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> BBC used to have the excellent World Service programming.

BBC radio programmes were also at the receiving end of a wave of political correctness sweeping through the Blair years. "Classist" Received Pronunciation was out, regional accents were in (mostly so that Scottish cronies could occupy civil-servant jobs and the likes of John Prescott could eventually become plausible Peers of the Realm, but I digress). The result is such that, in 2013, I struggle to find any broadcast at all that might sound like old-fashioned RP. There is now no real alternative for learning RP: either you attend Oxbridge and/or belong to certain circles, or you'll be stuck with a local accent forever.

Paradoxically, trying to make RP disappear, they made it even more exclusive and desirable.

NB: RP is fancy british english

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

Nah... RP is the accent all us inverse snobs snigger at. In all seriousness, there are more "neutral" and aurally-pleasing English accents than old-fashioned RP.

It's interesting to see the effects of varied accents in modern British television programming on largely self-taught English speakers in relatively isolated communities though: Burmese Cockney has to be my favourite.

Burmese Cockney eh? This I hafta listen to at least once in my lifetime.

RP isn't especially common at Oxbridge.

"Classist" Received Pronunciation was out, regional accents were in (mostly so that Scottish cronies could occupy civil-servant jobs and the likes of John Prescott could eventually become plausible Peers of the Realm, but I digress)

Fucking hell, you're a prize twat. Besides, the shift from RP to regional accents in the media started during the 60's, not the 90's, it isn't some Blairite conspiracy. My mum used to winge about it because her dad sent her to RP to get rid of her welsh accent just at the point where having a regional accent was starting to be a benefit.

Thank you for the kind words, as a foreigner I try hard to fit in! :)

I've been around here since 2001 and from what I've read, the blairites were the ones responsible for big changes at the BBC in particular. The topic had been raised and policies had been half-heartedly implemented before, but they were finally enshrined after Blair came to power.

Same goes for the Scottish influence in civil service and ministerial appointments, as far as I understand, although it could be argued that it's just balancing out the Tories' penchant for English-English personalities (probably because they hardly elected anyone out of Scotland since the Thatcher years).

(btw, sorry if this sounds anti-Labour; as a proto-Bennite, I probably resent the careerist attitude of most NewLabourites more than I should -- Benn fought hard to get rid of his titles, and now we're supposed to be led by Lord Prezza... -- and their horrible treatment of Gordon Brown is still too fresh).

So you are saying that there was an orchestrated move against RP to regional accents in the media in the 90's and you think it was partly to help a Scottish influence in civil service and ministerial appointments and to help John Prescott in some nefarious plan to become a lord.

Sorry for swearing at you before, but this seems unlikely.

Hyperbole doesn't really work on the internet... of course it wasn't a conspiracy to have the Queen replaced by a Scottish miner, but it's well documented that Blair and friends did bring in a new wave of civil servants and appointees from the North, and a new attitude towards regions outside the Tory enclaves of Home Counties and Midlands. Which was very welcome and very refreshing (and likely helped acceptance of people like me, sporting a clearly non-UK accent), but was certainly motivated in large part by a desire to advance the careers of regional Labourites, and produced, as collateral damage, a certain ostracism of RP, something that I personally think is detrimental to the country as a whole (or even just to the image of the country, as perceived from abroad). Even a strong "regionalist" like Tony Wilson, wandering the country in his Granada years, had a spotless accent (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCuqKzW6r7M from 1985), whereas most popular broadcasters in their 30s/40s, these days, tend to have a recognisable accent.

Thanks for the interesting links, it is interesting that there is a debate about it.

About software documentation translation, maybe I'm biased since the Italian speaking population is so small that it's much simpler for italians to learn basic English skills, but actually Spanish or Chinese have so many speakers that the efforts could pay back a lot more.

As for the "World Service", I would already be happy enough with a "card game" program that actually focuses on pronounce, I can't find any, even if I suspect that a simple script using osx "say" program should suffice.

How would the card game work? It sounds like an interesting idea.

