Re: [ARSCLIST] Edward R. Murrow "Hear It Now"

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This may well be true. I don't know of Murrow and Friendly cherry-picked
particularly well-spoken citizens, but the diction and sentence structure
were more complex than your average American today. Not necessarily more $5
words, just better craft of stringing together $1 words.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11:40 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Edward R. Murrow "Hear It Now"


> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Also, it's fascinating to hear the actual
> > voices of both historic figures and ordinary people of those days. To my
> > ears, the regional accents of America were more pronounced back then,
and
> > the average person had a more refined and clearer way of speaking.
> >
> Probably because this was well before the ubiquity of television
> reduced North American speech to a "lowest common denominator!"
> Remember that children are often "Baby-sat" by the TV, and learning
> how to speak from the audio rather than from their family...
>
> ...stevenc
> http://users.interlinks.net/stevenc/