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The BBC and English pronunciation

Graham Pointon

English Today / Volume 4 / Issue 03 / July 1988, pp 8 - 12

DOI: 10.1017/S0266078400003448, Published online: 17 October 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266078400003448

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Graham Pointon (1988). The BBC and English pronunciation. English Today, 4, pp 8-12
doi:10.1017/S0266078400003448

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The BBC and English
pronunciation
GRAHAM POINTON
The Director of the BBC Pronunciation Unit
follows our recent articles on RP and the
Queen's English with a review of how his
corporation has approached such thorny issues
over the six decades of its existence
THE BBC's concern for 'standards' in the use
of the English language goes back almost to
the foundation of the BBC itself. It must be
remembered that the initials originally stood
for 'British Broadcasting Company', set up in
1922 by a consortium of wireless equipment
manufacturers and licensed by the Govern-
ment. Its Managing Director was John C. W.
Reith, a man with a Messianic vision of the
importance of broadcasting, and the deter-
mination that with his leadership there
should be no slipping from the very highest of
standards of excellence in everything. In
1924, Reith published a book: Broadcast over
Britain, of which a chapter was devoted to
'The King's English':
'The pronunciation of the King's English is a sore
trial to students of our own language. It is also a
matter of considerable irritation and concern to
ourselves. I have heard it said that one can place a
man socially and educationally from the first few
dozen words he utters. There is a measure of truth
in the statement. It is certainly true that even the
commonest and simplest words are subjected to
horrible and grotesque abuse. One hears the most
appalling travesties of vowel pronunciation. This is
a matter in which broadcasting may be of immense
assistance. Pride in a local or national intonation is
perhaps quite natural; this is not necessarily
mutilation. I do not suppose that any man wishes
to go through life handicapped by die mistakes or
carelessness of his own pronunciation, and yet this
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is what happens. We have made a special effort to
secure in our various stations men who, in the
presentation of programme items, the reading of
news bulletins and so on, can be relied upon to
employ die correct pronunciation of the English
tongue. Of course the announcers themselves
occasionally make dreadful mistakes with
uncommon words, especially place-names, but this
is excusable, and apart from it we may claim to
have succeeded. I have frequendy heard that
disputes as to the right pronunciation of words
have been settled by reference to the manner in
which they have been spoken on the wireless. No
one would deny the great advantage of a standard
pronunciation of the language, not only in theory
but in practice. Our responsibilities in this matter
are obvious, since in talking to so vast a multitude,
mistakes are likely to be promulgated to a much
greater extent than was ever possible before. There
is now presented to any who may require it, an
opportunity of learning by example. I am told that
children particularly have acquired the habit of
copying the announcer's articulation; this has been
observed by their teachers, and so long as the
announcer is talking good English, and without
affectation, I think it is much to be desired that he
should be copied. . . . An objectionable habit is to
refer to die listener as the listener-in; this is a relic
of the days when he actually did listen in to
messages not primarily intended for him; now he
is the one addressed, and he accordingly listens.
Only the unlicensed listen-in' (pp. 160-162).
From this polemical style it is easy to see
ENGLISH TODAY 15 July 1988
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how Reith dominated the Company. How-
ever, despite Reith's efforts, the standard did
not rise high enough to satisfy him, and in
1926 an Advisory Committee on Spoken
English was formed. Its first chairman was
Robert Bridges (the Poet Laureate of the
day), and its other original members were Sir
Johnston Forbes-Robertson (a noted actor),
Logan Pearsall Smith (American-born, but a
naturalised British writer), George Bernard
Shaw (who needs no introduction), Daniel
Jones (professor of phonetics at University
College London) and Arthur Lloyd James
(lecturer in phonetics at the School of
Oriental Studies of London) who acted as the
Committee's Honorary Secretary.
The original function of the Committee
was to advise announcers on the pronunci-
ation of contentious words, and this is
reflected in the sub-title of its first publi-
cation: 'Recommendations to announcers
regarding certain words of doubtful pronun-
ciation'. The word recommendations is some-
thing of a euphemism, as announcers were
obliged to follow the Committee's advice: 'it
seemed desirable to adopt uniformity of
principle and uniformity of pronunciation to
be observed by Announcers with respect of
doubtful words' (Foreword to Broadcast
English I: written by J.C.W. Reith). Even so,
the presence of Jones and Lloyd James on the
Committee ensured that the extreme pre-
scriptivism expressed by Reith in 1924 ('the
correct pronunciation of the English tongue',
'the right pronunciation of words', 'No one
would deny the great advantage of a standard
pronunciation of the language, not only in
theory but in practice.') was somewhat
tempered: in his Foreword to Broadcast
English I, Reith wrote: 'There has been no
attempt to establish a uniform spoken
language. . . . The policy might be described
as that of seeking a common denominator of
educated speech.'
