Dear Editor,
The National Communications Net-work (NCN) in Berbice while airing a ‘Bedtime Song’ was incredibly repeatedly using the word ‘hold’ instead of ‘whole’ to describe a variety of items or stocks by distributors for sale. This error is unacceptable. Also on a number of occasions a capital ‘N’ and common ‘a’ were used to identify the town New Amsterdam.
Being a national television station owned by the government should anyone question why the English results in schools are so poor? Most people, schoolchildren specifically, look to and are guided by what they see on television and hear on radio, which is also a disgrace when it comes to proper English. Why this mediocrity?
Little Rock Television in New Amsterdam is also guilty of atrocious English and both NCN and LTV should be more responsible about the quality of English they disseminate, as their language impacts on the population. Even though the CXC has simplified and de-emphasized the peculiarities of the English language, the grades of our students continue to plummet.
Yours faithfully,
M Sookraj
