ERICA HILL Interview a Broadcaster American English Pronunciation
Hey guys. Welcome to the new Rachel’s English
mini series, Interview a Broadcaster!
Hi guys. I’m here with Erica Hill.
Erica, can you tell my fans a
little bit about what you do?
Yes. I am the co-anchor of
the Weekend TODAY show, on NBC,
and I’m also a national
correspondent for NBC News.
Awesome. Well, I don’t
know if you know this,
but another term for the standard
American accent is ‘broadcaster English’.
I’m just learning this, actually.
So people all over the world are looking
to the people in America who are delivering
the news as a standard, as an example
for how to speak American English.
So, where do you come from? And, did you have
to change anything about your accent when you
came into this field?
I didn’t really need to change anything.
I grew up in Connecticut.
Okay.
Um, sort of, almost directly in between
New York and Boston. So there was a lot of
influence around us, and probably, definitely,
within people’s families. My mom’s from
New Hampshire, so she says words a little bit
differently than maybe some of my friends'
parents did. My dad is originally
from Connecticut. » Okay.
But the town where I grew
up, it was fairly standard.
I think we all pretty much speak like I do.
Right. Okay, well that’s nice, that’s easy.
Yeah, it was easy. » And, when your’e
preparing a script to read online,
or, to read on camera, um, do you have any…
how do you practice it? How much time do you
spend with it, do you have
any certain tricks you use?
You know, it depends on the script and how
much time I’m given. So, sometimes if I’m,
if I’m doing what we call a ‘day of turn’,
or, a piece that needs to air that day,
your’e very limited on your time.
Yeah.
Um, one of the most important things you
do as a broadcaster is,
you write to your pictures. So you want to
make sure that you’re writing to what the
people are seeing on their screen.
Okay.
Let’s take a second to talk about
the contractions Ms. Hill is using.
Sometimes my students shy away from
contractions because they think they’re less
clear. Check out this series of videos that
compares conversations with contractions
to conversations without. Ms. Hill has used
‘I’m’ and ‘you’re’ several times.
In ‘I’m’, nothing reduces. But, it’s still
quick. I’m, I’m. In ‘you’re’, we’re reducing
the vowel to the schwa, which is absorbed by
the R sound. So, it’s really just two sounds,
yy, er, yer, yer. And it should be quite fast.
You’re. Listen again to this section.
It depends on the script and how much
time I’m given. So, sometimes if I’m,
if I’m doing what we call a ‘day of turn’,
or, a piece that needs to air that day,
your’e very limited on your time.
Yeah.
Um, one of the most important things you
do as a broadcaster is, you write to your
pictures. So you want to make sure that
you’re writing to what the people are
seeing on their screen.
Okay.
Um, so you want that language to be visual.
And you want it to spark someone’s
imagination, so that it can help give them a
more full picture of the story that you’re
telling. Um, so, but when I do have time to
really craft a script, I like to take my time
with it. I love words, I love writing. Um,
so that’s a roundabout way of saying,
there’s never an exact amount of time that I
have, um, but in broadcasting, I think the
goal is not only to write to your pictures,
but you also want to keep it simple, um,
because it’s a spoken story.
So, you have maybe 30 seconds,
or even 15 seconds to tell a story. So it
really needs to be about the facts sometimes,
and not as much about the flowery language.
Uh-huh. There you go.
What do you do when you come across a
word that you don’t know how to pronounce?
If I don’t know how to pronounce it,
I’ll look it up. So, I will either call the
international desk, and see if there’s
someone there who is familiar.
If it’s a different language, who speaks,
who’s a native speaker of that language.
Right.
…so that they can say it for me.
Ms. Hill’s speech, as with all native
speakers, is filled with reductions.
Here, she’s given us a great example
of the reduction of the word ‘can’,
‘So that they can say it for me.’ Here ‘can’
is a helping verb. And ‘say’ is the main verb.
