Tudor Hughes wrote:
On Dec 31, 10:35 am, "Ian Bingham"
wrote:
I apologise for being somewhat OT, but am I the only one irritated to the
nth degree by Jeremy Paxman pronouncing the word “meteorology” as
“mee-tree-ology”? He’s been doing it for years. You would have thought
someone would have told him by now or, as the erudite fellow he seems to be,
he would have looked at the word and worked it out for himself.
And while I’m about it, even more OT, have you noticed how in all media,
people are saying “epicentre” when all they mean is “centre”. Sounds more
technical, you see.
And then there’s the word “dissect”. Almost everyone pronounces it
“dye-sect”, but there’s a double ‘s’ so the ‘i’ is short. Even highly
educated people do this.
Phew, that’s better!

Ian Bingham,
Inchmarlo, Aberdeenshire.

You've been watching University Challenge, haven't you? Good man.

Nobody can tell Paxo anything of course though he has yet to meet
me, for instance.

You're dead right about "dissect" and "epicentre" also. What
about "anticipate" as posh for "expect"? I won't bore the group with
the very worthwhile distinction.

While we're on about journalists, have you noticed the very
curious intonation of those reporting from various places? Also, they
talk about eye-WITnesses as oppeosed to EYE-witnesses. Weird lot -
are they of this world? I think I'd rather listen to like up-speak?

Now I must go and kickstart the car as I go through the course
of the afternoon period.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

--------------------------
Another notable thing with our Jeremy is his bias to the arts. You will
get somebody getting some genuinely difficult PhD history question and
he will deride them and basically say "How stupid ,it obviously couldn't
be the Venerable Bede" then the question will be an O'level (GCSE for
the younger) question such as "What is the chemical symbol for lead?"
and when the answer is Pu he says "Oh, bad luck, you were only one
letter out"
Despite that, I quite like him in a way and my daughter who has spoken
to him as part of her job said he was very pleasant.
After all it could be even worse - I mean what is the point of a dumbed
down Celebrity Mastermind that just can't be dumbed enough. There was
some woman, my wife says something to do with the X-factor, who when
asked the name of the famous white sparkilng wine from a northern region
of France said "Jacob's Creek" . The other answers were as cringe worthy.
Dave