My Radio Oxsont

 First carried as a newspaper column in the T&T Guardian in March 2016

Was driving along the highway the other day, listening to the “nooze”. Yes, “the nooze”- it came up just after the afternoon “drahv tarm” programme. This was followed by the sport report during which I heard about the latest loss by the “Wast Indiz” cricket team.

 The difficulty I had following what was being said reminded me of the time I was told by a radio “veteran” that, as a journalist who had transitioned from print to broadcast media, my English had been “good” but that I just had to do something about my “oxsont”. There was a way, he said, of “sounding professional”.

True, Liz and Ira had to whip “pityear” (picture) out of me and I still have difficulty positioning the “h” before the “w” when pronouncing the word “white” – as recommended by my joyous voice coach.

Today, it is now possible to tune-in to some programmes where an affected pronunciation of the place name “San Juan”, to cite one example, sounds like a cross between the Portuguese and Swahili renditions of the two words. People who speak Spanish would much prefer “Wan” over “Won”, so don’t tell me you are saying it in Spanish.

My personal rule is that however people who live there pronounce the name of the place, that’s how non-residents should say it. That’s the “proper” pronunciation.

Yes, unless you can “properly” pronounce the name “Sangre Grande” as originally conceived by the Spanish settlers, it is “Sandy Grandy” - as said by people from “Grandy”. Anything in between should draw plenty blood for sounding silly.

I remember, to give one example of my own folly, trying to find my way back to the “South Walk” library in south London and receiving very curious looks from the people I asked for directions. “Spell that please, sir.”

“Oh, that’s S-O-U-T-H-W-A-R-K.”

“You mean SODUK!”

“Yes, I suppose I meant SODUK. Is there a toob station near there?”

That was in the 1980s when, as a recent, non-resident arriver, I once had to take the trains to “Edin-bruh” and NOT to “Edinberg” – which must have been some desolate place in Scandinavia and the train station did not sell tickets to go there anyway.

“You have ticket for Edinberg?” Blank, incredulous stare. “Racist,” was the muttered retort.

By that time, the radio DJs back home had already been having a ball. One guy, who came a bit later, kept adding the letter “r” wherever there was an otherwise silent vowel at the end of any word, even in his own name. He has since been immortalised in one footnote to linguist Denis Solomon’s The Speech of Trinidad – A Reference Grammar.

Go get a copy, I am not telling you to whom Dr Solomon was referring. But the observation is capable of spanning generations of local broadcasters whose “radio voice” takes on a life of its own with an artificial register assembled somewhere between the airports of Noo Yark and Piarco.

There is another guy who, even before he “went away”, had a way of revving his “Rs” in a manner reminiscent of the engine of a high-performance car in the Indi 500. When the radio went on, you needed to get out of the way … fast. What is it with the letter “r”?

As Trinis, we traditionally adopt the British silent “r” before consonants and at the end of a word. The linguistic insecurity that leads to an audible “r” sound as a substitute for a final nasal vowel and just before a consonant, in the absence of protracted North American schooling, has to be a pathological condition requiring urgent attention. Instead, it’s rewarded in measures of airtime on radio.

Entering the world of radio, to the newspaper man, was simply awe-inspiring in the 80s. It was only sometime later, upon the publication of Dr Solomon’s mandatory 1993 text that I understood the psychosomatic nature of the phenomenon I had begun witnessing much more closely than I had in the past.

“Many radio ‘personalities’ apparently feel the lack of a Trinidadian radio register and, uncertain of their ability to use the Standard for light programming … have created a register in imitation of American radio speech, or what they imagine that to be,” Dr Solomon wrote.

Until then, I only knew what I had heard on Saturday mornings on radio and the more glamorous aural delivery of girls who attended “Cornvont” – now standard lingo for some people who reside west of Movietowne and east of the fish stand in Carenage – and I simply could not understand what the hell was happening. Somebody once used the word “posh” to describe what I was experiencing as a victim.

As time passed, there were those who “went away” and could lay legitimate claim to an affectation of some kind (because they paid lots for a plane ticket) and those who did not have to “go away” or stay “away” for very long. For instance, I always wondered why some Hindu men of faith develop a difficulty with pronouncing the letter “v” after relatively brief periods away.

There are, as well, evangelical preachers who do not have to go further than the television set on a Sunday morning to finally declare the glory of “Gad”.

In recent years, the convenience of mp3s has made it much easier to transfer voice tracks for radio. As a consequence, there is now no shortage of male voices promoting events in “Shugwanas” and “Pert uv Spain” and radio stations are even now using such voices for station IDs. Do stations pay for them? If so, can’t Colm Imbert stop this hemorrhaging of scarce foreign exchange?

Stations managers who encourage this nonsense should be tied to the bandstand in Woodford Square and have the audio from the Indi 500 broadcast to them for 24 straight hours. Or worse, arm Barbara Assoon or Brenda Da Silva with a guava whip for their bare legs.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There have been and are many fine broadcasters during my time in the print and broadcast media. In every single instance they have, to use Dr Solomon’s description of the process, not been uncertain of their ability to use what is called “Standard English.”

But, I have some advice for many of those who occupy the thirty-something frequencies on the radio spectrum – You know who you are. You did not sound like that when you left home this morning. Your own dog will bite you. Will you please stop it? Just stop it. It is embarrassing. It is stupid. Please … stop it.