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Mind your language

Dot Wordsworth

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

Encouraged by those blancmange-makers of the linguistic kitchen, the Queen’s English Society, listeners have recently been having a go at the BBC.

To try the guide’s other wares, have a go with: tinnitus, Salome, Purcell, Medici, Beijing, Marlborough, Baile Atha Cliath. For these, the BBC book recommends tinIGHtus; suhLOHmay in the Bible, SALohmay for Wilde and ZAHlohmay for Strauss; PURsul (Dryden wrote, ‘The gods are pleas’d alone with Purcell’s lays,’ indicating the stress); MEDitchi; bay-JING (the j in Chinese transliteration never being pronounced with the sound zh as in leisure; MAWLbuhruh (except for the towns in New Zealand and Zimbabwe and the cigarettes, which are apparently MARL-buh-ruh); and BLAH KLEE-uh.

I am still uncertain about Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll, whom I’d call jek-uhl. But the BBC book notes that in the film made in 1932, he is pronounced jee-kuhl, like Gertrude, the gardener.

Four common mispronunciations seem to derive from an erroneous notion of the form of the words: restaurateur, genealogy, mischievous and nuclear often come out as restauranteur, geneology, mischievious and nucular (this last being favoured by President Bush).

At least broadcasters do not annoy us with bad spelling. Two of the most common current offences that come my way are: chose for choose and contrariwise loose for lose.

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