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Careful, Lou, Some of us speak English as well... Graham McDonald Sound & Broadcast Curator National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, McCoy Circuit, Acton, Canberra ACT 2601 Tel: 02 6248 2192 www.nfsa.gov.au From: Lou Judson <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask], Date: 14/03/2014 10:34 AM Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Toothpaste Sent by: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> I could not stop myself from emailing the BBC World Service about a report on some isolated island in the South Pacific, whose announcer/reporter/reality radio guy was unable to get me to understand the name of the island, the name of the reporter, or the characteristics of its peoples. When I went online to look it up I found he was a stringer for ABC - Australian Broadcasting Company - and the reason became clear. He wasn't speaking English of any sort, he was speaking Australian! Needless to say, no reply was forthcoming. <L> Lou Judson Intuitive Audio 415-883-2689 On Mar 12, 2014, at 4:27 PM, Michael Biel wrote: Michael is correct but it has not been just a recent development. In the early 80s the BBC purposefully started using regional dialects in their domestic services as the country started expanding to multiple local stations, both Independent Commercial and BBC. But for the BBC World Service they maintained "Standard English" because for a large percentage of their overseas listeners English is not their first language. This was explained to me in 1983 at the BBC when I toured with a class of Americans I was teaching there, and asked why the BBC I grew up with sounded different from what I was hearing on my first trip to England. But I am hearing more accents on the BBC World Service now -- the U.K. is noted for how many accents they have, not how few. remember, the starting premise of My Fair Lady (Pygmalion) was that the linguists could identify the birthplace of an Englishman to within two blocks by their speech.