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08 January 2007

Afrighting the ear

Lumber World has been running a radio spot on VOCM for way too many months now extolling the virtues of Bruce brand hardwood flooring.

There's some reference to Shakespeare and "trodding the boards", presumably to attach the hardwood flooring to some sort of elegance, grace and education.

Unfortunately this is a good example of a truly hideous radio spot where both the writing and the voicing wind up affrighting the ear of any listener with half a clue.

Not only is there a meaningless hodge-podge of some Shakespearean dialogue, one portion of which sounds like the prologue of Henry V, but the guy pretending to be an actor obviously has no idea what he is reading.

The word is Agincourt - pronounced "aazhincour". This guy pronounces it as if it were Jethro Bodean's way of saying "again".

Just so you get the point, here's Derk Jacobi's performance, from the 1989 Branagh version. No one's expecting the VOCM guy to deliver a performance worthy of one of the finer actors around, but at least we could expect that he could get the pronunciation right.