Diction

This is true.

Whilst I'll have to accept that 'have' and 'of' sound very similar in conjunction with other words as part of a narrative, it's very annoying to see the same journalists put their grammatical errors in writing.

"Gordon Brown would of carried on...." makes me cringe!

As an aside, and I don't know whether it's a particular trait of the accent in Kirkaldy, but Brown's constant pronunciation of 'Constituency' as Consti-you-ency (without using the second 't'), made him sound as though the audio was slipping.

No, the correct pronunciation is with four syllables, rather than three. Ba-ly-air-ix is very close in pronunciation to the official name, in Catalan ("Illes Balears": E-yus ba-ly-ahs ).

The dropping of the T sound is known as a glottal stop, like "buh-er" for "butter" - and its common in Scotland and elsewhere.

Yep - and the North East of England as well. (Also quite common in "Estuary" English from the Essex/Kent area) It's where certain sounds are swallowed rather than clearly enunciated.

Interesting that a similar glottal stop is a key difference between standard Danish (which has lots of "swallowed sounds") and the very similar Swedish and Norwegian language (where the pronunciation is much simpler to an English ear).

Eyederz instead of eyedeers.

Moozeum instead of mewzeum (it's a place where you go to muse, for heaven's sake).

Ryezible instead of rizzible.

They drive me spare, but you just have to try to block it out, I suppose.

Wow. Even the home of "BBC English" suffers different accents and "incorrect" pronunciation.

Why all this friction about diction?


The City where I live is (rather ironically) often pronounced as "Jew-Bye" by the English media, as opposed to the proper pronunciation of Du-bayy (bayy pronounced as "Bay" - literally Doo Bay.) We tend to all compromise and call it Doo-bye. (which is very wrong, but somewhat more credible than "Jew-Bye"). ((DUBAI))

Even international anchors based locally persist in the Jew-Bye thing.

Someone who has perfect diction but a very distinct accent making it hard to make out sometimes, is Lyse Doucet.

Whomsoever is a nice word.

So is invariably. But "almost invariably" (what they should say), invariably is misused.

Another pet peeve - people using "unique" with a qualification. It's like being "a little bit pregnant", either you are or you aren't, there aren't levels of uniqueness.

And don't get me started on "literally"...

You've got me started now Noggin

Ah yes, "unique"-- Simon Cowell is a repeat offender: "That was quite unique", as he often says on BGT or X-Factor. No Simon, either something is one of a kind, or it is not. Just same way you can't be "quite dead".

"Literally" being misused does keep Colemanballs in business, there's one good thing about that! One football commentator recently said of a footballer: "His feet were quite literally planted into the ground". Who did that? The groundsman? :lol

"Naseous" does not mean suffering from nausea. Unless you are saying somebody induces nausea in other people (for example Piers Morgan), then the word is nauseated-- confer the difference between "poisonous" and "poisoned".

"Years" rhymes with "ears", not "furs"-- surely?

"Off of " is tautological, as is "close proximity" and "free gift". Not a gift, if the recipient pays for it!

I heard an ITV News reporter saying this the other day: "I've been stood outside parliament". No, you've been standing outside parliament; unless somebody abducted you, then placed you there. Same problem with "I've been sat here", unless somebody forced you into the chair.

"Indefinitely" mean with no specified end-date, so is not really interchangeable with "infinite". Finally to sports commentators a "result" is the final outcome of something, bad or good. Therefore a losing team also gets a result (they lose!), ditto when it's a draw.

In the sense of English 'poetry', it would be a loss, yeah. I was speaking more in terms of the grammatic usefulness of "whom", it just seems a lingering relic from when English had a proper case system. Interesting to note German has retained this-- indeed Old English is closer to modern German than modern English!

Just thought of another irritant: "Airplane" for "aeroplane". Surely I can't be serious? I am serious, I don't call me Shirley...