# broadcast dialect? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 25, 2003, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093 "2003-04-25T12:30:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![yoyo3500](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5daacb/32.png) [@yoyo3500](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyo3500)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/1 "2003-04-25T12:30:22Z")
I have heard that the dialect of American English that broadcasters (television and radio) use as a model is based on the particular dialect spoken in the Minneapolis metropolitan area. Is this true? Also, if it is true, can anyone tell me why this particular dialect was chosen? And if it’s not true, what model(s) is considered “correct”? ---
**Author:** ![Coffeeguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/958977/32.png) [@Coffeeguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coffeeguy)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/2 "2003-04-25T14:19:18Z")
I think they all pretty much sound Canadian. -CoffeeGuy ---
**Author:** ![yoyo3500](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5daacb/32.png) [@yoyo3500](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyo3500)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/3 "2003-04-25T16:23:59Z")
That’s what I thought and why I’m asking the question. Did I stump the Teeming Millions? I did not think this possible! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/4 "2003-04-25T16:36:19Z")
I’ve never noticed one consistent dialect among broadcasters. Are we talking word choice or pronunciation? Nothing I’ve ever heard on a news show ever struck me as Minnesotan, much less specific to the Twin Cities. ---
**Author:** ![yoyo3500](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/5daacb/32.png) [@yoyo3500](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyo3500)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/5 "2003-04-25T16:43:35Z")
I’m talking about what is taught in communications schools, or sought in the news media. I suppose I’m mainly talking about the news, in particular. And not really you’re local news station. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/6 "2003-04-25T16:46:23Z")
Tom Brokaw was born and raised in South Dakota. Peter Jennings was born and raised in Ontario. Dan Rather was born and raised in Texas. Jim Lehrer was born in Kansas, and raised in Kansas and Texas. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/7 "2003-04-25T16:53:34Z")
I’m at a journalism school, and though I’m not a broadcast major, again, I’ve never noticed anything regional (Minneapolis or any other region) about the way we’re taught to write broadcast copy. And I didn’t mean local news either. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/8 "2003-04-25T16:55:23Z")
BTW, the classic Minnesota accent belongs to Jesse Ventura, who was born and raised in the Minneapolis area. But I don’t hear too many newscasters who sound like him. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/9 "2003-04-25T16:57:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Marley23 \* > \*\*I’m at a journalism school, and though I’m not a broadcast major, again, I’ve never noticed anything regional (Minneapolis or any other region) about the way we’re taught to write broadcast copy. And I didn’t mean local news either. \*\* **yoyo3500** is talking about speech, not writing. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/10 "2003-04-25T17:22:04Z")
Makes more sense, but as I said before, I don’t see anything particularly Minnesota-ish coming from broadcasters not from that general region. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/11 "2003-04-25T18:07:54Z")
Actually this goes back some 30-40 years to some broadcasters’ belief that the most perfect announcer-speak came from longtime CBS and ABC correspondent Harry Reasoner. Reasoner’s vowel pronunciation wasn’t too sharp (like eastern accents) nor as flat as the classic “midwestern” accent) Consonants came out clearly and there was inflection without excitedness. Most of all, he sounded perfectly natural, not like he was auditioning for a part in a play. Reasoner got his start in broadcasting in Minneapolis, before moving on to CBS. But he no more had a classic Minnesota accent than John Chancellor – who cut his teeth in Chicago – had a classic Chicago accent. ---
**Author:** ![I\_can\_t\_believe\_that\_s\_butter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@I\_can\_t\_believe\_that\_s\_butter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_can_t_believe_that_s_butter)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/12 "2003-04-25T18:29:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Walloon \* > \*\*Tom Brokaw was born and raised in South Dakota. > Peter Jennings was born and raised in Ontario. > Dan Rather was born and raised in Texas. > Jim Lehrer was born in Kansas, and raised in Kansas and Texas. \*\* And, Diane Sawyer is from Kentucky, I learned last night. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/13 "2003-04-25T18:46:07Z")
Interesting, Kunilou. Sort of reminds me of the way every airline pilot tries to be Chuck Yeager. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/14 "2003-04-25T19:02:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Walloon \* > \*\*Dan Rather was born and raised in Texas. > \*\* Yeah, but he doens’t sound like a Texan on his news broadcast. But once I heard him interviewed, and when he wasn’t “on stage” he sounded much more like a Texan. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/15 "2003-04-25T19:40:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Walloon \* > \*\*Tom Brokaw was born and raised in South Dakota. > Peter Jennings was born and raised in Ontario. > Dan Rather was born and raised in Texas. > Jim Lehrer was born in Kansas, and raised in Kansas and Texas. \*\* South Dakota’s pretty linguistically homogeneous, and while I’m not sure about Kansas and Texas, I do know that Ontario is a pretty big province, and encompasses several distinct dialect areas. Someone from Thunder Bay will sound markedly different from someone from Toronto, who in turn will sound different from a native of the Ottawa Valley or someone who hails from the coast of Hudson Bay or one of the province’s francophone communities. There’s not much you can say about someone’s accent by simply noting that they’re from “Ontario”. To keep this post semi-topical, CTV news anchor Lloyd Robertson’s accent is a bit atypical for North American broadcasting. The most notable feature (to me) is that he rhymes “were” with “bear” instead of “burr”. In my estimation, CBC’s Peter Mansbridge speaks something more closely resembling the American standard. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_Bowe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/16 "2003-04-25T20:42:58Z")
FWIW I’ve been in commercial broadcast for 34 years now. Through the years I’ve been told that what U.S. broadcasters call “Broadcast English” is a midwest dialect. It was/is supposed to be the easiest to understand by most of the public. ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2003, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/broadcast-dialect/171093/17 "2003-04-25T21:01:17Z")
Many broadcasters speak with a perceived Midwestern accent because of its close association with the so-called “General American” pronunciation, the AmE equivalent of the [“Received Pronunciation”](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation) in BrE (also known as “BBC English” or “the Queen’s English”): > [@](#): > > [**General American**](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American) is the supposed standard system of American English pronunciation. The idea of a uniform media American accent has declined in popularity since the late 1960s. > > Like the British Received Pronunciation, General American was never the accent of the entire nation. Rather, it was derived from a generalized Midwestern accent and is spoken particularly by many newscasters–in part because the national broadcasters preferred to hire people who spoke in this way. It is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents: In the U.S., classes promising “accent elimination” generally attempt to teach this accent. > > General American is a rhotic accent, maintaining the postvocalic _/r/_ in words like _pearl_, _car_, and _court_. Because this is a generalized accent, certain vowel mergers, including the _cot/caught_ vowel merger between _/A/_ and _/O/_, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving phonemic distinctions. > > Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like Ebonics. Both the General American and the Received pronunciations have been exalted as the supposed accent-free version of the language, a notion now widely discredited among linguists.