There is a common game to learn new words of a foreign language consisting of a set of cards with the word translated in your native language in the back, and the word translated in the target language in the front. You have to pick the cards you are not very sure, and remember the translation before flipping the card. At this point you can flip the card for confirmation.

I would love to have the same, but with the ability to play the sound of the word at the same time. Sounds like a simple program to write, probably it already exists.

They are called flash cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashcard

> Sounds like a simple program to write, probably it already exists.

It does and is called Anki. You'll probably need to search a bit though to find a deck that has italian/english with english sounds:

https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/english

Alternatively you could take decks made for other languages and build a new deck, since they're all stored in SQLite.

Thanks! I don't need an italian -> english one, just english with sounds will be enough.

I'm using Anki to teach reading/writing English to my kids. Anki is also a great way to learn a programming language or API (see: https://sivers.org/srs).

Have you taken a look at Duolingo[1]? It doesn't 100% focus on pronunciation but it certainly does provide them for all words. The app is great.

[1] http://www.duolingo.com/

Thanks, I'll try it for sure.

Your article reads fine to me, only a couple of places that gave away that you are not a native speaker.

If you can get it you might be better watching BBC World News than just listening to World Service on the radio so that you get the visual cues as well. My second language is French and it improved a lot through watching current affairs programmes each evening.

as a fellow broken english speaker I have to note: _which_ pronounce? And does it even matter?

Should "can't" be kaːnt, kʰeɪnt or kænt ? Pederasts are pɛ.dəˌfaɪl or ˈpiː.dəˌfaɪl? Do we like to dɑːns or dæns ?

(examples taken from the last two TV shows I've seen _yesterday_)

Surely there are improvements we can all have to the way we misspeak (heck, I just learned "honorable" doesn't have a "h"!) but I have given up on getting english right until native speakers finally agree on whether it's tomaito or tomahto.

(Or, as wiktionary showss: təˈmɛɪtoː, təˈmætoː, təˈmɑːtəʊ, təˈmeɪtoʊ or təˈmeɪtə..)

/dɑːns/ and /kɑːnt/ in the UK, /dæns/ and /kænt/ in most of the US.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dance#Pronunciation

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/can%27t#Pronunciation

Which way you should pronounce them depends, I suppose, on whether you speak to more British people or Americans.

It also depends on which British people you speak to - I don't pronounce those words like that.

Can you please shed more light on BBC World Service? Why the past tense? What radio would you suggest now as a general English background noise to occasionally learn vocabulary from?

Honestly I'd have to improve my spoken English a lot. It's not even comparable to my written skills. It feels like I have to learn the language all over again with my ears.

The BBC World Service used to have a wide variety of programming.

They'd include some of the programmes broadcast on BBC Radio Four, including panel games such as "Just a minute". They'd include some of the science and medical documentary that Radio 4 would broadcast. They'd also have their own programming - some soap operas, some news, some great documentaries.

All of this meant that English was being used in a variety of ways. There was informal, conversational English. There was English humour and word play. And there was more formal English.

But now the World Service has lost most of that. It is just a rolling news service now. There are some arts and science programmes, but those aren't great. The variety of spoken English is much reduced, and the variety of programming is much less. And everything is repeated every few hours, with some tweaks for different time zones.

Speaking English must be very hard!

Oddly enough, the English-language service of Deutsche Welle provides much of what BBC World Service used to provide, and in a fairly standardized "mid-Atlantic" accent.

(There was a time, as well, when the CBC and Radio Canada International used/enforced a standard pronunciation across the board. There was something quaint about it for every regional Canadian English dialect -- and our dialects, apart from Newfanese and the Nova Scotia Lunenburg dialect, tend to be pretty subtle -- but everyone could understand it. With the trend toward a vox populi approach, a rural Saskatchewan listener may find the various immigrant Englishes of major population centres like Toronto baffling at first. It's nice that communities can hear themselves on the radio -- it makes them feel more like first class citizens -- but it can impede communication between groups, and that friction can foster the very problems that the policies are trying to correct.)

