Anyway, with all the teeth grinding that's been going on here of late, here's something that made me laugh. (And it's true)
When, in 1926, the BBC first started broadcasting on radio, received pronunciation (posh accents) were still not all that common in Britain, so the Beeb set up a think tank on how words ought to be pronounced on radio. (The Advisory Committee on Spoken Radio)
Amongst the people on this think tank were George Bernard Shaw and a very young Alistair Cooke. The book says:
'Shaw brought up the word 'canine' , and he wanted the recommendation to be 'cay-nine'...And somebody said, 'Mr Shaw, I don't know why you bring this up, of course it's 'ca-nine'. Shaw said, 'I always pronounce things the way they are pronounced by people who use the word professionally every day.' And he said 'My dentist always says 'cay-nine.' And somebody said, 'Well, in that case Mr Shaw, you must have had an American dentist'. And he said 'Of course, why do you think at seventy-six I still have all of my teeth?'
Ravs
