Real Voices
PRONUNCIATION and accent are vexed subjects. Every now and then I have an idle and disorganised evening’s listening, going all over the dial, shortwave and broadcast, trying to make a pattern of announcer’s voices. I presume the BBC and the NZBS have a policy about announcers. It seems to me that in Britain the Home Service at least leans towards standardisation, and on the Home Service the standard is high. News readers on the General and Pacific Overseas Services, on the other hand, are apparently allowed mild dialects and even idiosyncracies, and the standard is not quite so high. Generally speaking, the voices have a genuine ring, and lead me to believe that they have sounded as they do now for the whole of the adult life of the speaker. Many Australian and New. Zealand an--nouncers do not possess this genuine quality. Admittedly they are on the horns of a dilemma. If they speak. like the majority of their countrymen, some of the sounds they make will be ugly. If they try to speak in what they imagine is an English accent they almost always sound affected. I am against. over-standardisation, and I am. against ugly noises, but I think I prefer either or both of these to mellifluous phoniness,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 532, 2 September 1949, Page 11
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212Real Voices New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 532, 2 September 1949, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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