While it might not be on the World Service, I'd like to point out that a wide range of content is internationally available in the form of podcasts, this is the Radio 4 link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4 but do browse around. There's really an incredible amount of content on there (and there is a ton more across the pond at NPR).

I have to agree about the World Service. It made me so very cross when I heard they were cutting the funding! Having listened to the Africa Daily for a few months, I was convinced that it was the only robust news source for so many people. (robust = willing to interview relevant politicians with real, tough questions.)

I may be wrong, but it is still an enormous asset, worth saving and/or reviving one day.

Ideally you would probably want to cross reference it with something like Al Jazeera to get a non-western point of view, too.

Translating the documentation from English is akin to providing obese people with scooters inside chain stores: instead of facing the problem head-on you're just avoiding it and learning to live with it.

> instead of facing the problem

The "problem" is to talk another language? Well, that's pretty imperialistic.

The problem is not being willing to learn an essential skill.

So a 12 year old in Brazil not only has to learn how to install an OS, and then how to install Python, and then how to program with Python, but also has to do all of that in a different language?

Pretty easy to call it an essential skill when English is your first language.

How about you try to pick up some new programming language using only Japanese documentation?

The parent comment wasn't prescriptive, it was descriptive. You can argue all you'd like that it isn't fair or optimal or good, but you're hard pressed to argue that it isn't true.

> but you're hard pressed to argue that it isn't true.

But it's only true (if it is true, and I haven't seen anything to show that it is) because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's nothing about it that needs it to be true.

"The world needs a common language; you lazy thickos need to speak English (which, coincidentally, is what I speak) otherwise you only have yourselves to blame" is the language of fascists and belongs to the era of Eugenics and other hateful wrong-headed ideologies.

Like I just said, the comment was descriptive, not prescriptive. Neither that commenter nor I are arguing that this is how it should be. We're simply observing that it's how it is, and if you want to be successful it's almost always better to base your decisions on how the world is than on how you think it should be.

As for anything to show that it is true… have you looked around you? English has very obviously become the lingua franca of commerce, science, and technology. This is not a controversial statement.

Are you saying the world doesn't need a common language? Or that there's a better choice than English?

Yes it sucks a lot for some people, and no it isn't fair, but that doesn't change it.

What would you have us do?

> Are you saying the world doesn't need a common language?

It is very easy to say that common languages are good when you already speak that common language.

Common languages are great when you've reached the point of doing the job, but they cause extra burden on large parts of the world population and are a barrier to entry for poor people.

One response is to say "Let's teach a simple international English to as many people as possible". Another response is to say "Let's create excellent quality documentation, and then translate this into the majority languages." These need not be exclusive, we can do both.

My misplaced anger you see in this thread comes from my perception of the tone of the 'learn English' side.

If I had to I would. In fact, just like the author, I was born and raised in Italy. I'm not a native English speaker but since the circumstances required it I learned the English language, simple as that. Now I get to read college textbooks in English instead of relying on the botched translations, I watch movies in their original language instead of watching the translated version and missing half the jokes.

I think we're talking at cross purposes.

I think it would be really useful for some core information[1] to be made available in best quality form, and in many different languages. This would be things like "How does science work?" and other simple introductory science texts. This would be things like man pages.

This would help people learn the basic concepts while they're also learning other languages. Having short form, excellent quality, science and math educational material available in many languages could do a lot to make the world a better place.

Having read some of your other comments I see that you're aiming the "learn English, it's really useful" to people working at a much higher level than that. I gently agree with most of that - there are many areas where learning English is very useful.

But in away this is always been with us.

Before ww2 in some technical fields you more or less had to learn German as that where a lot of the research was done - in chemistry it was effectively mandatory.

Before that a natural philosophers had to learn/know Latin.

> How about you try to pick up some new programming language using only 日本語 documentation?

Funny story: Ruby took a while to catch on outside of Japan because its docs were all in 日本語. The Pickaxe was created by basically ignoring all the docs, reading the C, and playing around in the REPL.

Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_l...

