Wyn Drabble asks why so many cricket commentators turn a perfectly good five-syllable word into one of four syllables. Photo / File
Wyn Drabble asks why so many cricket commentators turn a perfectly good five-syllable word into one of four syllables. Photo / File
OPINION
Do you know what has brought me back to the language theme again this week? It's Spark Sport cricket commentary.
Here, I'm not becoming embroiled in the Spark/Sky debate although I have played my part. I emailed Sky and suggested, now that they couldn't offer part of what Ihad paid for, perhaps some sort of rebate was in order. Their answer failed to address the issue and failed to offer the suggested rebate.
No, what riled me was that every day the Spark Sport telecast was introduced by a man's voice saying that today's live cricket is "bought to you by ANZ". There are a number of worrying aspects to this gross error.
Was that written on the man's script? If so, could he not have corrected it himself? How come nobody throughout the whole system bothered to report it and get it fixed? Somewhere along the chain there must have been someone who knew the difference between "bought" and "brought".
Those who think this is trivial are advised to stop reading now because more is to come.
Yes, I accept it would have been prerecorded so it was the same recording used over and over again. But it was someone's job to suggest rerecording it to get it right. Even someone from ANZ that is currently making banking "easier" for us by closing banks.
Another possibility is that it was written as "brought" on the script but the man didn't notice and just ran with his usual incorrect choice.
Still on the Spark Sport cricket, why do so many cricket commentators turn a perfectly good five-syllable word into a four-syllable word in which the letter "p" is turned into a "b" and "t" is sounded as a "d"? Why does "opportunity" become "obchoonidee"?
That said, there's no denying that the New Zealand cricketers have seized every obchoonidee.
Wyn Drabble.
Remember, I did warn you to stop reading if you find language issues trivial but I get the feeling that a few of you have doggedly continued to read on so that you can get really irritated.
So here just for you is another diction issue. Why does the TV1 weather man continually refer to the "North Ine" and "South Ine" in his forecasts? Surely there is someone in the building who notices and could have a quiet word in his ear.
That some people DO care was illustrated by the fact that one of the cricket commentators admitted on air that he was receiving a lot of correspondence about his poor pronunciation of Maori place names.
To his credit, he was taking the criticism on board and was "trying" to do something about it.
That people DO care was also illustrated by the mail I received after the last column on a language theme.
Thanks particularly to Ross of Hastings who offered me more examples of the vacuous nonsense that is corporate speak in which a lot of words are said but very little or no content is communicated.
Anyway, I started out on sports commentary so let's close on it too. Who better to comment on than Formula 1 caller Murray Walker? The late Clive James perfectly summed up the reason for Walker's appeal: "Even in moments of tranquillity, Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire."
Walker could mix metaphors ("You can cut the tension with a cricket stump") or just become very confused ("The lead car is unique, except of course for the one behind it which is identical").
Then there was his classic, "With half the race gone, there is still half of the race to go."
Well, with all of this column written, there is no more to write.
*Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.
