The Stressing Of Prepositions In The Media Options

[clavicembalo]

That quasi-Australian rising at the end of a sentence is possibly diminishing now that Neighbours and Home & Away are no longer central to BBC/ITV stations. However, for quite some time, those holding fort on both radio and television, particularly in news programmes, many of whom have a journalistic background and presumably have studied English grammar at an appropriate level, insist on stressing prepositions: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/argh.gif)

"... and now we're going over TO the Blue Peter garden FOR the weather, where undoubtedly it will be snowing IN the south."

"... and where exactly do you stand ON the question of ...?"

It's everywhere! Why is this not being pointed out to them? I haven't been listening to the World Service on the radio recently but, if they're not careful, they will inadvertently be schooling potentially millions of budding English speakers to propagate this error.

Rant over. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

[Solari]

The guy who does LBC's travel clinic does this and it drives me crazy! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

[Mad Tom]

It all goes to show that just because you are doing something and getting paid for it, it does not mean you are any good at it.

Apart from being annoying it makes it harder to get at the meaning of what they are saying.

A musical equivalent would be playing the main theme of the middle movement of the Pathetique with the rubbish phrasing from the AB edition.

It has already spread to Customer service desks and PA announcers. Railway companies are the worst. They like to choose announcers that not only stress the wrong words, but also have a speech impediment AND a strong regional accent.

For more mangling of the language you should listen to some football commentators. Most of them can't put a coherent sentence together. [But what can you expect ... they need 6 action replays to see what was obvious at first sight to everyone else but the referee. And they don't even seem to understand the rules of the game - if they ever bothered to read them!]

[bobifier]

Those fools, with their different accents to yours. What do they think they're playing at?

[clavicembalo]

Those fools, with their different accents to yours. What do they think they're playing at?

Far from wishing to denegrate our antipodean forumites, this latter affectation shows a real ignorance in the role played by prepositions within sentence-structure; it is relatively rare for these words to need elevating above others.

That reminds me ....

When I was in early teens I woke one night and couldn't get back to sleep, so I started writing out the geometry theorems that we had been learning (as you do). I had a little radio that only picked up the odd station and at 3 am or thereabouts, Terry Wogan was delivering a programme clearly aimed at those learning English. Olivia Newton-John had a song about 'The Ohio'. So a typical interjection from Terry would be,"Down by the side of the Ohio. Not 'ON' but 'down by the side'."

So there you are, an insignificant anecdote that even manages to promote a little antipodean friend! G'day!