Easy For Pedants to Watch For Mistakes

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 46, 24 May 1935, Page 50

Easy For Pedants to Watch For Mistakes

To the #ditor Sir,-In your issue of May 3 appeared a letter in favour of cultured announcers written by one who impressed us with his own English culture by adopting the typically Latin pen-name of Caius, In explanation (or was it apology?) for his attack on the dialectic qualities of our announcers, lie states that he comes from Wngland, "and one never hears grammatical errors or mispronunciation there." It must be due to our lack of cultured Wnglish announcers that we find the speech of so many newly-arrived Dnglishmeén 86 very (difficult to follow. | As far as grammatical errors are concerned, "Caius" being himself a eultured Wnglishman, will be perfectly aware that they are fairly common even in the works of standard English authors, and, of course, we cannot expect a mere radio announcer to be more pedantic than a standard author. The introduction of the Oxford accent would supply a source

of amusement to the youth of this country for whom "Caius" shows so much eoncern, I consider that "Cains's’ outburst is a gratuitous insult to our New Zealand announcers, who can compare more than favourably in clarity of diction and freedom from grammatical error with any of the Mnglish announcers I haye heard during the Jubilee celebrations, It is easy for pedants to sit back and watch for mistakes, but I fancy that most listeners will prefer the pleasing accents of, say, our 3YA announcer, to the possibly more correct but certainly less intelligible speech of "cultured English announcers." -TI an, ete.,

NEW ZEALAND

imalu.