Broadcast English I consists of a list of 332
words and the Committee's recommen-
dations, indicated in a modified spelling
system, preceded by the Foreword referred
to above, and by a 16-page Introduction by
Lloyd James, which sets out the principles
adduced by the Committee, and the historical
background to the current language situation
in these islands. He goes much further than
does Reith in his brief statement: 'The BBC
has no desire to accept or to dictate any
THE BBC AND ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
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standard of pronunciation other than the
current usage of educated speakers. But
where there is diversity of opinion among
works of reference, and diversity of practice
among educated speakers, it is evident that
no solution of doubtful questions can be
attained that will meet with universal
approval. The function of the Advisory
Committee on Spoken English is to suggest to
the Corporation, for the use of announcers,
solutions that shall be in accordance with one
accepted usage.' (p. 10) - 'Is laboratory to
have the accent on the first syllable or on the
second? Here there is no question of district
variants: the two pronunciations are heard in
all parts of the country. This is a question of
alternative pronunciations.' (p. 11). He made
similar comments in an article in the BBC
Handbook (1929, pp. 238-41):
'Every word in the list published in the pamphlet
"Broadcast English" (obtainable from the B.B.C.,
price id., post free) has given rise to doubt in the
mind of Announcers as to its pronunciation, and
the Advisory Committee, after consulting existing
standard dictionaries, and, where possible,
technical authorities or such people as are most
likely to use the word in question, has decided to
recommend that the Announcers shall use the
pronunciation indicated. This is not to be regarded
as implying that all other pronunciatons are
wrong: the recommendations are made in order to
ensure uniformity of practice, and to protect the
Announcers from the criticism to which the very
peculiar nature of their work renders them liable,
(p. 241)
The Alphabet of the (International Phonetic
Association has never been used for making
recommendations within the BBC, and, as
mentioned above, a modified spelling was
developed. This has been progressively refined
until we believe that it is now totally unambiguous.
To quote Lloyd James again: 'The representation
in print of pronunciation is always a difficult
matter; it is easy when a complicated phonetic
alphabet is employed, but such an alphabet
requires special types, and is, moreover, difficult
to read. But unless a phonetic alphabet is
employed, there must be a lack of consistency and
indeed of accuracy. The pronunciations . . .are
indicated as simply as possible, and the original
spelling is interfered with as little as possible'.
(Broadcast English I, pp. 19-20).
Examples of the Committee's original rec-
ommendations are:
FORMIDABLE stress on first syllable
IODINE eye-o-dyne
PEJORATIVE peejorativ
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Some of the pronunciations recommended
were rather odd, particularly:
IMMANENT immaynent, to avoid confusion
with imminent
Robert Bridges was one of the founders of
the Society for Pure English, in 1913, and one
of its Tracts (number XXXII) was devoted to
a critical analysis of Broadcast English I. It
seems rather strange that the Society for pure
English, in a Tract edited by Bridges, should
criticize the work of a Committee chaired by
him, but this is what happened. The Tract
used the phrase 'BBC disapproved' several
times!
Broadcast English I went into three
editions, becoming progressively longer as
the number of words discussed by the
Committee increased (1st edition 332 words,
2nd 503, and 3rd 779 words). Inevitably,
some recommendations were changed, pre-
sumably in response to criticism from the
public, additional information, and to take
into account the views of new members of the
Committee, which grew over the years until
eventually it numbered over twenty. Bridges
died in 1930 and George Bernard Shaw
became chairman. More members were
recruited to advise on specialist fields, or to
replace others who resigned or died. In 1934
the procedure was modified: Jones, Lloyd
James, Harold Orton (then Lecturer in
English at Armstrong College, Newcastle on
Tyne, and later Director of the English
Dialect Survey) and H.C.K. Wyld (Merton
Professor of English Language and Literature
in the University of Oxford, and author of the
Universal English Dictionary) were designated
'consultant members' and words for dis-
cussion were submitted in the first instance to
them, as expert phoneticians. Their report,
taking past and present usage into consider-
ation, and accepted alternative pronunci-
ations, was then passed to the main
committee, which considered the word in
relation to broadcasting. Even then, the
question of a firm recommendation was left
open until 'informed opinion throughout the
country' (Foreword to the 3rd Edition, p. 5)
had had an opportunity to comment.
One word, very common nowadays, which
clearly caused a lot of discussion was garage.
