O.T. Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain "Controversy"

Jan 03, 2018 11 Replies

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Johnny B Good 8 years ago

I was watching the first episode of this six episode miniseries today and at 40 minutes and 20 seconds in[1], was staggered to hear, for the first time in decades, the *correct* pronunciation of the word "Controversy" in a television broadcast. What made it all the more remarkable was that this was a BBC broadcast, the very same organisation that had employed that cowardly joker in the Received Pronunciation dept who had issued his joke memo on how to (mis)pronounce this controversial word all those many decades ago.

I mention this startling fact since the subject of pronunciation of various words, including the word "controversy" has been discussed in this NG from time to time over the past few years, typically as the result of "topic drift", hence my marking the subject as O.T.

I was so impressed by this act of independent thought by Andrew in regard of using the correct pronunciation of a word that has for so long been systematically mispronounced by news readers and commentators in TV and radio broadcasting that I felt impelled to alert all and sundry of this momentous event.

[1] pid b00np25k for those using get_iplayer or this link to iPlayer:

Apologies if there's a line wrap issue with the iplayer link above.

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Brian Gaff 8 years ago

I'm going to be controversial here and wonder if it really matters at all in the great scheme of things. My screenreader voices depending on who made them have different takes on many words and in different contexts too. Brian

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Dave Plowman (News) 8 years ago

It's because he's a Scot.

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Robin 8 years ago

What is your authority for "the *correct* [sic] pronunciation"?

I ask because:

a. AFAIK the there is nothing equivalent to the Academie Francaise the UK (or for England, Scotland etc);

b. the BBC (once the paragons of *received* pronunciation) recognise the

*traditional* pronunciation given by some dictionaries is not the one used widely as recognised by eg Longmans

c. other dictionaries - including the OED online - have caught up with modern usage and recognise both pronunciations which are common in the UK as British English.

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Johnny B Good 8 years ago

Perhaps that might account for him not getting "The Memo" (and thus saved from the "Well Poisoning" effect of that memo). Even if he ever did see that poisonous memo, being Scots educated, he would have known better than to take such a memo seriously anyway. :-)

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Johnny B Good 8 years ago

Given a conflicting choice, you'd naturally go for the one that offers the best 'fluidity of the spoken word' rather than the one that interrupts such fluidity with its cumbersome syllabic structure.

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Robin 8 years ago

"None" would have been shorter :)

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Scott 8 years ago

I heard the word 'kilometer' pronounced correctly in a news broadcast recently.

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Johnny B Good 8 years ago

====snip====

Do you mean when the *first*, rather than the penultimate syllable is stressed? :-)

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Richard 8 years ago

American? It's even better when the word 'kilometre' is written correctly ;)

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Johnny B Good 8 years ago

I *did* notice the spelling but deliberately concentrated on the pronunciation aspect to avoid any further controversy. :-)

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whisky-dave 8 years ago

Yeah well in america they give guns to almost anyone, so killer-meters is really a form of valid self defence if you should get attacked by a meter. Or it's a new sci-fi film from spielberg Invasion of The killer-meters from space, Episode 4 part 1.

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