In train

[caddyman]

I'm not sure whether I've grumbled about this before or not, but hey, it's my journal so I'm going to grumble about it now and sod the possibility of repetition.

I noticed both on the way up to Shrewsbury and on the return trip to Euston this afternoon, that amongst the younger train announcers it is now de rigeur to announce that we arriving into a station. Not at a station, into it. Now in my native language, one arrives at one's destination; that may be achieved by pulling into a station, but never arriving into. I expect that these are the same people who, in an emergency exercise, would try to evacuate people and not premises.

Happily, the announcer on today's Virgin Pandemonium Pendolino was a bit older and capable of making announcements in English, not some close counterfeit thereof.

Comments

[oldnick.livejournal.com]

My personal pet hate at the moment is regularly perpetrated by radio road traffic announcers, and one in particular.

"There are delays from junction X and junction Y".

"There are delays between junction X to junction Y".

To add to it, the worst offender also cannot pronounce letter Rs a la Jonathan Woss, and clearly has no knowledge of localised English pronunciations.

Now, the confusion between 'between - and' and 'from - to' has a secondary effect. Apart from being intensely annoying, it also has a secondary result - that of removing precision from the language. 'From - to' indicates that the congestion extends the entire distance between the two locations, 'Between - and' can be used to indicate that it is at a location between the two points. The mixture cannot make that distinction, and also indicates that the announcer isn't thinking with that degree of precision.

My other pet announcement peeve at the moment is the pronunciation of "was" as "is" by newsreaders. They are different words with different meanings - but again the lack of precision removes precision from the statement and throws doubt upon the accuracy of the rest of the report.