Dear Editor,
It is a pity that the letter ‘Broadcasters mispronounce words’ (SN, March 28) is so vague, even though it is timely and quite necessary. I am forced now to make some comments, which even though pertinent, may not be related to the letter directly.
First, when we have businesses and politicians ruling broadcasters and broadcasting, what do you expect? We have a problem in Guyana, where the official language is not what we use on a daily basis; we only use it for official purposes. Most of the deejays and many broadcasters are not language trained in English. What is quite comical is when we hear Americanisms invading our wrong use of Standard English. We are losing some sounds and letters, because we want to sound just like Americans – the ‘t’ is a ‘d’ in words like ‘party’ and ‘forty.’ Then there is so much overuse of ‘wanna’ and ‘gonna’ and ‘some-t-mm’ (for something). These people create a lot of laughs; they make me remember ‘Copycat’ by Dave Martins. Basically they live in denial and they love getting praise from those who do not know any better.
Where NCN is concerned, I hope that some kind of standard will be maintained. The over indulgence in America-nism and Jamaican Patois reflects our inferiority complex. We are so embarrassed of ourselves, it’s a shame. We need to wake up.
I hear mispronunciation of all ‘th’sounds – going to‘t’ and‘d’ – and many announcers, right there in NCN, cannot say ‘birthday’ and ‘immediate’ and ‘ask,’ etc, correctly. There should be some monitoring and some training. If this continues, we may have a set of different sounds altogether for our once lofty Guyanese English.
Yours faithfully,
M Singh
