KGO newsperson's bad pronunciation!

[baywest]

To Kathy Whitman, on now at KGO: The word is "may-or-al," not "may-or-i-al."

Jeez!

 

[radio dx]

Picky, picky does anyone care...judging by the response (no)

 

[JEREMIAH]

Yeah, I care. If you're on a station like KGO there's no excuse for an error like that. That's the kind of mistake you make in podunk.

When I was on KGO radio and TV in the 80's and 90's that anchor would have their ass reamed. Management was always paying attention, I guess they don't care anymore.


Jerry Gordon Announcer, The Jack B Show...syndicated

 

[1069_KIFR]

How do we know she did not get in trouble?

 

[SFStatic]

She had reportedly been let go before, and just recently came back to KGO. I agree with Jerry...on a major station in a major market, you need to pronounce and enunciate your words correctly, etc.

BTW, there are some off hours on KCBS when some of the kids doing traffic say things like "Bay Ba-ridge." Adding valley girl extra syllables to words just sounds terrible...Bay Area listeners are bright...this sort of thing doesn't just fly past them!

 

[radioman148]

Radio just isn't the same anymore. I think we've all noticed that.

 

[jprg]

Even when I worked at a small wattage station with maybe a listener ot two, I was as professional as I could be because you never knew.....

 

[DavidKaye]

Radio just isn't the same anymore. I think we've all noticed that.

Oh, give her the benefit of the doubt for goodness sake! It could be very well that she unintentionally mispronounced the word. This sometimes happens when you're reading something and get distracted.

I remember being a DJ and having to line up a remote that was a about to start. I had the cue audio from the remote in my ear and I was ad-libbing some info about the upcoming remote broadcast when the remote board op was talking to someone at his end. He said something that they would be starting soon, "when the DJ stops talking and throws me a cue." I automatically told our audience that we would be going to the remote shortly "when they DJ stops talking...oh, wait, that's me."

Things happen. "Mayorial" is a minor problem compared to wrong information in a newscast.

 

[LKellerIII]

Yeah, no big deal, though "Mayorial is a mistake I've heard often, so she may not know any better. I think some mispronunciations get copied and become the default because people keep hearing them. "Nucular" (for 'nuclear' is one example.

Speaking of "mayorial," it used to bug me when news anchors on radio and TV referred to Mayor (or Senator) "DY-anne Feinstein" (emphasis on first syllable). The name is pronounced "Di-ANNE,' fer heavenssake - emphasis on second syllable.

You would never walk up to your friend Dianne and say "Good morning DY-anne." But for some reason, when news people put it together with her last name it almost always comes out wrong. How hard is it to say Di-ANNE Feinstein? I found this to be the case almost 100% of the time...haven't paid attention lately, though.

 

[TheBigA]

Radio just isn't the same anymore. I think we've all noticed that.

Oh boo hoo hoo. People griped about Bush when he pronounced nuclear: nucular. And he was the stinkin' President, in charge of the nucular weapons. No one corrected him.

 

[TomJF]

Next up: "Diablo"....

.... dee- or dye- ?


I go with dee- (a reasonably-authentic-for-a-gringo "dee-AH-blow"), though I hear some radio folk go with "dye-".

 

[DavidKaye]

Oh, give her the benefit of the doubt for goodness sake! It could be very well that she unintentionally mispronounced the word. This sometimes happens when you're reading something and get distracted.

I just thought of another story. I was working in TV at channel 31 in Sacramento when bandleader George Liberace (pianist Liberace's brother) was doing public relations for the station. George was a celebrity in his own right, having co-hosted TV with his brother, led big dance bands in hotel ballrooms for 30 years, etc. George was no slouch and no beginner to public speaking.

George was a movie host at the station (then known as KMUV, the Movie House). During our pre-tape of his hosting segment he actually said, "This is George Liberach-ery." What's funny was that none of us even caught it until we reran the production tape to transfer it to our air reel.

 

[LKellerIII]

Next up: "Diablo"....

.... dee- or dye- ?


I go with dee- (a reasonably-authentic-for-a-gringo "dee-AH-blow"), though I hear some radio folk go with "dye-".

