New rendition of definite article debuts in television dialect, describes “thuh” Anzac……
A panel on public and official pronunciation convened by MSC Newswire uncovered what it describes as six categories of routine spoken language abuse by professional broadcasters. They are:-
- Handling of the vowel sound “e” in a generalised context in which the word air so often emerged from broadcasters as “ear.”
- Emergence of the definite article now pronounced as “thuh” before words beginning with a vowel
- Latin-language tendency to emphasise second syllable of certain words
- “Ts” rendered as Ds
- Missing syllables
- Protest used without being followed by “against.”
In its second sitting a variety of words and phrases used by broadcasters that employed a non-standard delivery falling far-wide of received and even common usage.
Other examples were bed rendered to sound like “beard” and bear, as in bearing up, sounding like “beering up.”
“Fear” was routinely substituted for “fair” or “fare” and often rendered vice versa. Hair emerged as hear.
Bed rendered as “beard” was also singled out.
Similarly the name of the fruit pear emerged to sound like pier or peer (of the realm)
It was routine to hear about the damage inflicted on society by “six” abuse.
These were the most frequent half-dozen vowel abuses inflicted by broadcasters on their listeners.
The panel claimed however that it had unearthed a new and startlingly systemic departure from accepted usage that had swept through broadcasting in just the past few months.
The panel observed that the definite article was increasingly being delivered as “ther” or “thuh” in front of words starting with a vowel.
The most routine example was a morning independent television magazine programme described by the show itself as “ther” AM Show.
Other renditions in the thuh or ther category before a vowel included “ther” EU; “ther” average and “ther” emphasis, and ther Easter holidays, and most recently still, thuh Anzac day……………
This was an abrupt and still unacknowledged change in spoken English, and deserved to be analysed by academia, according to the panel which confessed to being flummoxed how the common use of “thee” prior to a vowel sound had so abruptly shifted to the non-elided ther/thuh.
“Thuh” only reason for this the panel could discern at this stage was a still unidentified but influential avatar.
The panel also identified as prevalent in the New Zealand broadcasting argot the romance or Latin-based language formula of emphasising the second vowel as dominant, notably in the delivery of the word health to sound like “halth.”
The squished or swallowed “i” sound substituting for the extended “e” sound was again noted by the panel in a word such as wreckage delivered as “rickige.”
Alternately the word wreckage emerged as wreakage,
Another curious and routine romance language rendering was that of the word prayer as “prier.”
The panel claimed that government, public sector, broadcasters were there to show an example and especially so as New Zealand’s tertiary education was increasingly funded by foreign students paying substantial fees to learn English as a second language.
For example the elision of the words “try to” do this or that emerging as “tryder” was instantly understood by native speakers, said the panel, but was unintelligible to second language students who required substantial context to understand it.
The panel was mildly tolerant of various mangled sayings such as “hone in,” for home-in and in something “playing” (preying) on someone’s mind.
It was similarly inclined to be tolerant in the misuse of more complex words such as “expousing” for espousing.
The panel singled out for urgent attention by state broadcasting administrators the correct usage of the verb to protest which was routinely applied in a way that delivered the opposite of the intended meaning.
By itself protest means support.
Broadcasters routinely used it to mean the opposite i.e. condemn.
Protest requires the addition of the word “against” to deliver the desired negative, condemnatory meaning.
Otherwise it proclaimed positivity as in protesting the innocence of someone.
The panel however dismissed the “lazy lips” omission of the first syllable of the rendering of the word police (pleece) as irritating but trivial in that non native speakers still picked up the meaning through context.
In its first report the panel identified what is described as the near-standard, even de facto received, use of the word “woman” to describe in New Zealand a collection of them.
Survivors will seek redress from those who are dead, or, who soon will be
New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care poses unlimited financial liability to public funds.
This is because the historic claims unit which handles compensation claims has been instructed to “cooperate” with, and “support” the Commission.
The historic claims unit is under the umbrella of the Ministry of Social Development.
It is in the business of making what it describes as “payment offers” meaning compensation.
