CRAIG MELVIN Interview a Broadcaster American English Pronunciation
Hey guys. Welcome to the new Rachel’s English
mini-series, Interview a Broadcaster!
Hey guys. I’m here with Craig Melvin.
Craig, tell me a little bit about what you do.
I do YouTube.
No you don’t I do YouTube!
Ah, I am a correspondent with NBC
News, and an anchor with MSNBC,
and that’s, that’s kind of what I do.
Awesome.
Yeah. Somedays it’s awesome.
And other days it’s really awesome.
Yes, yes. Because this is on the internet,
I love it!
He loves it! I don’t know if you’re aware,
but sometimes people call the standard
American accent ‘broadcaster English’.
Really? » So…, Yeah.
I did not know that.
So we’re sort of looking to
the people who deliver the news
to be examples of the
standard American accent.
No pressure.
No pressure at all.
Alright.
So, I’m curious, where did you grow up?
Uh, South Carolina, a state not known
for— » Right!
—language. We’ll just leave it at that.
Right, for the American accent.
Yes, but, I grew up in South Carolina.
So, did you grow up
speaking the standard accent,
or did you sort of have to change
that as you went into this field?
I was blessed with a mother who was a
school teacher, who, at a very young age,
made sure that we understood how important
it was to pronounce words correctly.
And, this non-regional dialect.
Yep.
So, this ambiguous dialect, it’s the same
dialect I’ve always had because of her.
That’s great, yeah. » Well, it’s
helped professionally. » Right.
Now, when you’re preparing for the
camera, how do you prepare a text?
It depends on the story. Um,
and if there are words in the copy
that might prove themselves difficult,
Yeah?
I’ll go over it three times. Three times
is generally my rule, for each script.
Read it aloud, three times. Um, because
sometimes when you read something,
it may not seem very complicated.
But when you say it out loud,
you realize, oh, I’m going
to trip up over this word.
Right. So you read it out loud when you’re
practicing. » Yes, three times. » Okay.
Unless we’re pressed for time. If there’s
breaking news, then it’s a dice roll. » Yeah.
Mr. Melvin used the idiom ‘dice
roll’, also used as, roll the dice.
This means to do something even if you’re not
certain of the outcome, to take a chance.
To have to read a text for the first
time on air is definitely a dice roll.
If there’s breaking news,
then it’s a dice roll. » Yeah.
What is a word that you,
sort of, shy away from?
Are there any words in American English that
you still find difficult to pronounce?
Oo. That’s a really good question.
Yes. There are a couple.
Um, there’s one that I struggle with,
regularly. » Is it ‘regularly’?
‘Regularly’ is one. If I see ‘regularly’,
I frequently change it to ‘frequently’.
So you change it!
Oh yeah. All the time.
‘Regularly’. This is a tough word.
It’s a four-syllable word with stress
on the first syllable. DA-da-da-da. Let’s
practice just a few times slowed down.
Reg-u-lar-ly, regularly. Regularly.
So, and I also struggle with, and
there’s no synonym for this one: rural.
Rural. I get questions about that.
Rural. R-U-R-A-L. It’s very difficult.
Rural. » Now, I’m noticing a pattern.
With ‘regularly’ and ‘rural’,
I think you’re having issues with R’s and
L’s maybe. » Yes. I have always
struggled with the R.
Uh-huh.
And I don’t know why. Can you help me?
I can.
Rrr-.
Rural. Another really tough word! Let’s
practice it slowed down. Rur-al. Rur-al.
What’s your favorite
word in American English?
And, maybe, why? » Oo. My favorite word?
Yeah.
Oh, that’s a good one. Favorite word.
I—there are a couple that I enjoy.
Let’s hear them. » Now some of these
are just crutch words that I use.
Uh, cool. ‘Cool’ is a crutch word.
Yeah.
But I—because ‘cool’ is one
of those words it can be a noun,
it can be an adjective, you can
say ‘Cool!’ or ‘eh, cool.’
Right. Yeah, yeah. » You know? It’s a
multi-purpose word. » Yeah.
So I enjoy ‘cool’. And another word that
I’ve always…well, that’s a proper noun.
It’s not really a word, it’s a name.
It still counts.
Betty Jo.
Betty Jo.
Betty Jo. » Who’s this?
That’s my mother. » Ok.
Betty Jo. Notice that we have a double T
there. But, it represents one sound,
and that’s the Flap T, because it’s
not starting a stressed syllable,
and there’s a vowel before and
a vowel after. Betty, Betty.
Her name’s Betty. Um, why am I telling
this story on the internet? Her name’s Betty,
and, again, from South Carolina. When you
grow up in South Carolina, it’s like Ella May,
Betty Jo. So, she grew up like a country girl,
was Betty Jo. She grew up and she dropped
the middle name.
And I found out when I was, like,
22-23.
Oh, so she was like ‘Just call me Betty’.
Right. And when I found out that it was
really Betty Jo, I use ‘Betty Jo’ sometimes
as, obviously my mother, Betty Jo, but
sometimes, my brother and I, if we’re, like,
just messing around, we’ll be
like “That’s so Betty Jo.”
Messing around. In this case,
it means to play around, a relaxed
not serious interaction with someone.
Notice Mr. Melvin made the NG an N sound,
messin', messin', messin' around. Native
speakers do this sometimes with -ing words.
Another common example, doin'.
What are you doin'?
Sometimes, if my brother and I,
if we’re, like, just messing around,
we’ll be like “That’s so Betty Jo.”
I bet she loves that.
That was so inside baseball.
‘That’s so inside baseball’. I’d never heard
this phrase before, I had to look it up.
So, thanks to Mr. Melvin for
teaching me a new metaphor.
Basically, it means inside information that
isn’t pertinent to the general public.
In this case, information
about Mr. Melvin’s family.
Inside baseball, DA-da-DA-da.
Inside baseball.
So inside baseball.
But those are the two.
Awesome. Well, Craig,
thank you so much for joining us
Thank you.
I hope I did not bore your YouTube fans.
I think they’ll love it.
This is a really cool thing you do.
Thank you. » See what I did there?
Cool!
He used the word ‘cool’ in a sentence.
There you go.
Follow Mr. Melvin on Twitter and
check out his segments on TV
or online for a great example of
American English pronunciation.
Alright, guys, that’s it, and thanks
so much for using Rachel’s English.
Special thanks to Patrick of PatrickJMT
who manned the camera for this shoot.
Check out his YouTube channel
for excellent math tutorials.
Check out all the videos in the Interview
a Broadcaster series by clicking here,
or on the link in the video description below.