I don’t know what’s wrong with either her name or her voice.
She does usually seem, however, to be very uncomfortable. As though someone were forcing her to broadcast against her will.
Another Brit for whom her accent sounds normal. Her delivery is a bit unusual, what with all the forceful enunciation, but that’s just newsreaderish and I doubt very much that’s how she sounds when she’s down the local shop buying a pint of milk.
How does this guysound to the rest of the world?
His newsreading is highly regarded over here.
I too thought the thread title meant did you find her name silly. Yes, I do. But her accent is completely normal, slightly Americanised RP. Skip the American features, and a lot of the people I know (including me) talk in a very similar way. I don’t think any of them would describe themselves as “upper class”!
I thought I heard two guys in the clip. The first one introduced the newscast and the second one is the one, I think, that you were drawing our attention to? The second guy’s accent/voice was nice, but the first guy’s was yummy and I would like to listen to an audiobook recorded by him or else just have him talk to me every day. If both voices were the same person, the first instance was more relaxed and at ease. I still want that voice to talk to me every day.
I meant the first guy, Trevor MacDonald, yes speaking so well and so naturally is just what he is known for.
‘Katty’ is an unusual name (first time I’ve ever heard of it) - I think it’s probably easy to take it as a childish-sounding name, or maybe a bit horsey or something. And ‘Katty Kay’ sounds like she should be one of Superman’s girlfriends.
I wonder if he has recorded any audio books. Or the phone book.
Yeah, I guess that’s possible. It’s pretty common (and not childish) in Spanish, though, because it’s more or less the way you pronounce “Kathy” (or “Kathi”).
Katty sounds just like my friend who’s from Dover and has lived in the States more than half her life. I don’t find her accent odd at all, but I’ve been around her a long time, spent some time with her family in Dover, and more time in London, so I guess I’m more used to it than some others from the States.
It makes me wonder, too, whether large city living helps people become more acclimated to varied accents and the way non-native folks pronounce things. Meaning they don’t think certain pronunciations are so strange as just the way that person says things. I had a hard time with some African accents until I was in the city for a couple years.
Sir Trevor McDonald is actually Trinidadian. He taught himself to speak like that when he was a kid, from listening to the BBC World Service. You can hear just a touch of the Caribbean lilt in his voice, which is what makes his accent so gorgeous.
Do you think Sir Trevor would call me and wake me every morning if I asked him to?
No, but Stephen Fry will.
What he said.
She sounds like all the other news readers to me, except for the ones that they brought in to add a few regional dialects.
That will absolutely do! I love that man.
Yes, IF they are from that area of England, I have a brummie friend who doesn’t speak with that accent, not does the mancunian, come to that nor do the cockneys, liverpudlians, geordies …
Oh and I said MIGHT get mocked.
But you said the ordinary man in the street doesn’t speak like that unless he’s from Chelsea, but that accent is actually common across a much larger area, far more than a quarter of the country (where there are other regional accents too, but RP is one of them). I’m not saying that ALL people in the UK speak like that, obviously, but you make it sound as though her accent is extremely unusual.
Mrs Tom Carver grew up in various middle eastern countries as her father was a diplomat and she later lived in Zimbabwe and I think S Africa. That would make her accent less standard somehow. How do I know this? When I was a wee lad, I had big crushes on many BBC (female) newscasters and I read as many of their bios as possible.
Although she does not sound posh to me, she might to Americans. After all, I have met Americans who thought John Oliver was posh.
In Spanish it may be a Caty or a Cati, tho. Both K and Y were quite unusual until very recently.