Engmerican spoken here
28 August 2016 · News
Last month Peter Saxon's article Should radio news be read in English? sparked considerable discussion.
It seems many in the industry are uncomfortable with the Americanisation of Australian Englis...
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Tags: John Knox | Scott Mayman
HEAR BLOODY HEAR!
Question: If the young "whipper-snappers" generally don't own radios why are there so many of them on the air? I'm not doubting your statement, but it seems a great oversight on the part of managements to have on-air personalities who are going to annoy their audience with their choice of words on such a regular basis. As a one-time professional, with hopes of getting back in some time soon, I am starting to wonder if my chances would be improved if I spoke nothing but an almost unintelligible strine whine, referred to "flats" as "apartments", and breathing problems as res-pit-ORy issues, and was vitally interested in nothing more important than who pashed who how hard, on The Bachelor.
@higgins: I think there is an important distinction. The cultural heritage of many (most?) Australians is British, given who colonised the country, and migrated here in the years since. On the other hand, I get the impression that many of those people (or their children) have some kind of cringe about their background, and see Americanisms as somehow "cool" or in some indefinite way superior to what they already had.
Why are we even having this conversation? English evolves. And there is far less American content on (free to air) TV than there was back in the 60s and 70s. Think of how many groovy, awesome and rad words and expressions entered the Australian lexicon then.
While the use of zee for zed is a bit much, what's wrong with the word "shooter"? Nothing at all. Everyone knows what it means. Poor grammar is far more of a crime than a few imported words.
And why only pick on words from the US? I hear a lot of British words entering regular Australian usage. Is it just an anti-American line being peddled?
May I ask on what basis these recommendations are being made?
American English is my native variety, and I've never heard "to front court". A quick look at the Corpus of Contemporary American English shows no instances. I'd also be willing to bet that Australian announcers say "two-thousand-twelve" as often as "two-thousand-and-twelve".
One thing I've noticed in my years as a linguist is that people aren't very good at telling Americanisms from Australianisms. They generally class anything as American if it annoys them.
This is a fantastic article, well written Scott and John.
Interesting to read the comments, many of who are exactly why the article was written. You don't seem to understand the importance and need to learn why it matters.
One person queried the basis of the recommendations being made. If you bothered to research, only two of the most experienced and respected radio newsmen around.
Scott and John are quite right to be drawing this to the attention of the industry. We live in Australia and should reflect our own identity. Look to France for an example of country that closely guards the cultural evolution of their language.
When stations advertise for a person to write, source and present news as part of a breakfast onair team, but pay announcers wages not a journalist award you only encourage low standards.. but as we know saving cash remains an industry priority.