The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / Announcer's Enunciation Test

**Posted by deLaat** September 18, 2024 9:31 pm

This is a new one on me. I did do a search and it doesn't seem to have been mentioned before.

This test originated at Radio Central in New York in the early 1940s as a cold reading test given to prospective radio talent to demonstrate their speaking ability and breath control. The way it was shown to me was along the lines of a reverse Twelve Days of Christmas in that you repeated and built on the previous line.....

Line1
Line 1 & 2
Line 1 & 2 & 3
Line 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 etc

Professional announcers would be asked to perform the entire speaking test within a single breath without sounding rushed or out of breath.

Here are the phrases...

One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four limerick oysters
Five corpulent porpoises
Six pairs of Don Alverzo's tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine sympathetic, apathetic, catatonic old men on roller skates, with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who all stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.

Wow. And I struggle with being a Greeter at Graingers, ".... home of hard hats, french safes, rain shoes, overcoats and work boots."

**Posted by newsguy1** September 18, 2024 10:36 pm

For many years the CBC had their standard announcers test.
It was run when I took it by its inventor, an Englishmen named George Rich.
By the time I took the test in the 1980s it was laughably out of date and yet the CBC allowed Rich to still administer the test to an absurd extent.
I took with prep from a woman I knew who also took it -- and failed as I did.
But after you took it Rich would give you the answers about how you should have answered.
For instance, they had a sentence where you had to refer to "a flaccid Belizean Junta."
Nobody in the 1980's would pronounce it FLAK-sid Belezian JUN-tah.
It would be pronounced by everyone as FLASSid Belezian HOON tah.
When he failed me on the pronunciation I pissed him off when I pointed out that the most senior announcer at the CBC, who was Knowlton Nash at the time, would never say FLAK-sid or JUN-tah.
On another part of the test I had to read a paragraph about describing a small town in England.
I had a lot of acting training at the time and I thought I gave a pretty good read.
But he told me my read was terrible because he wrote that about his home town in England and I did not read it with the proper feeling at all.
Later I submitted a demo tape to one of the CBC radio execs.
His assessment of me was I had a "beautiful" radio voice, but it was just too "priivaty" sounding.

**Posted by mace** September 19, 2024 3:30 am

How about "He slits sheets with the sheet slitter's daughter, while the sheet slitters out slitting sheets"

**Posted by newsguy1** September 19, 2024 8:11 pm

black bugs blood and red bugs blood.
sister susie saw seven silver swans silently swimming over the silver shining sea.

**Posted by betaylored** September 20, 2024 10:40 pm

Funny how things pop up. Yesterday I was listening to a fav Harlan Coben* audiobook and out of the blue the voice actor described a vegetable growing in a garden as flaccid but actually read it as flak-sid. I went back and listened to it three more times just to confirm the pronunciation. It sounded odd. Besides, the flah-sid flaccid version even sounds limp.

She sells seashells by the seashore is an oldy but goody.

And is also useful if you have to practice shounding dra-unk.

*I highly recommend the Myron Bolitar series from Harlan Coben. They're worth reading in order.

Last edited by betaylored (September 20, 2024 10:43 pm)

**Posted by ig** September 21, 2024 11:41 am

I remember from ages ago someone telling me an old BBC annunciation test was reading the following over and over as quickly as possible till you muffed it up.

Red Leather, Yellow Leather

I also read an announcer tip where you take a pencil and hold it as far back as you can in your mouth, then read a script with it held there. Then, when you remove the pen and read, you usually tend to overannunciate words, but not to an uncomfortable level, just not as much slurring. That was a biggie when creating demo tapes.