Words words words
Working in radio, my job revolves around words. The words I choose in my reports can bring tears to your eyes or give you a good chuckle on your drive to and from work. But what happens when I have problems saying certain words?
It doesn’t matter who you are, there are always those 4 or 5 (or more) words you can never properly get out of your mouth. Although we here at 660 ews are professional journalists we suffer from the same problem.
I myself have a big problem saying the word “statistics;” it generally comes out sounding like st-ist-iss-ics. Since we don’t like embarrassing ourselves, reporters and anchors tend to replace these problem words with synonyms that we can actually pronounce. I replace the word “statistics” with stats.
When you can’t avoid problem words it makes things difficult. One of them I can’t avoid is the name of one of our reporters. When I sit at the anchors desk I have to concentrate when throwing to James Munroe. If I don’t, and casually read his name it can sometimes come out a mumbled mess. It usually helps to slow down my read and articulate while desperately trying not to screw it up.
Some of my co-workers have confessed their problem words but out of respect I will refrain from giving their names. One anchor says she hates saying “Detroit Red Wings.” She doesn’t have a speech impediment but still ends up saying Det-woit Wed Wings. She avoids the team name by simply saying Detroit or Red Wings…which she can easily get through.
Some other problem words are “preferably” or puh-fur-ubly, “realtor” or re-latur, “film” or fill-um, “nuclear” or nu-cular, “especially” or ex-pecially, “interac” or interact, and “specialty” or spesh-ee-ality.
Although I didn’t hear it on our station (thankfully), I must say my favourite problem word is the capital city of Saskatchewan, Regina.
I’ll let you figure that one out.
As I said before we simply replace our problem words to avoid running into any on air issues. Needless to say a The-thaurus…I mean “Thesaurus” can be a journalist’s best friend.