Newscasters Voice.

I shall defend the English language whenever necessary!

“… the rest of us slobs;…” AAAaaarrrgh!!

…the rest of WE slobs… please. :wink:

Whoosh?

I think that We the People of SDMB will mostly agree that “the rest of us slobs” is correct. It’s the object of a preposition here. What say the rest of US Dopers?

nm

Agreed, Senegoid. Us slobs is the object of the preposition, of. It should use the object form, not the subject form.

Oh yeah, the column.

Take out the “slobs.”

“The rest of us” sounds right.

“The rest of we” does not.

We slobs on the SDMB disagree with the OP’s purported correction. It is the contention of us slobs that he is wrong.

There was a good reason why “BBC English” was developed, everyone could understand it easily, native speakers and speakers of English as a second language. Very difficult to actually speak it but even over a hissy interference prone radio it could be understood.

However I have trouble understanding some American broadcasters nowadays, as do many of my non mother tongue friends, as the accent becomes more pronounced, but it is easier to speak it.

Throughout the world (except apparently in the US) newscasters and announcers are becoming regionalised so that our newsreaders are identifiably New Zealanders, not even Australian, and the British have accepted Welshmen and Scots onto prime time news.

Times have changed since the merest of Yorkshire inflections (not dialect idioms or any strength of accent) reading the news caused complaints, as happened in 1941 to a man called Wilfred Pickles (I’ve heard the recording, you could hardly tell it apart from a standard BBC voice of the period, but later as an actor and light entertainment presenter he broadened the accent a lot).

Now there is a much wider range of accents, in terms mainly of vowel sounds, but if they get too far from RP, particularly into accents that are perceived to be a bit more below the salt (mostly Midlands or perceived lower-class London), or especially if they start to wander into irritating speech habits (pausing in odd places, too many ums and ers, or too flat and monotonous) then there are complaints. It’s a difficult balance to strike when you’re supposed to be reading the news neutrally but authoritatively.

Of course, it’s different for presenters of entertainment programmes and the like. There it’s more about establishing a personality with the audience.