Most of the time, ‘can’ is a helping verb.
In these cases, we reduce the pronunciation
to ‘kn’. So we change the vowel to the schwa.
But just like in ‘you’re’, the next consonant,
here the N, absorbs the schwa. So it’s
just two sounds: kkn, nn, kn, kn.
She says it incredibly fast. But the
main verb, say, has much more length,
and that nice shape of a stressed syllable.
Can say. This rhythmic contrast
of short and long syllables is very
important in American English.
So that they can say it [4x] for me. Um,
or I’ll look it up online, if I can’t find it.
You know, if it’s a regular word, I’ll
go to one of the dictionary websites.
And oftentimes you can hit a button and
you can hear that word. » Right, yes.
You can hit. Again, a great
reduction of the function word,
the helping verb ‘can’. You can, you can.
And oftentimes you can hit [3x] a button
and you can hear that word. » Right, yes.
Another ‘can’ reduction: can hear.
You can hear [3x] that word.
Right, yes.
I’ll do that. Or I will go and listen to
whatever I can find in terms of video online.
Another ‘can’ reduction: can find.
I’ll do that. Or I will go and listen to
whatever I can find [3x] in terms of video
online, to hear, if it’s a name, to
hear that person saying their name.
So it can be time-consuming.
It can be, yeah.
It can be time-consuming. Here, we’re
stressing the word ‘can’. Not always,
but it can be. So, we’re not reducing the
word. We’re keeping the AA as in BAT vowel.
So it can be [4x] time-consuming.
It can be [4x], yeah, but it’s worth it.
I think one of the worst things you can
do is mispronounce someone’s name.
Yeah. So when you, when it’s
someone’s name that you don’t know,
or a word in a foreign language and you
hear it, what do, what do you do with that?
Do you just practice it repetitiously?
I do. I, um, I’ll listen to it a few times.
Did you notice her ‘I’ll’ contraction? It
sounds great when we reduce it to ‘all’,
so it sounds just like this word ‘all’.
I’ll listen [4x] to it a few times,
I’ll say it out loud a few times.
If there’s someone, if it’s not just hearing
it online but there’s an actual human being…
Yeah.
… who’s giving me the pronunciation,
I’ll say it back to them until they
tell me that I have it correct.
Because I think it’s really important
to take that time and make that effort.
Yeah. That’s great. Now, are there
any words in American English
that you find especially
difficult to pronounce?
Yes. I am almost incapable
of the following phrase.
And I literally have to think about
it before I say it. War of words.
Ok. War of words.
Which is pretty much the only thing that I
have asked anybody who ever writes a script
that I have to read to please not put in it.
Leave that out.
Because I have a very difficult time.
Interesting.
War of words. This refers to a long
debate, either spoken or in writing.
The stress pattern is DA-da-DA, DA-da-DA.
‘Of’ should be very short.
War of words. War of words.
When you write something, you want to
make sure you say it out loud. » Uh-huh.
To make sure that it works when you’re,
when it’s a spoken word. » Good tip.
Um, and, you know, it’s just in doing
that exercise that I’ve realized,
I have to pause and think about each one of
those words separately. » Interesting.
And it’s, yeah.
Yeah, you don’t have time to do that.
I don’t like that phrase!
Okay, well, what about a phrase
or a word that you especially like?
Um, one of the words I love the
most is ‘mama’ because I like,
I like hearing my kids say ‘mama’.
That’s, that’s beautiful. » Yeah.
‘Mama’ is a word that very young
children often use for their mother.
Mama, DA-da, mama.
Well, thank you so much for the time.
My pleasure.
I think my users are
going to really enjoy this.
Follow Ms. Hill on Twitter and check
out her segments on TV or online
for a great example of American
English pronunciation.
And, uh, that’s it, and thanks
so much for using Rachel’s English.
Check out all the videos in the
Interview a Broadcaster series
by clicking here, or on the link
in the video description below.