You are correct - it's a Spanish word, and verbs in Spanish never vary - unlike English where 'I' can be pronounced "eye" or "ih." 'i' is always pronounced "e" in Spanish, so the proper pronunciation is dee-Ah-blo. But of course, Americans never pronounce Los Angeles properly as "Los AN-hell-es," so who's to say what's proper.

Another nit-pick of mine: the now accepted and wrong pronunciation of Loma Pree-ate-ah" (Loma Prieta) that you hear news anchors use - usually in the context of the 1989 earthquake. Again - Spanish verbs are consistent, and it should be "Pree-eh-ta."

Others that bug me (I'm really getting rolling now):

- Commercials for "Jew-la-ree" (Jewelry) stores, or "the Jew-la-ree department at JC Penny," etc.

-Commercials for "Re-la-turs" (Realtors).

 

[LKellerIII]

Radio just isn't the same anymore. I think we've all noticed that.

Oh boo hoo hoo. People griped about Bush when he pronounced nuclear: nucular. And he was the stinkin' President, in charge of the nucular weapons. No one corrected him.

Yeah, and Jimmy Carter had an odd pronunciation - something like "nuke-yer."

But I'm not sure that citing W as the rationalization for a mispronunciation is such a good idea. Actually, the pronunciation "nucular" goes back to the 1950s- I remember my father complaining that President Eisenhower pronounced it that way. Ike was widely derided in those days (mostly by Democrats, of course) for being inarticulate, but compared to George W. Bush, he was Dylan Thomas.

 

[DavidKaye]

0
Another nit-pick of mine: the now accepted and wrong pronunciation of Loma Pree-ate-ah" (Loma Prieta) that you hear news anchors use - usually in the context of the 1989 earthquake. Again - Spanish verbs are consistent, and it should be "Pree-eh-ta."

Oh, no, not again!

So, great oracles, how do you pronounce "San Jose"? It's obviously not "sann-JOZE", but it is technically not "sann-hoe-ZAY", either, though this is how all English-speakers pronounce it. If we want to pronounce it in the proper Spanish style, it's "SAHN-oh-SAY", with the "oh" being extremely short, and both the first and last syllables emphasized equally. But nobody pronounces it that way in English.

While we're on the topic, "Contra Costa" is more properly pronounced, "cone-tra-COE-stah", with a trill on the second syllable, not "conn-tra-COST-uh", as it's pronounced locally. But again, no English speakers pronounce it the proper way.

 

[recto101]

My nit-pik for pronounciation is Los Angeles. I noticed the American pronouciation is Lost Sand-Jealous. but the Spanish and Philippine pronouciation of Los Angeles would be Los Anh-Hell-Es
or Angeles City near Clark air force base in the Philippines would be Anh-Hell-Es too. Also the City of Vallejo would sometimes get the Mission Viejo pronounciation on Tagalog commercials on TFC tv.

 

[TheBigA]

In the south, it's not unusual for furniture commercials on TV to pronounce bedroom suite as bedroom soots, as opposed to bedroom sweets. I'm not kidding. Hey, just drop the "e" and how do you pronounce it?

 

[LKellerIII]

In the south, it's not unusual for furniture commercials on TV to pronounce bedroom suite as bedroom soots, as opposed to bedroom sweets. I'm not kidding. Hey, just drop the "e" and how do you pronounce it?

I recall that in the 60s, Cal Worthington sold the Dodge Mon-ACK-oh (Monaco) on his TV commercials.

 

[recto101]

In the south, it's not unusual for furniture commercials on TV to pronounce bedroom suite as bedroom soots, as opposed to bedroom sweets. I'm not kidding. Hey, just drop the "e" and how do you pronounce it?

I recall that in the 60s, Cal Worthington sold the Dodge Mon-ACK-oh (Monaco) on his TV commercials.

I've seen the Cal Worhington Commercials on Youtube for the 1970's and 1980's for Los Angeles.

 

[Dick Skinner]

I'm glad this thread was started. Has anyone else noticed a trend toward adding an h to the pronunciation of str, i.e., reshtaurant, or shtranger or shtrictly. I hear it all the time in media these days and personally attribute it to "lazy mouth." It requires fewer muscles to say shtrength than to say strength. Or is it just me?