Americans Drop Their G's

          Perhaps because I didn’t start learning English until I was seven years old, I was always very conscious of the pronunciation of words.   It was months before I was brave enough to even open my mouth to speak and then only very hesitantly, waiting for someone to point out how dumb my heavy accent sounded. 

          My early years in an English speaking school changed from horrific to not so bad as I began to adjust to this very strange language that made no sense at all.  I can vividly remember turning a gorgeous beetroot red when I discovered that the shop across the road from the school that I referred to again and again as a chemist, with a soft ‘ch’ as in cheese, was nothing of the kind.

          By the time my English language skills were good enough to understand what teachers were trying to instill in our eight and nine year old brains, I had fallen in love with words.  Books were a source of wonder and I devoured them as though they were my lunch.

          One of my English teachers was a little white haired lady called Miss Dunn.  I think she was probably one of those picture perfect teachers you read about or see in movies.  She’d never married nor had children because to her, we were all the children and family she wanted.

          Miss Dunn was barely an inch over five feet and always very neatly dressed.  She usually wore a pleated, plaid skirt topped with a soft blue twinset.  A string of pearls was her only jewelry.  

          It is because of Miss Dunn that I became such a stickler for the way words are pronounced.  She would stand at the blackboard at the front of the class, and with a flourish write out a word – for instance – ‘feeling,’ and then very firmly underline the ‘ing’.  She did this with every word that ended in ‘ing’, all the time very loudly emphasizing, ‘Remember children, the word ends with i-n-g.  It does not end with i-n.  I want to hear the i-n-g!’

          ‘What do I want to hear?’

          ‘I-n-g, Miss.’

          ‘That’s right, and don’t forget it please.’

          If in fact we did forget it as children so often do, Miss Dunn would stand with her hand up to her ear and a puzzled look on her face.

          ‘Did I hear a word that ended in i-n-g or was it a word that doesn’t belong in the English language?’  That usually produced instant recall on our part and a happy smile on the face of Miss Dunn.

          Many years later I emigrated to the United States, a country I had read about and, of course, seen so much of in movies.  I was looking forward to being a part of this terrific (for me) new country.  There was going to be so much to see and do – including TV shows that I had heard about but hadn’t seen in Australia.

          And so it was that after only a few days in the USA, with childlike glee, I settled in front of the TV to watch my first American newscast.  But then the horror struck me.  It wasn’t the taped TV shows that had me gasping and glancing over my shoulder to see if Miss Dunn would magically materialize with cupped ear.  It was the live broadcasts; the morning newscasters, the commentators and the various announcers.  Was I hearing things?  Was Katie Couric really dropping her g’s?  Indeed yes…and in a very short interview to boot!  Matt Lauer wasn’t much better with his captive interviewee.  The young lady had apparently been singin’ since she was ten.

          I switched channels hoping this ‘g’ dropping was limited to NBC newcasters but alas no.  The pundits on CBS and ABC were just as bad.  ‘G’s were being dropped like peas from a broken pod.

          Now, as I read my grandkids emails and FB entries…most of which consist of random letters of the alphabet instead of actual words, I wonder if the beginning of all this incomprehensible muttering was when Americans started dropping their ‘g’s?