Saturday 9 February 2013

Patricia Hughes, R.I.P.

credit: BBC

I just received the news that one of the most distinctive voices of the BBC can no longer be heard - Patricia Hughes has died at the age of 90 at a nursing home in Winchester, Hampshire.
 
I wrote three blog entries on aspects of her enunciation, which can easily be found if you search my blog for her name. Jack Windsor Lewis made some interesting and detailed observations on her amusing story about an event related to her job with Auntie Beeb to be read here and here.

4 comments:

  1. A beautiful psychoactive voice...

    ReplyDelete
  2. The obituary in The Times has a few comments on her pronunciation. It suggests that her way of speaking had both admirers and detractors.

    I tried to listen to her voice here, but I couldn't get it to play. I could hear a brief clip here. To show that everyone varies, she seems to use her LOT vowel in the first syllable of "Moscow" at 0:18 but then her STRUT vowel in the same word at 1:01.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry for this inconvenience - something must have gone wrong when I changed the template of my blog. I'll try to fix it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Update: I've managed to update the two short videos again.

      Delete