Co Mun Ni Ca Shun...

It’s been a thing of mine forever. If you work in media – especially the type that requires you to talk as your preferred form of communication i.e. radio and TV then you should be able to actually speak the language your communicating in – clearly.

I am not talking about helping lost tourists looking for TABBEL MOUNT, DA WATTERFRROOONT or MERVREEKS, but rather some of the people that occupy space inside my radio and behind the flat-screen at home.

I can already here the gasps from the far left now! Everyone is equal and we should all get an equal chance in life yadda yadda…Well now no!…screw yourself because sadly this is not true in media. Print its fine – there we have spell checker…radio and TV…no.

The whole point of a news broadcast or such like is to get your message across – inform and educate the person on the other end, with TV license in hand saying, “I paid for this so tell me what’s going on today”.

If you are missing the one obvious thing that makes this happen for example – THE ENGLISH LANGAUGE – then don’t do it.

I want to know what’s going on when I watch the news – not try and work out what the f&*k you are saying and then only after that get an idea of what the actual story is about. I am not been unfair here as I would not even attempted to speak another persons language and think that I was even mildly getting my point across…

No German radio station has ever come up to me and said “hey why don’t you read the news for us this evening?” – You know why? Because the know that even if I was reading from a teleprompt I would still never in a million years be able to deliver the message in an understandable format!

I can speak Afrikaans and understand it better – however I would not dream, as a radio presenter to pretend, that me talking Afrikaans on air is not going to be difficult for some listeners to understand – so I don’t. I have conversations in Afrikaans regularly, but its normally me listening in their language and vice versa.

As an example I heard an advert this AM on radio describing how you could win a trip to Ecuador…sounds fab except the voice over artist pronounced it EeeeCudor…its EK QUI DOOR you brain fart EK – QUI – DOOR…its tantamount to you sitting at home with your calculator and saying “Oh 1 and 1 Ekwells 2”… How can the producer of that Ad let it go out like that? …that makes at least two stupid people in the booth at once?

Had to get that off my chest…

PS. I too have made screw ups on air, in the past, through wrong pronunciation and I realize it happens…I have had them pointed out and then don’t do it again. Now when I am unsure I look it up… BTW Producer and pratt Voice Over Artists…Its under EC…in the dictionary…it’s a place by the way…in case you were unsure…