Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.british
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!gw1.att.com!gw2.att.com!nntpa!mac-118.lz.att.com!user
From: rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards)
Subject: Re: Differences between American + British english
Message-ID: <rte-2004951816330001@mac-118.lz.att.com>
Sender: news@nntpa.cb.att.com (Netnews Administration)
Nntp-Posting-Host: mac-118.lz.att.com
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs
References: <795681149snz@duntone.demon.co.uk> <D5yIDv.L0G@Virginia.EDU> <planders.577.2F732A06@mail.utexas.edu> <3lp4uk$n8p@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> <widmayes.797804097@gusun> <3mph1r$oca@venus.roc.csci.csc.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 23:16:33 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <3mph1r$oca@venus.roc.csci.csc.com>,
rhicklin@alfalfa.csci.csc.com (Richard Hickling) wrote:

> Sharon Widmayer (widmayes@gusun.acc.georgetown.edu) wrote:
> : etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (Edmund Grimley-Evans) writes:
> 
> : >British newsreaders have a weird intonation. If you were to speak like
> : >that in any context other than reading news, people would think you
> : >were mad.
> This is true, yet the weirdness is as follows: Speaking about emotive
> issues while displaying little emotion.  Both American and British news-
> readers do this, but in different ways: Americans by being perpetually
> light-hearted, British by being serious.  To me the American version
> sounds patronising, while the British style doesn't seem to handle 
> human interest stories too well.
> 

You miss the point, British newsreaders use a utterly bizarre intonation
and rhythm, which is completely different from any other form of spoken
English.
It includes (but is not confined to) speaking the last sylable of a phrase
with an artificially high tone and about six times as long as in normal
human speech.

Some US newsreaders speak in an artificial manner, but in no sense is it
so divorced from normal speech.