It does not appear in the Oxford English
Dictionary, that part of the letter G having
been published in October 1898, while its
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earliest reference in the Supplement of 1933 is
for January 1902. Consequently the Com-
mittee, working from 1926, had to fall back
on its own resources completely. The first
edition of Broadcast English I (1928) gave
'garraazh'. Bridges (1929) comments:
'GARAGE. (B.B.C. garraazh.)
'The B.B.C. advise the French pronunciation;
and it may have some short lease of life, because of
the word barrage from which it only differs by one
letter; for although die O.E.D. 1885 gave the
pronunciation of this as bared3; yet the French
sound, which we cannot write (although we have it
in Rajah), was usually maintained when the word
came into the use of the British engineers, who
were busied in damming the Nile more than fifty
years ago. During the Great War the word came up
afresh, with a new application in artillery, and
again kept its French form, but there can be no
doubt that, unless we can spell this sound, barrage
will follow all the other -ages, and garage most
likely has already done so, because it is spelt out at
every street corner.
'One can feel no sentiment about the
pronunciation of garage, except to deplore that
there should be another word added to the some
200 which used to be -age and are now commonly
pronounced -edge or -idge; for instance, Jones
records in his dictionary (1917) that cultivated
Southern English people, in their ordinary
conversation, pronounce parsonage as pahsnidg
(pa:snid3). Anything that can check the spread of
this disease is useful, and it is to be hoped that the
B.B.C. announcers will set the example of a more
agreeable solution than the phoneticians have
predetermined' (pp. 381-382).
The second edition of Broadcast English I
(1931) has 'garredge', and Lloyd James'
Preface comments:
'Garage has been granted unconditional British
nationality, and may now be rhymed with marriage
and carriage. There are people who maintain that
this is an uneducated pronunciation; but if the
word is ever to become an English word - and it is
difficult nowadays to do without it - then it must
shed its foreign "zh" ending. This is a sound that
we tolerate only in the middle of words, e.g.
pleasure, measure, azure, etc., and words that begin
or end with this sound are still foreign to our ears'
(p. v).
The third edition (1935) reverts to 'garraazh'.
Lloyd James wrote:
In preparing the Third Edition of Broadcast
English I for the press, it has been thought
advisable, not only to include the new words that
have come up for discussion since die year 1932,
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but also to scrutinize very carefully the
pronunciations recorded in the second edition,
some of which have been found in practice to be
unacceptable (p. 5).
During the 1930's more booklets were
published, dealing with place names and
family names. Listeners, and readers of the
Radio Times, were encouraged to send in lists
of British names whose pronunciation might
not be predicted from the spelling, and
foreign names were also collected. Broadcast
English VI (1937) listed foreign place names,
giving an I.P.A. transcription of the native
pronunciation, followed by an I.P.A. tran-
scription of the anglicised pronunciation, and
the modified spelling which corresponds to
this. Broadcast English VIII, intended to
cover foreign personal names, was printed in
proof form, but never published.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, the
Committee was suspended. Lloyd James, by
then Professor, and Daniel Jones remained as
Linguistic Advisers to the BBC, positions
which they held until their deaths.
The day-to-day work on pronunciation was
taken over by Miss G.M. Miller, formerly the
Assistant Secretary to the Committee, with
the title Pronunciation Assistant, and Miss
E.D. Anderson. Both were honours gradu-
ates in modern languages with a training in
phonetics gained at London University. They
had the assistance of a clerk, and were
members of the Presentation department. A
third linguist post was created in 1957 and a
fourth in 1984. The Committee was not re-
activated after the war, and the Pronunciation
Unit, now headed by a Pronunciation
Adviser, is no longer within Presentation, but
forms part of BBC Data, which includes the
Reference Libraries, Written Archives
Centre and News Cuttings collections, serv-
ing the whole of the BBC.
Most of the problems dealt with concern
the pronunciation of foreign names. The
place names among them fall into four
categories:
O those for which there is a long-established
English word spelt differently from the native
name: Florence, Munich, Copenhagen. Clearly
the English name, where still in common
usage, is to be preferred, as the use of
Firenze, Munchen, K0benhavn would sound
pedantic and pretentious;
O those for which there is a long-established
English pronunciation despite the spelling's
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being identical with the native one: Paris,
Barcelona, Oslo. Again, an approximation to
the native pronunciation in a straightforward
English sentence would sound precious;
O those, very few, where an approximation
to the native pronunciation would be so
different from the perceived spelling that
incomprehensibility would result: Lodz (the
Polish spelling Lodz cannot be reproduced by
most British typesetters);
O the vast majority, which are unfamiliar,
and for which we devise an anglicised form
which is a close approximation to the native
pronunciation without causing difficulties of
either production (for the speaker) or
comprehension (for the listener).
