BBC BBC BBC – get it right, will you? You don’t ever get it right. You need to learn to get it right.
(No not how to pronounce “Houston,” the one in Texas. They need to learn that too, but this is not that.)
They don’t get it right yet again.
Religious education in schools is under threat, faith leaders have warned.
Leaders representing Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists said
they were “gravely concerned” about the “negative impact” that current
government policies were having.
There are no such peoples. There is no such thing as “faith leaders.” They don’t “represent” anyone. “Representing” people requires some kind of process by which the people represented appoint or elect or consent to the people supposed to be doing the representing. Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists have not ever done that. They have not ever named or appointed a Leader. There is no “leader” anywhere who “represents” all Christians or all Sikhs or all Hindus or all Muslims or all Buddhists.
What the BBC means, of course, is clerics. Maybe it would sound too obviously self-interested to say clerics are upset because students might do less religion in state schools.
Nevertheless, the BBC must get it right.
Comments
22 responses to “Faith leaders”
Perhaps if they’d written “some Christians, Sikhs…” it might have been slightly more accurate. I’m sure there are some people out there who consider some clerics their representatives in some fashion. But, alas, that’s not what was written. Oy.
Leaders don’t have to represent anyone. All they need is followers and ‘authority’ over those followers.
Yes to the rest though.
What, incidentally is the correct way to say Houston TX, and how did the BBC say it?
The correct way to say “Houston” for the American city is “heweston,” as in an ‘h’ sound, then the word “you.” I’m betting the BBC pronounced it HOWston.
English media also have a thoroughly annoying inability to pronounce Barack Obama’s name correctly. The ‘a’s are not pronounced as they would be for “cat” or “ban” or “apple”. They are pronounced like the ‘o’s in “ontological.”
When I consider that I know how to pronounce “Paris” but had better not bother if I want to be taken as a rational person in my own country, and that the French can’t even spell “London”, and that from the American point of view no Britishers can say “Birmingham” properly, and that from the British point of view neither can the Americans…I will go my own way and leave the impossible shibboleths of the received American pronunciation of “New York”, “Connecticut” and “Houston” to the natives, who always know how to do it properly, and only complain about the BBC when they do things like appointing leaders for us without asking. Thus I consider myself to be on firmer ground. And don’t even get me started on “Berkeley”, “Rome”, “Persian” or “PZ Myers”!
I imagine the BBC pronounced it “Hooston”, though I thought that “Hewston” was well accepted over here. Your “ontological” doesn’t work for us Brits. Perhaps “Bah-rahk” might work (?)
Gordon, you’re right. I immediately thought of that when I posted – “D’uh, Brits and Yanks pronounce those sounds differently.” Yes, Bahrahk is closer to the mark. It’s trivial, but then I get irritated by trivial things. It’s a hobby.
Oh we’ve done the whole Barack thing on an old “my annoying prejudices about words and phrases” thread. It’s not all that trivial, and it’s not comparable to Birmingham, because his name has to be said a lot and it’s not that difficult to discover the correct pronunciation and I think it’s just perverse and rude to use their own special wrong pronunciation. Many BBC presenters say BaaRACK: both short ‘a’s and accent on last syllable; it’s BaROCK. It rhymes neatly with Iraq if people pronounce that properly, but most go out of their way not to.
Anyway yes: Hooston instead of Hyouston. The reverse of nooz/nyews and dook/dyewk.
Bahrahk isn’t quite right actually, because the first syllable is short; it’s like the a in ago or ahead, not like the ah in aha.
Yes, mispronouncing Barak is not comparable with mispronouncing Birmingham because it seems to me very discourteous not to make an effort with a person’s name. When I consider how I used to consign to outer darkness all those people who spelt my name “Gorden”…
And now I’ve done it with “Barak”. Outer darkness for me, too…
Kinda makes you wish you had one of those foreign and exotic sound names people don’t even bother trying to spell.
I always used to say “Two O’s, as in gin“, but it never seemed to work.
It’s funny though!
From this bitter experience I learnt that there’s just no helping some people. On which pessimistic note I shall retire. I expect that I shall dream of wailing and gnashing of teeth and demons shouting “Birmingham” in mocking voices.
As far as I’m aware, the English Baccalaureate is modelled on the French version, which has never had a religious component, except as an elective. I would be very surprised to see even comparative religion in there.
And, once again, two countries confused by a common language.
I like it! A definitional argument! Ophelia said: “There is no “leader” anywhere who “represents” all Christians or all Sikhs or all Hindus or all Muslims or all Buddhists….What the BBC means, of course, is clerics. Maybe it would sound too obviously self-interested to say clerics are upset because students might do less religion in state schools.”
Yes, indeed. They should care more about the accuracy of their word choices, common usage (even among Britons) and also bother to explicate what it means for any such “leaders” to issue a warning—a warning?! What can such a description mean? And is it expediency, laziness, or both that makes news corps (like BBC, et al.) so unhelpful, so unwilling to educate an audience? Very vexing.
I think this has something to do with the fact that, to British ears, it’s easy to misinterpret an American saying RACK vs. ROCK; the vowels are too close together. We see it spelt Barack and reflexively interpret Americans saying BaRACK and it probably hasn’t occurred to most of us that we’re doing it wrong in our own accent. This doesn’t excuse the BBC though, who should know better.
This reminds me of that ridiculous video of a preacher arguing that god existed because the word for god in every language contained an ‘ah’ sound.
Kenan Malik has been a long time critic of the British government’s policy of outsourcing many of its responsibilities to so-called ‘community/religious leaders’.
Here are the relevant paragraphs from his recent NYT essay:
That would be an improvement to adding an “r” to his last name. That seriously annoys me. Obamer. Really BBC America?
For many years the BBC had a policy of mis-pronouncing certain words and may very well have it today. The policy was to use the pronounciation least likely to confuse their audience. Thus, Daventry, where their major transmitters were, was pronounced as-spelt, even though the correct pronounciation is `Daintree’.
Erm – the BBC has a new boss.
Chris Patten (“Lord” Patten – excepth that a title implies honour ) who is a dyed-in-the-woll, thorougly-brainwashed Roman Catholic. OF COURSE the BBC are getting it wrong – their boss won’t let them do otherwise.