Re: Pro's & Kin's

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 03:55 PM 10/14/2003, tc@chaostheory.com wrote:

>Does NPR-- or any radio other news organization that folks are aware of,
>for that matter-- have a style guide that dictates the pronunciation? What
>I mean to ask it, are the reporters/announcers told to use the 'native'
>pronunciations or does it boil down to the choice/idiosyncracies of the
>announcer?

I don't know how official it is, but NPR does regularly have reviews of 
pronunciation for words frequently used in relation to whatever the main 
story of the week/month is.  These are then shared with the affiliates as 
well, and the affiliates are encouraged (within reason) to share their 
views with NPR central.   I don't think there's too much of a hard-and-fast 
rule on how it's done....more like a blend of what's commonly done, what is 
the official Oxford Dictionary, and what's the foreign way.

Regional accents, as long as they don't make it too hard for non-locals to 
understand, are rarely discouraged by NPR.  They like stations who have a 
local flavor.  Although some of the affiliates themselves will declare a 
holy war on regional accents, some do it on grammar, too...as Ken Bader 
found out (WBUR) about four years ago.  :-)

I remember when there was a big fooferfah with pollution in the 
Woonasquatucket River (Rhode Island) and the EPA a few years back and 
everyone at WRNI stumbled over that damn word at least three times before 
getting used to it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA