Garry Hill appears on CBC TV...

[cullman]

...Hawaiian shirt and all! There was an interview with our ferocious leader on tonight's (August 5, 2012) telecast of the CBC's National News! Apparently there is a bit of controversy over the use of a Canadian as the stadium announcer for track and field events at the Olympics. Harrruuumpphh.

cman

[gh]

pirate video! where's the link to that pirate video?!

[cullman]

At the risk of a lifetime banishment from this board ...the interview (from CBC's website - sorry for the commercials!) is at the 34:45 minute mark: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/watch/

cman

[gh]

geez, do I always curl my lip like that? Face made for radio indeed!

[Marlow]

At the risk of a lifetime banishment from this board ...the interview (from CBC's website - sorry for the commercials!) is at the 34:45 minute mark: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/watch/
cman

Very nice interview.
Several points

1. I have NEVER heard a Canadian accent come out of his mouth.
2. SHY? C'mon now. You can't do what you do and hang with the people you hang and STILL be shy.
3. The interview totally missed the two most important aspects of why he's so good:
...A. An encyclopedic command (often from sheer memory) of the numbers of the sport.
...B. A lightning quick wit/intelligence that sorts through, makes sense of, and then insightfully comments on the many things that are going on simultaneously at a big meet.

I may not be a big fan of the heavy hand that he wields on this board (OK, me!), but there's no denying he's at the top because he's the best mind in T&F . . . ever.

[BillVol]

Great interview and I didn't notice any lip curling or anything like that. WTG, gh!

[Master Po]

It is a face that expresses great wisdom and experience. So great, in fact, that we cannot bear to gaze upon it for extended periods of time!

By the way, good interview, and great work -- TFN, these boards, the announcing, all of it. Thank you.

[gibson]

great interview. it is sooo easy to imagine GH relaxing in a London pub = office central - shooting the good shit with the who's who.

and ya, no doubt GH is top dog around here.
he's been wasting his excellent literary skills and analytical abilities on track and field.
then again "real" jobs are very overrated, aren't they?

good for him to make a reasonable living while living large from time to time at the big meets.

regarding this shy business - what does shy really mean?
around here if a girl says she's shy. it really means, let's go out on the town....

[Master Po]

great interview. it is sooo easy to imagine GH relaxing in a London pub = office central - shooting the good shit with the who's who.

and ya, no doubt GH is top dog around here.
he's been wasting his excellent literary skills and analytical abilities on track and field.
then again "real" jobs are very overrated, aren't they?

good for him to make a reasonable living while living large from time to time at the big meets.

regarding this shy business - what does shy really mean?
around here if a girl says she's shy. it really means, let's go out on the town....

I needed to know this decades ago. Alas...

[cladthin]

Nice work on the announcing GH! It does contribute a lot, IMO, to the viewing experience when the PA can be overheard-esp. on the feed with no commentary. I've heard you get a mention or two, also, from one of the other stadium announcers. How much time due you spend prior to the comp. practicing the pronuciations-that must take some work particularly for the names of the emerging elite athletes?

[Marlow]

How much time due you spend prior to the comp. practicing the pronuciations-that must take some work particularly for the names of the emerging elite athletes?

After Ravelomanantsoa, it was all down hill.

[gh]

... How much time due you spend prior to the comp. practicing the pronuciations-that must take some work particularly for the names of the emerging elite athletes?

There's a two-part contradictory answer.

1. I spend no time at all.

2. I practice all day every day.

Meaning that I don't do anything much different when an international meet rolls around, but since I'm doing track work 100 hours a week.....

You'll note that for years now (thanks Apple, for making the technology simple) that T&FN has been fairly scrupulous about including diacritics on all athletes names (and foreign cities). Not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's an easy way for me to be reinforcing what I know on an ongoing basis.

Note that you'd make yourself crazy trying to memorize the pronunciations of of an ever-changing roster of thousands of names. It's far easier (although certainly still not easy) to learn the rules of grammar for a dozen or so important languages. That, and don't worry about trying to sound like a native and get it perfect; at least show the athletes the respect they deserve by hearing their name done in a recognizable fashion.

A small handful of general rules can get you miles.

I'm only decent at it because I've spent 20 years working at it, which is why I've now announced meets in 17 countries.

But the role of an IAAF announcer is to speak not only to the fans, but also to the athletes, officials and IAAF Family, all of whom use English as their lingua franca. So speaking as crisp and clear a version as you can is the biggest key. But now I'm boring you. Go back to enjoying the Games. It's an awesome edition.

[rsb2]

I used to do a fair amount of stadium announcing, right from elementary school kids to International level Meets. I was generally okay, except when we used to have a couple of dozen Japanese University distance runners come over to run in the Vancouver/Victoria Meets. Now that was crazy !

[lonewolf]

I would have thought phonetically spelled Japanese names would be among easiest to pronounce..not so Chinese..

[rsb2]

Part of the difficulty arose from the fact that we were given a list of 20 names, maybe 1 hour before the race, the uniforms were identical, no spotters, numbers too small to read from the announcing booth, and then the surname pronounciation overlaid. It was a different kind of fun

[BillVol]

Nice work on the announcing GH! It does contribute a lot, IMO, to the viewing experience when the PA can be overheard-esp. on the feed with no commentary. I've heard you get a mention or two, also, from one of the other stadium announcers. How much time due you spend prior to the comp. practicing the pronuciations-that must take some work particularly for the names of the emerging elite athletes?

PA (good PA) adds SO much to a track meet. Especially for the novices in the crowd such as myself. I remember gh and Bob H in '96 and the great job they did. And as I've mentioned before here, at Tennessee we used to have a PA man named Buck Jones who was just awesome and is a big reason I'm a fan today.

[bushop]

A small handful of general rules can get you miles.

Do you have a list you could share?

[Powell]

You'll note that for years now (thanks Apple, for making the technology simple) that T&FN has been fairly scrupulous about including diacritics on all athletes names

I don't think you did that with Polish names, until very recently.

[lapsus]

A small handful of general rules can get you miles.

I'm only decent at it because I've spent 20 years working at it, which is why I've now announced meets in 17 countries.

But I guess you wouldn't get the opportunity to do it for 20 years if others didn't think you were good...

Everyone else thinks you are pretty good at it after a couple years doing it, but you yourself start considering yourself decent at it only after 15 or 20 years? Sounds like stadium announcing really is an art.

[gh]

You'll note that for years now (thanks Apple, for making the technology simple) that T&FN has been fairly scrupulous about including diacritics on all athletes names

I don't think you did that with Polish names, until very recently.

That has been a function of Apple software; Romance-language accents were part of the OS about from day one. It was only (5-6?) years ago that they added a package that made doing the Slavic stuff possible.

[cullman]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/o ... le4459503/

<<The trickiest language for names? English.

“No language has fewer rules that can be followed,” he said. He recalled calling a college track meet years ago and announcing the name of one athlete, Laura Lavine, by pronouncing it “La Vine.” A teammate came up to the booth and corrected Hill, saying the pronunciation was “La Veen.” Then another woman came up and told Hill to go back to “La Vine.”

“I said, ‘No, no we talked to one of her teammates. It’s La Veen,’” Hill said. “And she said, ‘Well, talk to me, I’m her mother.’”>>

cman

[gh]

you say tomato, I say....

[gh]

At the risk of a lifetime banishment from this board ...the interview (from CBC's website - sorry for the commercials!) is at the 34:45 minute mark: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/watch/

cman

your next task, Mr. Phelp, should you....... find my CTV treatment, which I believe aired on Tuesday.

[Vault-emort]

you say tomato, I say....

tomatova?

[Marlow]

So, since we hear it both ways (on TV!), is a name like Ivanova

Ihvan-OH'va

or

Ih - VAN'uhva

?

It seems Brits pronounce it the latter way and American commentators the former.

[gibson]

YOU SAY TOMATO - ACCORDING TO THE BBC PRONUNCIATION UNIT

In his book on language, Mother Tongue (1990), Bill Bryson says: "The problem [of pronouncing names correctly] is so extensive, and the possibility of gaffes so omnipresent, that the BBC employs an entire pronunciation unit, a small group of dedicated orthoepists (professional pronouncers) who spend their working lives getting to grips with these illogical pronunciations so that broadcasters don't have to do it on the air."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2 ... omato.html

[cullman]

At the risk of a lifetime banishment from this board ...the interview (from CBC's website - sorry for the commercials!) is at the 34:45 minute mark: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/watch/

cman

your next task, Mr. Phelp, should you....... find my CTV treatment, which I believe aired on Tuesday.

Tuesday? I was pulled from my mission at the track in order to run out to the hardware store for pitch forks and torches. A few of us vigilanties went viral tweeting and blogging about the Canada vs USA/FIFA women's soccer match earlier that day.

Come to think of it...you may have been pre-empted by that fiasco.

[skiboo]

At the risk of a lifetime banishment from this board ...the interview (from CBC's website - sorry for the commercials!) is at the 34:45 minute mark: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/watch/

cman

At the risk of revealing how obtuse I am, may I request some assistance with using the above link, which doesn't (so far as I can see) yield anything Hill-esque?

[Vault-emort]

So, since we hear it both ways (on TV!), is a name like Ivanova

Ihvan-OH'va

or

Ih - VAN'uhva

?

It seems Brits pronounce it the latter way and American commentators the former.

It's the latter way, but some athletes even pronounce it 'the American way' themselves - eg Shara-Poe-va - when it should be Sha-Raap-uhva (Sharapova).

But a Eurosport stream I was watching tonight with Brit commentators kept saying 'Chitcher-OH'va' .

[cullman]

At the risk of revealing how obtuse I am, may I request some assistance with using the above link, which doesn't (so far as I can see) yield anything Hill-esque?

It has disappeared into CBC's black hole of an archives and there search engine isn't the greatest. I'll get my team of crack researchers to hunt around for the piece.

[cladthin]

At the risk of revealing how obtuse I am, may I request some assistance with using the above link, which doesn't (so far as I can see) yield anything Hill-esque?

It has disappeared into CBC's black hole of an archives and there search engine isn't the greatest. I'll get my team of crack researchers to hunt around for the piece.

When I tried to view the video on the same day as the posting, the CBC had already moved to the evening report and just as you allude to, the search engine was not very helpful in finding the one in question.

[lonewolf]

Think how it would facilitate pronunciation if everyone in the world were named Smith, Jones, Brown, Blue, Black, White, Green, Pink, Red .......

[gh]

That sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie.

[Powell]

You'll note that for years now (thanks Apple, for making the technology simple) that T&FN has been fairly scrupulous about including diacritics on all athletes names

I don't think you did that with Polish names, until very recently.

That has been a function of Apple software; Romance-language accents were part of the OS about from day one. It was only (5-6?) years ago that they added a package that made doing the Slavic stuff possible.

That may be, but in 2007 it was certainly possible. You have Ziółkowski (written incorrectly, but Polish diacriticals are there), and Małachowski, but in the women's rankings of the same year Anna Jesień is missing her diacritical. Same thing in 2008 - the diacriticals are missing in both Jesień's and Włodarczyk's names. It's not until 2009 that you started using them consistently.

[Pego]

So, since we hear it both ways (on TV!), is a name like Ivanova

Ihvan-OH'va

or

Ih - VAN'uhva

?

It seems Brits pronounce it the latter way and American commentators the former.

Misplacing accents I can live with, no problem. Pronouncing Hejnová as "hezhnova" instead of "heynova", Chára as "chara" instead of "khara", Kiss as "kiss" instead of "kish"...drives me nuts.