Monday, July 12, 2010

NAUGHTY AUNTY ABC


You expect Yanks to butcher English but the local ABC comes up with some excruciating clangers . The island of , sounded liked , Goo-am , is a protectorate of what country ? asked one morning radio presenter. Think she meant Guam , pronounced Gwarm . Another ABC newsreader called the Pfizer drug company Fizzer ,many of which are found after cracker night.

An American techno- optimist who advises a large number of the top 500 US corporations mentioned Armageddon , but the way he pronounced the word it came out not like the end of the world but a medication for treating insomnia and drug addiction – a mogadon . When using the adjective affluent, he twice made it sound like what comes out of the Larrakeyah poo shooter. If I heard him correctly, he repeated the cheery news that during the next millennium there would be three international wars and humanity would survive .

Increasingly , the annoying American way of referring to the French/English word route as ROWT is heard over the Australian airwaves, including some of our academics who must have received a Fullbright Scholarship and swanned about the US of A , picking up the local twang .