciations only.

I come from a part of the country where there are practically more accents than people. I am well aware of the nuances of accents, with respect to pronunciation. If you want to attempt to defend the pronunciation of "3" as "free" and somehow legitimise it, you are quite entitled to do so. I - and many others I suspect - would strongly disagree with you. Some of us find it particularly objectionable in the context of a broadcast announcer role on a major BBC channel - for reasons which I would think are pretty obvious to most people.

To use Liverpool again as an example, it's common for words like "book" and "cook" to end with a "khhkk" sound (see Lee Mack's dolphin impression). It's a staple of the accent and you could use Kunst's argument that you can't have a Liverpool accent without having the traits of it, but it wouldn't be particularly suitable for a CA on BBC One to talk like that. You'd probably soften the accent, and IIRC there's a chap on Gold (possibly UKTV in general) with a Liverpudlian accent but doesn't have the more coarse features you might hear from other people from the city.

I'm not saying that an announcer for the BBC should do that (of course accent should be a bit clear(er) for that), but one definitely cannot say that a different pronunciation of the consonants is part of a bad diction , as you were implying

I implied no such thing. I have been very clear about the distinction between accent variations and good pronunciation. All accents produce variations in pronunciation - that's basically what an accent is. However - particularly where a professional broadcast announcer/voiceover role is concerned - there's an acceptable threshold of variation, where the pronunciation has not changed significantly enough: to cause the listener not to recognise the word at all; for the word to sound like a completely different word; to cause the meaning to change.

I've heard plenty of people with the same general accent as this particular announcer and they manage to pronounce these words in a manner which is recognisable. When words become different words or sounds that are not actually words, then we have a problem.

The examples cited in the Points of View piece were:

"Thunderball" became "Funderball"
"Thirty-Three" became "Firty-Free"
"Thousand" became "Fousand"
"Thriller" became "Friller"
"BBC Three" became "BBC Free"
"Radio Three" became "Radio Free"

This is not acceptable pronunciation for a professional broadcast announcer role. The defence put up by that BBC spokesperson was utter twaddle.

Are you saying people didn't understand what he was saying because of his accent? Get a grip.

No - I'm talking about a decent standard of pronunciation in a professional broadcast environment. Thanks for your contribution.

It's part of his regional accent. In his accent the pronunciation is correct - there's no need to hold him to a prestige accent whose full use has almost completely died out.

Where have I requested a "prestige" accent? I'm asking for a decent standard of pronunciation, which this is not. This is the very pronunciation error which many of us have corrected 3-year-old sons, daughters, nieces, nephews on.

Anyhow - I've made the point I intended to. I'm done on this subject.

Remember when this thread was about presentation?

It isn't an error - just because you don't like it doesn't make it wrong.



Forgive me, though you might want to let the announcers know that they're not part of the presentation.

Can we get back to celebrating the joy of oneness! 😉