From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Dan Rather (was: "Route")
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 08:46:38 GMT

For what it's worth, I was born in England in 1955, moved to Alberta in
1957, and then came to Ontario in 1964.  I pronounce "route" like "root"
but am not surprised by "rout" from Americans.  I am surprised by that
pronunciation from Canadians, but some of my co-workers use it, at least
when they're talking about email routers.

Bonita Kale (bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) writes:
> Oh, hey, someone on this thread mentioned "woof" and "wolf".  Where does
> Dan Rather come from?  Did anyone see the news broadcast in which he had to
> use the world "wolf" over and over, and said "woof" every time? ...

He comes from Texas.  He was born in 1931 in Wharton, which is southwest
of Houston; he studied journalism at the former Sam Houston Institute of
Teaching in Huntsville, then called Sam Houston State Teachers College
[no apostrophe] and now Sam Houston State University.  The original name
was changed when students started using the initials on T-shirts.

Later, he worked at the Houston Chronicle's radio station, KTRH, where he
often did broadcasts from the paper's newsroom...

#   I was blessed with not having what is known in other parts of
#   the country as a standard Texas accent.  What I did have I never
#   worked to get out.  Instead I had to work, hard, at pronouncing
#   certain words.  Once my boss, Bob Hart, sent me to a speech
#   teacher to learn to say "posts", the plural of "post".  I could
#   not say the extra "s".  She taught me in the course of one afternoon.
#   
#   Another time a fairly big local story broke about a heroin case.
#   I was in the Chronicle city room, telling this story in a fairly
#   excited fashion:  "Houston police today captured a large cache of
#   her-OYNE..."  As I read through the story I pronounced the word
#   the same way about three times, a not uncommon colloquialism.
#   
#   But by the third or fourth reference the church editor of the
#   Chronicle, a large woman with a robust voice, could stand it no
#   longer.  She rose from her desk and started walking toward me,
#   shouting across the room, the words booming louder into my live
#   microphone as she drew closer, "Not her-OYNE, idiot!  It is HER-
#   OH-in! HER-OH-in! HER-OH-in!"
#   
#   During those years I spent a lot of time poring over dictionaries.
#   I was not a good speller, which was one reason I didn't make it
#   in the newspaper business.  And poor spellers are frequently poor
#   pronouncers.
#   
#   I was not unaware of my weaknesses when I took over the late-night
#   newscast at 10 PM.  Nighttime radio, of course, was then a much
#   bigger influence than it is now.  The ten o'clock news on KTRH was
#   a listening tradition in Houston, with a large audience.  I really
#   labored over that broadcast.  It was my first fifteen-minute program
#   and I did it all, news, sports and weather.  I would usually close
#   with the next day's forecast, on the order of, "...sunny and bright,
#   with light, var'ble winds."  Leaving out the "i".
#   
#   A woman began to call, the moment the newscast was over.
#   
#   "Is this Dan Rather?"
#   
#   "Yes."
#   
#   "Dammit, boy, the word is var-EE-able.  Has another syllable in there.
#   Look it up."  Very schoolmarmish.  After two weeks of repeated calls
#   I finally got the word right.  The first night I was able to say it
#   distinctly on the air, instead of "var'ble", she called and said,
#   with great zest,  "Congratulations!  You finally got it."
#   
#   I never did learn the lady's name.  She never identified herself.
#   But a full year later we lost the network line and someone rushed
#   into the newsroom and said,  "You're needed in the studio.  You
#   have to fill--meaning kill time--while we get the network back up."
#   We had an emergency format for such times and they shoved the
#   script in front of me.  "We regret that network programming has
#   been interrupted.  In the meantime we bring you Music in Mini'ture."
#   
#   Phone rang.  Same woman.  "Dammit, boy, the word is minny-a-choor.
#   Minny-a-choor.  It has another syllable.  Look it up."  I found it
#   encouraging that I hadn't heard from her in a year.

Excerpt from "The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist",
by Dan Rather with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977, Morrow, ISBN 0-688-03184-6.
-- 
Mark Brader			"Poor spelling does not prove poor knowledge,
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto		 but is fatal to the argument by intimidation."
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com				-- Gene Ward Smith

Original text in this article is in the public domain.