Priti Patel, PLEASE recognise and use the letter G!

grannylane I think you’re spot on. It’s as if she’s poshed up her accent on her way to the top (wouldn’t be the first) but didn’t sort this issue out. I find it so irritatin’ (along with her over use of the phrase ‘the fact of the matter is’) that I don’t hear what she’s trying to say. I can’t believe no one’s ever told her. Beth Rigby from Sky News does it too.
And to those who say just turn her off if we don’t like it - she is the home secretary for goodness sake. We need to hear her!
lemongrove I think I was the OP you mention but there wasn’t quite the same response!

Ah well, phoenix et al, you're in good company. Quentin Letts —he of Patronising Bastards fame— takes a swipe at Priti's lack of 'ng' (sorry, can't do the phonetic sign) in the Times today.

What do people think of her quarantine spot checks and £1000 fines for 'flouts' thereof? Sorry to bring up something so trivial on such an important thread ?

Urmstongran wrote:
"As a northern girl myself, I spent one summer when I was 17y with my posh aunt and cousins who lived in Esher. Huge house, gravel path, leafy lane, they lived opposite some bigwig in the government.

Anyroad up, here was I from Old Trafford, Lancs. I was mocked (sort of kindly, but still ... ) for pronouncing the ‘g’ at the end of words. Got told it was ‘common’. The barb pierced. That was 50y ago."

That illustrates how social class is not about wealth.

The woman journalist from Sky also drops her ' gs', out of interest. I forget her name. It doesn't distract from what she is saying but jars in my brain. It's the same with Priti Patel.

It is really what they say that is important not how they say it.

Sadly, Priti Patel never seems to say anything I want to hear so how she delivers it is only a small part of my irritation.
I find her stance on almost everything, totally objectionable.

The Sky journalist is Beth Rigby. At least she asks great questiones. PP’s another annoying linguistic habit is the over-use of the phrase ‘the fact of the matter is....’ I actually can’t listen to her now.

I have recently joined Gransnet and have been looking forward to some quality content and advice. What I'm seeing here are petty grievances and intolerance. Is this really what Gransnet is all about?

Thank you Alexa ?

She shouldn’t pronounce the g separately, but just say ‘ing’, rather than ‘in’. I agree it is very irritating and makes it hard to listen the content of what she says.

Well, one man’s petty grievance is another man’s serious issue I guess! Lockdown has made us all a bit more sensitive and this has all been pretty light hearted. But there is a serious issue, surely, if someone as important as the Home Secretary has pedantic viewers turning the TV off in their droves ?

rosie44 there are lots of other threads on various subjects, have a look and see if anything takes your fancy.

Failing that, start one of your own and see if others find it to their taste.

If the post of 18.27 was your first, shame to start with a critical one.

phoenix - I do enjoy your OPs, been wrackin' my brain and can't think of one that hasn't raised a smile.

I'm far from a fan o Priti Patel, though I did admire they way she came back at the black Labour MP who foolishly suggested that Ms Patel didn't know much about racism.

As for droppin' the g's, it's something I enjoyed when listening to Just William stories bein' read, that William Brown never wasted effort on pronouncin' a G did he. Same with Lord Peter Wimsey. I can't put Ms Patel's pronunciation or entertainment value in the same class somehow.

Keep up the good work phoenix

I say path and bath and some people say parth and barth.

People from the Midlands put an emphasis on the 'g' in 'ing' so I perhaps people from Hertfordshire don't pronounce the g.

My mother used to be fascinated by a friend from Norfolk who couldn't pronounce 'byoo' as in beautiful and called it bootiful.

rosie44

I have recently joined Gransnet and have been looking forward to some quality content and advice. What I'm seeing here are petty grievances and intolerance. Is this really what Gransnet is all about?

I would say you're off to a jolly good start rosie44

Callistemon ??? I quite agree!

Northerners quite often miss off the 'g' from words ending in 'ing'. It is lazy I agree, sadly I do it myself, but unfortunately that's just the way we speak. To suddenly change the way we pronounce words would just sound so affected. But heyho, we are all different.

I can't believe you're off on this again. Different people have different accents. These indicate all sorts of aspects regarding eg region they're from as well as social class.
Speech came long before written language. The 'ng' sound is made at the rear of the mouth and is made by movement of the soft palate this transfers the airstream through the nose thus naselising the sound.
'n' is made by the tongue tip on the alveolar ridge behind the top front teeth. So that part of her accent is caused by the use of her tongue tip instead of her soft palate. So what?
Who says what's wrong or right? Written language came long after speech. That's when the convention of adding the letter 'g' came to indicate the presence of a nasal sound.

Phoenix
I am very conscious that we have disagreed recently but I must comment on your reply to Rosie44 saying her first post was critical.
I wasn’t going to comment before I read this but I feel your reply to Daisydoes of 17:25 on the snowflake thread was very personal and rather unkind.
To call her H a failed father is not on.

I so understand! Whoever is narrating Devon and Cornwall on Monday evenings drops her aitches and thinks she has a Devon accent, spoils the programme!

I don't listen to here, she irritates me beyond belief.

I thought John Nettles narrated Devon And Cornwall.

He did sound as if he had a cold when he recorded the narration this week!

Why is it apparently OK to criticise how someone sounds (based purely on personal preference) yet its not acceptable to criticise a person's appearance?

annsixty if you back to the post you mentioned you will. Sees that Daisydoes is talking about her Dil, and says the the Dil's father did everything for her, which has made her incapable.

I’m with you Phoenix I regularly shout at the bad pronunciation on radio and tv. It all goes back to my childhood when we were regularly told to ‘speak properly’. I do love accents though, it’s slovenly speech that irritates me.

Agree NanKate , this is not about accents at all, it’s just about accuracy. If you were teaching English as an aquired language (or whatever it’s called now) you wouldn’t instruct learners ‘Oh, by the way , you can pronounce ‘doing’ or ‘learning’ with or without the final ‘g’, it’s entirely up to you’. Well, I wouldn’t, anyway.
I swore last night I wouldn’t comment on this thread again as it seems to annoy people! Yet here I am....... I’ll go back to Coronavirus. Less controversial!