Quote Originally Posted by Andy_Faber View Post
I?ve not watched Prem football MOTD for 20 plus years so shouldn?t have an opinion but Please no! A) not very good at all, way worse than any of the options given by me or others, not very good, C) not at all popular, but of course D) ticks boxes so yes probably
She triggers the English teacher in me. All the classes I ever taught got lessons in Phonetics. How to make the sounds we hear in language. Mouth shape, tongue position, use or otherwise of the throat etc. There is no Dutch child that I taught that would say "fink fings frew". I even tempered my own East Midlands accent so that they had a more neutral accent when speaking English. Not completely tempered though. They'd all say "butty" not "batty" and they would pass something rather than parse it. I also treated them, on occasions, to some of the various accents so they wouldn't get dummied completely if they were ever in Newcastle or Liverpool or the East End of London. They were also versed in East Midlands ma duck, en ya sane it, sin tin intit, nah tin tin tin.

I can only conclude that correct pronunciation is no longer taught. I don't get triggered by things that are "normal" in regional terms. Such as pass/parse etc but the TH combination being wrong really gets my goat.

There's also nationality and background based anomalies. Things like Spanish natives being unable to pronounce words that start with an S followed by another consonant. They have to put an E in front so Smith becomes Esmith, Street becomes Estreet etc. Not an issue. Another weird one is one that a lot of Afro American / Afro Caribbeans have whereby they don't ask a question, they aks a question. What makes it especially weird is that, in Covid times they wore a mask, not a maks. They can pronounce sk but a lot reverse it when it relates to a question. Irish. Most of them don't watch a film, they watch a fillum.

Language is a strange phenomenon. We have several strange quirks in Dutch as well. Over the past 40 years they appear to have lost the ability to pronounce the letter L correctly when it comes at the end of a word. It come out as more of a W. A sound switch that many Scots have, for instance, Sir Awex finding something wuvwy.

I could give more examples but you get the gist.

Basically, if Alex Scott does get the job, I sincerely hope someone teaches her the phonetics of the TH.