Items filtered by date: Tuesday, 02 December 2014

Influx of Esol students is fresh imperative to curb New Zealand-ese

A group or collection of females described in the singular as “woman,” has emerged as the most obvious flaw in the diction of professional broadcasters according to a survey by MSC Newswire, the affiliate site of the National Press Club.

The other most discernible mangled word was vulnerable which frequently emerges as “vunerable,” according to the panel.

Also selected was “summision” for submission.

In vowel handling the panel identified as a continuing articulation problem the sounds of the letters “a” and “e” in which for example weeks of time became “wakes” of time and the Southern Alps became the Southern “yelps.”

Other examples among many was the word flash being delivered as “flesh” and vice versa. Someone called Alice was frequently described as “Ellis,” and again vice versa.

This was mentioned by the panel in a range of other such transposition which included the word (bus) fares emerging as “fears,” and vice versa.

Other such jumbled locutions were the words beer/bare/bear noted the panel.

The panel remained though much exercised about the delivery of more than one female as “woman” and it warned that especially when rendered on the state stations it exhibited what it described as an indifference to standards.

This single-as-plural colloquialism was unique to New Zealand and it existed in isolation from any other English language argot or slang such as Cockney.

It was of relatively recent derivation.

It was due according to the panel to the New Zealand Woman's Weekly first published in the depths of the great depression,1932, and which once had the highest print saturation per head of population in the world.

It was and remains Woman’s Weekly rather than being entitled the plural Women’s Weekly as it was in every other country including Australia (see illustrations) in which the same formula magazine was launched shortly after the pioneering New Zealand version.

Even so, counselled the panel, slipshod standards in professional broadcasting reflected adversely on every other professional endeavour in anything at all in the nation at large.

The panel stated that it reviewed only the delivery of professional broadcasters and those who put themselves forward as such.

The panel observed also that those responsible for mainstream broadcast media delivery should bear in mind the nation’s accelerating role in ESOL.

Curiously, the panel accommodated and even discounted the discarding of the present participle ing in favour of ‘in or the more specialised New Zealand rendering ‘een. as in “walkeen, talkeen” or doin’ and thinkin.’

“We are not ‘worry-een’” quipped the panel.

This was because the termination minus the “g” was standard among US broadcasters and was notably becoming so now in the BBC.

The BBC, the onetime arbiter of vocal English standards, was being forced politically to adopt more and more regional accents and patois and do so regardless of its central role as a universally comprehensible communicator.

Even so and bearing in mind New Zealand tertiary education’s increasing revenue dependence on English as a second language for Asian students, the panel cautioned state broadcasters over the use of what it described as “institutionalised” slang such as choppers for helicopters and “the ditch” for the Tasman Sea.

The stated policy of New Zealand’s Fairfax newspaper group to discard all views and data that dissents with the chain’s own collectively-held opinion that climate change is an existential threat and is manmade is a challenge to science according to a local government figure, Rick Long.

Even more serious believes Mr Long (pictured) remains the subsequent decision of the nation’s news-content arbitrator, the Media Council, to uphold the Australian-owned chain’s decision.

Fairfax is now part of Australia’s Channel Nine Network.

Mr Long’s contention is that the decision to outlaw dissenting information by Fairfax, with the support of the Media Council, was particularly significant in terms of the mainstream media’s accepted role.

This is because the Fairfax chain controls the only daily newspapers in New Zealand’s chief scientific research centres, notably those in and around Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Palmerston North, and Hamilton.

Mr Long said that the public understanding was that greenhouse gas estimates were detected by atmospheric sensors.

In fact, he stated, they are estimates based on computer modelling, and differed widely, especially in New Zealand

The New Zealand publicly-disseminated hypothesis focussed on the animal contribution, he said.

It omitted component elements such as volcanic activity and water vapour, all contributors to the greenhouse gas syndrome.

This in turn remains further distorted because New Zealand media reports only events supporting its warming theory such as heatwaves while ignoring all icy weather and freezes to the contrary.

Mr Long explained to MSC Newswire, the National Press Club’s associated news site, that his main worry centred in fact on the active support given to Fairfax by the industry’s own arbitrator of content, the Media Council.

It was this support that gave the “proudly” proclaimed Fairfax auto-censorship on climate-dissenting information its sinister undertone, he noted.

He claimed that there was a “book burning” aura to the Media Council’s upholding of Fairfax’s announced policy.

This was because an arbitrating and at face value official and impartial referee board, the Media Council, had given its seal of approval to the Fairfax stated policy of reporting only one side of what the chain itself conceded was one of the central issues of the era.

Mr Long for many years has been involved as an elected official in Wellington and Central Districts regional, municipal, and health roles.....

To see Mr Long’s original letter to the National Press Club in full go to: www.nationalpressclub.org.nz

Witness to global peace keeping operations for 30 years

Stephen Whitehouse’s career began in broadcasting in Wellington and took him to the inner circles of United Nations headquarters in New York where secretary general Kofi Annan described the New Zealander’s technique as the “Whitehouse Way.”

He led the United Nations radio and television unit and his 30 year career there took him throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, and the Balkans during which time he witnessed and recorded many commotions.

Stephen Alexander Whitehouse who has died in the United Kingdom suddenly at the age of 73 emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1952.

He grew up in Wellington in an artistic and bohemian household, his mother, actress Davina Whitehouse, being a central figure in the young country’s burgeoning cultural scene. Visitors to the home included a young Sam Neil, Richard Campion (father of Jane), and Peter Jackson. The opening frames of Jackson’s film ‘Brain Dead’ were shot on the beach outside his mother’s house.

After graduating from Victoria University, Wellington, where he had excelled as a revue writer and performer, he worked for the Broadcasting Corporation before moving to Hong Kong for a stint on the South China Morning Post. A keen jazz enthusiast (he played tenor saxophone) he leapt at the chance to work at the UN and lived in the Park Slope, Brooklyn (the ‘real New York’ as he put it) from the early 70’s.

Retiring to Sandwich, Kent, he worked on the Festival Committee, took up the banjo, joined the local Liberal Democrats, avidly watched cricket and rugby and listened to his beloved Radio New Zealand, returning to Wellington every year for the NZ summer.

An enthusiastic amateur historian, he was also a volunteer at Sandwich Museum. A keen sailor during his earlier years, he recently became a trustee for the P22 gunboat.

Steve is survived by his wife Lynne O’Donoghue, sons Sasha and Sam from his first marriage, a stepdaughter Alexandra and stepson Daniel.

Former Prime Minister, leader of the Opposition and Minister of Finance the Right Honourable Sir Bill English is to receive an honorary doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington.

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