There are very few personal names which
come into any but the last category.
The Unit now finds it less useful to make
rulings on English vocabulary words, as
educated usage now accommodates far more
variation than formerly, but certain words of
more than one pronunciation have one which
causes less annoyance to certain sections of
the audience than the others, and in these
cases we do make recommendations which we
like broadcasters to follow: controversy (first
syllable stress), dispute (second syllable stress
for both noun and verb), kilometre (first
syllable stress), soviet (-o as in no rather than
in not), cervical (first syllable stress, -i as in
pin, not as in nine).
The pre-war Broadcast-English booklets
have long been out of print, but in 1971,
Oxford University Press published the first
edition of the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of
British Names, edited by Miss G.M. Miller,
who retired shortly after its publication,
having spent over 30 years as Pronunciation
Assistant, and been awarded the M.B.E. in
1956 for services to the English language.
The dictionary incorporates all the inform-
ation of the relevant Broadcast English
booklets (nos. II-V and VII) (although
unfortunately the sources for these were lost
in an air raid during World War II), and that
acquired in the intervening period. A second,
enlarged edition appeared in 1983.
BBC Data also publishes a series of
Pronunciation Guides compiled by the Unit.
These are lists of names in particular
categories: composers, singers, German
Lieder, football team names, British M.P.s.
Altogether ten such guides are available,
together with a complete list of Chinese
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syllables, giving Pinyin and Wade-Giles
equivalents and the BBC recommendation.
We do not see our role as being 'guardians
of the language' as some would like to think
us, but as reflecting the preferred usage of the
British public. Inevitably this changes over a
period of time, and whereas we used to
recommend 'll-6nz' (-1 as in high) and
'maarssaylz' for the French cities of Lyons
and Marseilles (English spelling!), English
usage has now adopted 'lee-o(ng)' (-(ng)
representing nasalisation: and 'maarssay', so
we have followed suit. Interestingly though,
the English spelling has retained thefinal-s.
Similarly, while pejorative, quandary and
vagary used to have the recommendations
'pe"ejorativ', 'kwondairi' and 'vagairi' (see
Broadcast English I), we would now expect to
hear people say 'pejorrativ', 'kwondari' and
'vaygari'.
Inevitably, some people do not like these
changes, but we try to judge our amendments
to coincide with, or follow, developments in
the country as a whole. I hope that we never
initiate changes, nor even find ourselves in
the vanguard. In matters of pronunciation,
that would certainly be impermissible for an
organisation which has acquired so great an
influence as the BBC.
References
Bridges, R. (ed.) (1929): TheB.B.C.'s
Recommendations for Pronouncing Doubtful
Words, Reissued with Criticisms. Society for
Pure English Tract No. XXXII, At the
Clarendon Press.
Lloyd James, A. (ed.) (1928): Broadcast English I:
Recommendations to announcers regarding
certain words of doubtful pronunciation. Also
2nd edition (1931) and 3rd edition (1935).
BBC, London.
(1929): 'English - How it strikes the foreigner'
in BBC Handbook 1929, pp. 238-241.
(1932a): Broadcast English II: Recommendations
to announcers regarding the pronunciation of
some English place names. 2nd edition 1936.
BBC, London.
(1932b): Broadcast English III: Recommendations
to announcers regarding the pronunciations of
some Scottish place names. BBC, London.
(1934: Broadcast English IV: Recommendations to
announcers regarding the pronunciation of some
Welsh place names. BBC, London.
(1935): Broadcast English V: Recommendations to
announcers regarding the pronunciation of some
Northern Irish place names. BBC, London.
(1937): Broadcast English VI: Recommendations
to announcers regarding the pronunciation of
some foreign place names. BBC, London.
(1939): Broadcast English VII: Recommendations
to announcers regarding the pronunciation of
some British family names and titles. BBC,
London.
(printed not published): Broadcast English VIII:
Recommendations to announcers regarding the
pronunciation of some foreign personal names.
BBC, London.
Miller, G.M. (ed.) 1971): BBC Pronouncing
Dictionary of British Names. Oxford
University Press, London. 2nd edition (ed.
G.E. Pointon) 1983.
Reith, J.C.W. (n.d. 1924?): Broadcast over Britain.
Hodder and Stoughton, London.
(1928): Foreword to Broadcast English I (ed. A.
Lloyd James).
ED

Premiere Rencontre
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Theme: L'enseignement des langues en Europe de
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