English as a Second Language for Sports Announcers
January 17, 2010
While watching an entertaining weekend of football (a big high five to F-Train for his Jets knocking off the Electric Norvs), I was reminded repeatedly of how badly many sports announcers mangle the English language. Here are my two biggest sports announcing pet peeves du jour:
“There’s no question …” / “No question about it …”—Umm, if there’s no question about a point, if it is so obvious and so incontrovertible that there can be no debate on the issue, why oh why are you wasting my time with your nattering?
“Player X is out with a [body part].”—This formulation is pure verbal laziness. “Smith is out with a knee.” Actually, he has two knees. He’s out because he has (take your pick): a) a torn ACL, b) a knee strain, or c) a knee injury. See how that works? You report on a medical condition, not merely name a part of the anatomy. To illustrate the silliness of this formulation, imagine saying a player is “out with a head” or “out with a brain” when in fact he is “out with a concussion”.
Now we can only hope Joe Buck goes back to baseball where nobody listens to him …
5 comments:
I wanted to read this article but I'm currently out with an eye.
No question about it, Minton takes his comments to the next level.
i totally agree. But my pet peeve when it comes to sports commentators is when they are describing a player they put a "a" in front of the player's name. Like saying
"When you have on you team a Derek Jeter.
Like there is hundreds of Derek Jeter's laying around and they Yankees have just one. There is only one Derek Jeter or any other player for that matter!!! Please stop now!!
Tom
Tom,
I would agree with you, except you violated the prime directive for Derek Jeter references: All Derek Jeter statements must state, "He does all the little things."
Sorry, I was not aware of the Jeter directive. I will use it the next time I reference Derek Jeter(He does all the little things).
Tom
Post a Comment