I don't think so. I can talk with Italian, Finnish, Chinese, Russian... etc. people, without knowing all and every of their languages (or without them knowing Spanish for that matter.)

The fact that the common language is actually English is not really relevant to me. I don't care if Spanish has more native speakers, or Chinese. The value of English is as a common language.

No, not really. I have the same opinion and I'm not a native English speaker.

English has some good properties for a common language:

- It has a simple grammar

- It is spoken by the entertaining media

- It already has a head start

Now, if they could actually fix the major flaws:

- Spelling is absurd. It's not just bad, it is absurd.

- For foreigners, the UK accents are terrible. It took me a couple of days in London before I could understand people; and I came from a base of being perfectly fluent

Come to think of it. Scratch that fixing the UK accent part. It's a cool accent, double-oh seven style.

For the love of god, fix the spelling:

-----

"Eye Rhymes, by Helen Bowyer"

Bear and dear // Share, I fear // The pointless deceptivness // Of there and here.

Some and home // Tomb and comb, // Sin against the tongue // Like from and whom.

Howl and bowl // Foul and soul, // Mislead the ear // Like doll and toll. //

Give and dive // Live and thrive, // Bewilder the moppet // Of six or five.

Love and hove // Dove and strove // Sound no more alike // Than glove and cove.

Pew and sew // Do and go // Fail expectation // Like now and slow.

Laid and said // Must be read // As if they rhymed // With neighed and Ned.

------

As I said before, English spelling's bonkers.

bend, send, spend, friend.

Rough - 'ruff'

Cough - 'coff'

Bough - 'bow'

Though - 'tho'

Through - 'throo'

hiccough - 'hiccup'

Bought - 'bawt'

I'm still waiting for HN member ghotifish to show up, as his name is pronounced fish fish:

gh as in cough

o as in women

ti as in nation

Thankfully you're not actually allowed to pick pronunciation arbitrarily in new words. Especially if they violate common or semi-common patterns.

the internet is full of every one censorship,from government,politics and economic sanction. when do you think will the internet world be totally free for everyone?

What are you talking about?

i meant some site are banned or there are blocked and hence affect internet freedom.

An even better one (linked because it's too long to paste here):

http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html

Likewise, five different words all pronounced the same: or, oar, ore, awe, aww.

Where do you live that or and awe sound the same? I get or, oar and ore, but awe (such as awe shucks, or awesome) and aww sound nothing like or in the midwest.

Certainly in the UK, 'or' and 'awe' or very similar. But I'm pretty sure the same is true across the states. The 'awe' in 'awe, shucks' is not even really a word, just a sympathetic utterance in the same sort of class as 'um' and 'aaah', so I don't think it has an official spelling, just a phonetic approximation. It is certainly distinct from the word 'awe' that's the root of 'awesome'.

Edit: I meant to point out that I have never seen 'awe, shucks' written before, always 'ah' or 'aww', but I can see how it might be written that way based on a Midwestern accent.

What part of the UK? They are wildly different in Scotland, Northern England, Northern Ireland, in fact probably anywhere except for the south of England, and even there it doubtless varies.

Really? Can you have a stab at describing the difference? Because I've spend the vast majority of my life between Edinburgh, Nottingham and Leeds and I can't bring it to mind. I can see a slight differentiation in places with more solid 'r's (Scotland and the borders for instance), but any wild variation escapes me...

That's the difference though isn't it? Come to glasgow and hear the intensely rhotic pronunciation of "or" and compare to "awe" which has no R at all. The two words sound very different.

"burger" in much of the UK is completely rhotic, with both R's intensely rolled, while in other parts it is more like buhguh. Really sounds quite distinct to my ears.

US pronunciation is generally rhotic, ie. they will pronounce the r's distinctly in those words. Most of the UK (the southwest being the largest exception) is non-rhotic, as are Australia and New Zealand, and in those accents those words generally would be indistinguishable.

>> the cost of everything but the value of nothing

that tony benn speech is amazing :p

Oscar Wilde is the original author of that quote. It was the answer to a question posed to him ("What's a cynic?").