I don’t have a good ear for sounds or language and apparently there are certain words I mangle all the time. Irene says I consistently mispronounce “Martha’s Vineyard,” adding a “thuds” after the first syllable. I have a fair amount of confidence in the way I say
“Nantucket,” so maybe that explains why we’ve been there but never to "Mar-thuds Vineyard."
Although I lived in Germany for ten years, I’m ashamed to say mein Deutsch ist nicht gut. I can order a beer, a schnapps, a Wiener schnitzel, a coffee, a ski lift ticket and that’s about it. What’s worse is I try to fake it and automatically blurt out “ja, ja” when a German speaker says something totally incomprehensible to me. In a restaurant a waiter could say, in German, “We are out of liver dumpling soup tonight, but I can bring you chicken feet broth with sour cream, if you would like,” and I would nod confidently and lay a “ja, ja” on him. (And if I had had enough schnapps and beer before the chicken feet broth arrived, I would probably eat it.)
When I was in college and thought I was headed for a life as a disc jockey – my wisecracking on and off the air would surely have led to many firings - I took a diction course and did so well I was asked to take it again. I didn’t do any better the second time.
With that brief sampling of my linguistic limitations, let me now talk about other people’s shortcomings, in particular some of those who live with me in the Tri-State area. Irene and I were at lunch the other day and two booths away from us was a well-dressed gentleman with a booming voice. In the 40 minutes we were there, this fellow kept saying “oh-vuh” – “oh-vuh and oh-vuh.” To him the word “over” rhymes with the last name of the New York Yankee pitcher, Ivan Nova. I’m not quite sure what was “oh-vuh,” but praise God he did not talk about someone who needed a “dye-puh” or what he wanted to eat for “din-uh,” two other words often butchered in my neck of the woods. This was a man of some apparent means who, judging by one snippet of the conversation, owns or has access to a Porsche.
After lunch, we got in our non-Porsche and headed for home, hearing a commercial on WCBS-AM by a man praising the work and standards of a hospital not far from where we live. Irene, I and many others call it South Nassau Hospital. The man on WCBS – not an anchor - called it South “Nas-sawer.”
As a kid growing up in a small town in Indiana, I had this notion that folks up there in New York were really smart. It was a place where dummies weren’t allowed. Guess what? Dummies ARE everywhere.
Anyone can mispronounce or misuse a word, but what’s bothersome is when professional broadcasters do it and no one on their staff stops them, or maybe if they try they’re ignored or told to mind their own business. Walt Frazier was a terrific basketball player but is, I think, a terrible broadcaster. It’s not only his constant references to my home state as “Indiana-er” but his blatant abuse of words. He’s fond of telling viewers that the players “are huffing and puffing because of the vacillating pace” of the game. In Clyde’s world, “vacillating” means fast. He says “prodigious” when he means “prolific.”
To Frazier’s credit he has not – at least as far as I know – done an on-air impersonation of Al Jolson. John Sterling, the Yankees radio announcer, did that last month during a game against the Red Sox. I’m always interested in how the Yankees are doing but immediately turned off the radio when Sterling started singing. I later sent an e-mail to a WCBS executive, saying “John Sterling makes me wish summer were over. ”
Several network TV sports announcers have picked up the bad habit in recent years of using the nominative case after a preposition. If you haven’t noticed, listen for fairly regular references to “between he” and so-and-so. Some pretty smart and with it announcers have, for some reason, been sucked into this. No one on the staff notices? No one tells them, shames them, plops olives or night crawlers into their coffee cups to make them stop?
Broadcasters aren’t the only ones embarrassing themselves. Those churning out advertising copy are also seemingly bewildered at times. On the CBS Evening News recently there was a commercial for Chantix, the pill that’s supposed to help you stop smoking. The copy said “if you aren’t quit after 12 weeks” you would get your money back. Whoever wrote that and whoever approved it should find another line of work. Either that or reduce their intake of illegal substances while on the job.
Then there are the TV ads for Plavix, a drug, which, according to its website, “helps protect you from a future heart attack or stroke.” My favorite line in a Plavix commercial is the one that says “tell your doctor when planning surgery.” I don’t know about you, but I have an ironclad rule against operating on myself. I just don’t have time for it.
(Posted May 13, 2011)