An initial budget of $160 million was initially associated with the Royal Commission.
Now, a year and a half after its inauguration, and at which time its proceedings remain stalled, this is said to have shrunk to half this amount.
It is unclear if this sum is net of estimated compensation payments, or includes them.
When New Zealand’s Labour-led coalition took office it quickly delivered electoral obligations due to certain select constituencies, supporting groups
One of these was to the victim culture swirling around juvenile care and those responsible for administering it, and above all to allow the “survivors” their retributive public voice.
The fact that the Royal Commission scheme was implemented so soon after the arrival of the Labour-led coalition government does indicate though that the previous National government, similarly besieged by the highly organised “survivors,” was doubtful about its unforeseen consequences.
This unlimited liability inherent in the Royal Commission’s procedures has been shrouded in a variety of distractions, notably the sectarian one.
Similarly shrouded is the extent to which the coalition government’s departmental officials, those responsible for estimating things like risk and gross liability, were stampeded by the rush to implement the inquiry.
The Royal Commission’s area of investigation is from 1950 to 2000.
This means it will be reviewing events of 70 years ago.
This in turn means that the “network” as it is often described, of the “survivors” will be seeking redress from those who are dead, or, who soon will be.
Should the accused in loco parentis carers have themselves survived the timescale, many are likely to be of such infirmity as to be unable to defend themselves.
There are many reasons why the watchdogs both within the government, and outside it, notably the press, are silent on this Royal Commission and the unlimited taxpayer liabilities it is likely to set in motion.
The increasing delicacy of it is only one reason.
Continuing Social licence to motorbike gangs imperils control legislation
New Zealand’s numerous motor bike gangs represent the remaining stronghold of an accepted and even encouraged male dominated hierarchy, and one that is known to be singularly brutish.
These gangs are actively encouraged by progressive society for their adherence to tribalism.
These same gangs will now seek to spike the nation’s drastic new gun laws in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosques shooting catastrophe.
Successive governments have stepped as cautiously around the motorbike gangs as they have stepped with hitherto extreme trepidation around dealing with the nation’s gun proliferation.
Attempts to strengthen New Zealand’s gun-control laws have failed in parliament four times over the past 20 years.
Similarly, these same parliaments have shied away from imposing common law on the gangs since they began flexing their outlaw sinews in the early 1970s and prompted a placatory instead of an enforcement response.
Between then and now these gangs generated a service industry dedicated to divining their deeper purpose in a parallel growth sector in the social sciences.
New Zealand has more gang members than it has members of the professional military.
In the international gang context they share a similarity to their Mediterranean counterparts in being as rooted in rural areas as they are in cities.
This dispersal gives them another shared characteristic with that of the cosa nostra in that they abide by their own laws with the common law intruding only in extreme instances in which the public demands that steps be taken.
The artillery of the academia-based socio-political support base is at some variance with the horror that the gangs in full echelon inspire in the rest of the population.
With their full head and sleeve tattoos and gunning the unmuffled engines of their big capacity motorbikes the road gangs are the antithesis of the nation’s underpinning method and order.
Neither is the gang involvement in quasi-militia roles reassuring, notably their recent one in ringing Christchurch’s besieged mosques in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe.
When the gangs began to hit their straps in the 1970s, the official view was that the outbreak was transient, that participants would tire of it, and that the television lights would dim.
In the event much that officialdom did instead fuelled the gangs including the highway law enforcement transition from British to Japanese motorbikes which flooded the market with well- maintained second hand Nortons.
It is now said that the gangs are sidelining their standover ways in favour of migrating their activities into business enterprises of various descriptions.
This prospect reinforces another tacit exculpatory reason for the official social licence extended to the gangs which adds up to the notion that “at least they are visible.”
The government knows that its time frame of atonement, its bringing-together moment, is a diminishing asset in legislative terms.
An indicator was that within the same month as the Christchurch catastrophe a gun importer buying group saw it timely for a mass mail drop promoting repeating firearms.
The government knows that it treads on a common law minefield in extending any more slack to the gangs, or even upholding the present degree of social licence to them.