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Discussion Groups / English Usage / December 2008Heard on the radio: Lengthened vowels/dipthongs
One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR neeewoooze station." I thought it was just him, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed that Krista Tippett, the host of "Speaking of Faith," told us that we were listening to "Speaking of Faaaayth." Is this regional, or ...? Perce > One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR > neeewoooze station." [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Is this regional, or ...? I don't think eet eez. I hear it all over the place. "News" I often hear as "neeeeoooze." I also enjoy the NPR newsreader who says "industrill" and the many (not just on NPR) who say "infastructure." OTOH, "intristing" and "forrid" antedate me by generations. Even so ...  SignatureBob Lieblich Who as a kid pronounced "gauche" as "go-shay" >> One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR >> neeewoooze station." [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > >OTOH, "intristing" and "forrid" antedate me by generations. Even so And from Brits I hear "vunnabill" and "withdrawral". SignatureSteve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk >One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR >neeewoooze station." [...] >Is this regional, or ...? There is a certain "NPR accent", but I don't think this example is a part of it. For what it's worth, jazz saxophonist and WBUR overnight board-op Charlie Kohlhase often pronounces "this is" as one syllable, /DIz/. Of course, he's got a lot more to say. ("From Boston University, this is 90 point 9 W-B-U-R-F-M Boston, and 12-40 W-B-U-R-A-M West Yarmouth, also broadcasting on 91 point 5 W-S-D-H Sandwich and 90 point 3 W-C-C-T Harwich, W-B-U-R, Boston, Cape Cod, and the Islands, and on the Web at W-B-U-R dot O-R-G." There are two errors in that script, by the letter of the law, but it's unlikely that the Funny Cookie Commission would care.) The guy who hosts "Con Salsa" on Saturday nights does the same thing. -GAWollman SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness In alt.usage.english, Percival P. Cassidy wrote: >One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR >neeewoooze station." [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > >Is this regional, or ...? On BBC Radio Four, Charlotte Green has been doing something similar for many years. "BBC NYOO-oo-OOZ at nine o'clock". SignatureMike Barnes Cheshire, England > One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR > neeewoooze station." [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Is this regional, or ...? A couple of things about talking about the pronunciation of radio hosts. (1) You can probably find audio clips on line, so we can all listen to the same thing, and (2) there quite likely exist biographies of the hosts, so we can establish where they grew up and lived. I'm having trouble imagining any significant difference between "faith" and "faaaayth," except emphasis for meaning. SignatureBest -- Donna Richoux > One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your NPR > neeewoooze station." [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Is this regional, or ...? Usage varies with region and social class. Upper class speech in Britain pronounces the name LUKE with an inserted Y sound (semivowel) just as in NEWS, while lower class speech uttered both without the Y (or used to.) American speech patterns seemed in the early days of broadcasting (say 1930-60) to converge towards Chicago speech as a national norm, but the appearance in national broadcasting of Black English, Deep South speech and other accents now suggests no convergence towards any single norm. SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) > One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your > NPR neeewoooze station." > I thought it was just him, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed that > Krista Tippett, the host of "Speaking of Faith," told us that we > were listening to "Speaking of Faaaayth." > Is this regional, or ...? I think it's announcer-speak, for some of the less formal values of "announcer". They emphasise and distort some of the sounds in routine announcements to attract the listeners' attention to them and prevent them from being ignored as routine mumbling. Maybe it helps them to stave off their own boredom too. There is a daily political affairs show on CBC Newsworld ("Politics") whose host, Don Newman, always welcomes viewers to the broooaadcast; and when I was in Argentina, radio announcers rrroutinely rrrolled their rrrrrs until my (cheap) speakers buzzed. >> One of our Public Radio announcers always says, "This is xxxx, your >> NPR neeewoooze station." >> I thought it was just him, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed that >> Krista Tippett, the host of "Speaking of Faith," told us that we >> were listening to "Speaking of Faaaayth." >> Is this regional, or ...? > I think it's announcer-speak, for some of the less formal values of > "announcer". They emphasise and distort some of the sounds in routine > announcements to attract the listeners' attention to them and prevent > them from being ignored as routine mumbling. Maybe it helps them to > stave off their own boredom too. Here in America, television stations change the broadcast audio volume when a switch is made from programming to advertising. When a commercial break begins, television stations will broadcast the audio about twenty-five percent louder. This is very annoying at three in the morning, after you have fallen asleep with the boob tube on. You are dreaming of pixie dust, shooting stars, unicorns, rainbows and Barrack Obama, then are suddenly and rudely awakened by some yahoo screaming, "Girls Gone Wild!" > There is a daily political affairs show on CBC Newsworld ("Politics") > whose host, Don Newman, always welcomes viewers to the broooaadcast; > and when I was in Argentina, radio announcers rrroutinely rrrolled > their rrrrrs until my (cheap) speakers buzzed. Ha! Ha! Mexican television stations here in Southern California are well known for this! http://www.alarmatv.com/ http://www.tvrage.com/person/id-209468/Lianna+Grethel http://www.colarte.com/colarte/foto.asp?idfoto=157459 Muy Grrrrrrande! SignaturePurl Gurl -- This is to the native American poster who I believe to be a woman, but for some reason is gotten up like Groucho Marx: Excuse me? -- Margo Howard, 11/19/2008 <snip> >Here in America, television stations change the broadcast audio volume >when a switch is made from programming to advertising. When a commercial >break begins, television stations will broadcast the audio about >twenty-five percent louder. A similar practice is sometimes followed here in the British Isles, but the differential is never as large as it sometimes is in the United States, in my experience. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >Here in America, television stations change the broadcast audio volume >when a switch is made from programming to advertising. When a commercial >break begins, television stations will broadcast the audio about >twenty-five percent louder. Nitpick: technically incorrect, though that's the practical result nonetheless (modulo special tricks in the wee hours). The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on dialogue to leave room for explosions to be louder, for example, while the ads run near the maximum volume the whole time (possibly employing a compressor). So technically the commercials don't get any louder, but they just don't get as soft. But unless what you're watching is chock full of crashes and explosions, the subjective efect is as you've described. >This is very annoying at three in the morning, after you have fallen >asleep with the boob tube on. You are dreaming of pixie dust, shooting >stars, unicorns, rainbows and Barrack Obama, then are suddenly and >rudely awakened by some yahoo screaming, "Girls Gone Wild!" The Sinclair Broadcasting stations around here play their wee-hours shows turned way down so that you have to crank the volume to make out the dialogue, leaving the ads at normal volume so the effect is EVEN MORE PRONOUNCED (ow,my ears). *grrrr* I thought it was just age catching up with my hearing thatwas making it so hard to make out what folks were saying in late night movies, but having caught a couple of movies broadcast both in afternoon/evening and late at night a couple weeks apart, and similarly having caught the same episode of _Law_&_Order_ in both primetime and late night, I can say that my ears seem to be okay and the station is being rude about the volume. (Counterproductively, I must add, since it means I reach for the mute button when ads come on instead of letting them blather in the background.) >> There is a daily political affairs show on CBC Newsworld ("Politics") >> whose host, Don Newman, always welcomes viewers to the broooaadcast; [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > >Muy Grrrrrrande! SignatureD. Glenn Arthur Jr./The Human Vibrator, dglenn@panix.com Due to hand/wrist problems my newsreading time varies so I may miss followups. "Being a _man_ means knowing that one has a choice not to act like a 'man'." http://www.panix.com/~dglenn/ http://dglenn.livejournal.com >The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content >makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on >dialogue to leave room for explosions to be louder, for example, >while the ads run near the maximum volume the whole time (possibly >employing a compressor). I've yet to see a TV station in recent years that didn't have a multiband compressor/peak limiter (e.g., an Optimod) at the tail end of the audio air chain. Of course, with the switch to digital, there are all sorts of shenanigans that can be played. My reading of the ATSC specifications about eight years ago convinced me that all ATSC sources are supposed to mark their audio bitstreams with an indication of the engineered audio level (-3, -6, -20, etc., dBFS), so that receivers could appropriately adjust their output levels. Whether the program sources actually do, and correctly, I cannot say. -GAWollman SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness > >The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content > >makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on > >dialogue to leave room for explosions to be louder, for example, One is loudness and one is volume, and I can never remember which way round they are. I'm forever leaping for the remote control when the ads come on, to turn the gain down. -- JGH >>> The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content >>> makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > I'm forever leaping for the remote control when the ads come on, > to turn the gain down. I vaguely remember reading (in some kind of apology by the TV people) that it wasn't loudness/volume, but intensity, whatever they meant by that. SignatureRob Bannister >> >The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content >> >makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on >> >dialogue to leave room for explosions to be louder, for example, > >One is loudness and one is volume, and I can never remember >which way round they are. http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/Hearing/other/glossary.htm amplitude: The displacement of a wave. In the case of a sound wave, the greater the amplitude of the wave, the greater the intensity, or pressure, of the sound. The extent to which air particles are displaced in response to the energy of a sound. loudness: Our perceived impression of the intensity, frequency, and duration of a sound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness The perception of loudness is related to both the sound pressure level and duration of a sound. It appears that the human auditory system integrates the level over a 600-1000 ms window. For example, a sound of constant sound pressure level (SPL) will be perceived to grow in loudness as 20, 50, 100, 200 ms samples are played up to a maximum of ~1000 ms where the perception of loudness will stabilize. For long duration sounds then, the moment by moment perception of loudness will be based on the integration (or averaging) of the last 600-1000 ms. >I'm forever leaping for the remote control when the ads come on, >to turn the gain down. SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) >>> >The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content >>> >makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > moment by moment perception of loudness will be based on the integration > (or averaging) of the last 600-1000 ms. In addition, distortion introduced by electronic devices tends to make sounds seem louder to us, especially to those of us with a good musical ear. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >> >The maximum volume doesn't change, but the regular program content >> >makes use of more of the available dynamic range, holding back on [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >I'm forever leaping for the remote control when the ads come on, >to turn the gain down. My new LCD TV remote has a mute button with a half-mute capability which is quite handy. Signature************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@cox.net) ************* * Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow * * My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps * |
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