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Early BBC got in a stew over pronunciation of ‘vegetable’

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By John Glenday, Reporter

June 7, 2016 | 2 min read

Squabbles, politics and office rivalry at the BBC are nothing new it seems after publication of a new book lifted the lid on what it was like to work for the broadcaster in the early days of the 1920’s and thirties.

Far from stepping into a brave new world of optimism, science and technology the broadcaster found much of its enthusiasm sapped by interminable debates as to the correct pronunciation to words in common parlance; including how many syllables are present in the word ‘vegetable’ and whether margarine has a soft or hard ‘g’.

At that time an Orwellian pronunciation committee, disbanded in 1939, dictated to presenters and announcers the manner in which they spoke in a bid to maintain ‘purity of the language’ but this inevitably led to disputes between the lower and upper classes who generally spoke in distinctive ways.

This was laid bare by a 1935 memo on the vegetable issue stating: “Shall we follow the modern tendency, or shall we go back to four syllables? The question seems to me to be complicated by the fact that I think at present it is more or less a class distinction. The middle and upper classes make the elision, whereas the working class pronounce all four syllables.”

After much hand wringing the BBC eventually settled on the four syllable usage.

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