This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2528.
Breaking news, don't speak like a news anchor in English.
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Is the cadence that an anchor person on the news uses the same cadence that native English speakers use in everyday life?
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Hi, Michelle, how are you today?
I'm doing well.
Lindsay, how are you?
I'm feeling great.
Glad to be on the microphone recording.
Michelle, where do you consume most of your news?
Would you say that you consume a lot of news?
And if so, where do you get it?
Good question.
I think it's.
I would say I do watch tv.
I do watch.
You know, i switch around between different news channels on tv.
Um, i also will read articles.
Um, i will.
I mean, i don't want to, i don't want to say social media, that's a whole other topic, but i will.
I will find out about things on social media and i take it with a grain of salt and i might investigate a little further.
Right, because there's so much on social media nowadays that, oh my gosh, is just really messing with everything.
What do you think?
And where do you get your news?
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Grain of salt.
Take it with a grain of salt.
Great bonus for today.
You know, not taking it seriously, really not taking it seriously.
I agree.
I do stay away from social media for news and just kind of in general.
Yeah.
Sometimes I'll flip through Instagram for the dog videos, but that's pretty much it.
That's good.
I get my news definitely through podcasts.
So I'm a big listener of the daily, the journal, the wall street journals podcast box um today explained.
These are some of the ones that I listen to on a daily basis.
So that's really weird.
And then sometimes I'll have maybe CNN on, but I've been trying to get away from that, the talking heads.
You know, New York Times is always a tab open when I'm working.
Frankly unfortunately,
So yeah, that's what I do.
Yeah, yeah.
So today, we actually we have a really interesting listener question.
This is going to be a different kind of episode.
I'm really excited for this.
But before we get into it, I want to read you some results that we had from a Spotify poll that we did a few weeks ago.
Um, so this was episode of 2495 and it was, is being a trooper praised in your culture?
Um, that was the name of the episode.
So if you haven't listened to that one, definitely go ahead and do that.
Um, Lindsay, what was the poll?
Yeah.
The question was, have you ever broken a bone?
Interesting.
And so what were our results, Michelle, we roll out the results.
It And no was 74 and probably some decimal point, right?
Let's just say 75% for no.
So I forget, Lindsay, have you?
I don't even own a drink suit.
Yeah.
Oh, gosh.
Don't jinx me.
No, I haven't.
Well, I had like a hairline.
I don't think it was a break.
It was like a little sprain of my wrist.
But I think that doesn't count.
So I'm going to say no.
I've never broken a bone.
I'm surprised it's so low on the yes, actually.
Yeah.
I don't know.
In my mind, everyone's broken a bone once in their lives in my head.
So very interesting.
Thank you so much for answering that question on Spotify.
So yeah, let's get to the question from the listener.
Lindsay, would you like to read it?
Yeah, this is from YouTube.
Don't forget, guys, another way to consume this show is over on YouTube.
If you'd rather learn that way, through watching us and the gestures and seeing Michelle and I on video, that would be the way to do it.
So go over, search for Allers English on YouTube, hit the subscribe button.
So this comes from KKKKT2C7D.
Is there any difference between the way CNN speaks?
And the everyday American spoken accents.
So I'm going to assume this listener is talking about the actual, not so much the...
Like, you know, they do the round tables at night.
I assume that they're not asking about those people.
I assume they're talking about the anchors, like the news anchors.
That's what I'm going to take it as.
So, yeah.
And I took it more like this may not be a question of accent that you're wondering about.
It may be about the word cadenced.
Yes.
Right.
Lindsay, what is like what is the cadence?
Yes.
So the cadence is about the song.
I mean, how something sounds, the rhythm, the flow, the ups and downs.
And we just released our brand new pronunciation course talking all about this.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So it's it. we can talk about accent in just a second as well.
But to me that's really the difference, not necessarily how they speak, like with their accent and changing anything about their actual accent, but more so about just the certain special way, like we're going to talk more about this, like how they actually sound, the song of what.
That's how I always think of it as a song.
And I think there's a lot of secrets for our listeners in cadence and rhythm on how to be clear, less so in accents, right.
Because there's so many accents in the world and even in the U.S.
What is an American accent, Michelle?
Is it a Michigan accent, which sounds very different from a Texan accent?
Is it a New York accent, Boston accent?
You know, what is an American accent?
So we spend our time looking more at cadence and rhythm to be clear, right?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
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For sure.
For sure.
Good stuff um, yeah.
So yeah, i mean lindsey, when is when you see this question?
I mean, do you know what this listener is asking?
Basically like, have you noticed that there's a special way that newscasters speak anchors?
Yeah, of course, and it's always fun.
You can know it and sometimes you can imitate it a little bit and have fun with it.
There is a newscaster cadence, for sure.
Yes, i don't think it's anything like a typical.
I mean, if you went to a party and started talking like a newscaster and I mean no, we don't talk like that in everyday life.
No, exactly.
So again, you know, maybe in talking heads, but certainly not.
You know, maybe like when people are just having a conversation, they're speaking in a more realistic way, as Lindsay mentioned, but not when they're reading a news story, they're broadcasting something.
So there's, you know, there's a special way of speaking if you are in broadcast news.
And As far as accent goes, I would say that there might be a more standard accent.
For example, you don't typically hear reporters having huge New York accents, unless it's maybe in local news.
But for national, I don't think you would hear...
I think it's just a little bit more standard, whatever that means.
I think maybe Midwestern, I think, is maybe the more of the standard accent.
I'm not sure.
The Midwestern standard for the U.S., for a U.S. news anchor, you think?
Yeah, I think it's mostly trying to be more neutral.
Interesting.
I don't know that you would hear a heavy Boston accent.
Maybe the person is from Boston, but maybe they...
Right.
Kind of hide it a little.
Yeah.
Sometimes, when I think of a Midwestern accent, I think of some.
I think of a very strong accent like the Chicago accent, but I think I know what you're saying here, Michelle.
My question is when these news stations hire anchors, do they hire for the standard accent or do they train a regional accent out?
Like do you train?
Do they train you to speak in a standard American accent and train out the regional accent for when you're broadcasting?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
I mean, if somebody is in broadcast school, is that something that they work on?
I think probably they probably do work on this.
Um, but I don't know.
Um, so yeah, but in general um, They speak very clearly, with a lot of enunciation, maybe a little slower, maybe a little deeper, controlled and really stressing the words, right.
Not mumbling through anything.
Yeah, for sure.
I know, Michelle, you had an internship at a news station and you learned a little bit about this.
Are there any secrets you're going to tell us about today?
Well, I'll put on my news voice for you uh, later.
But yeah, I mean again just kind of what I said.
You know I remember speaking deeper.
Um, you know, pausing in certain places, really stress out the words.
A lot of enunciation, right.
So maybe a little less connected speech, things like that.
Um, but you know um, I'm sure if you ran into one of these, I mean like, for example um, I mean okay, so like okay, let's talk about maybe, Anderson Cooper.
Yeah.
The way he reads the news as a broadcaster is different than if you hear him on the New Year's show.
Yeah, that's true.
Oh, the two guys are always joking around.
Yeah.
Andy Cohen.
Yeah, so if you ran into Anderson Cooper on the street, he's not going to speak the same way he does when he's reporting live from a hurricane.
You know, like, it's not...
It's not going to be the same way.
They may be more casual in real life, have a certain accent, more natural, sounding less controlled, more casual, more connected speech contractions, all of these things just a little less formal.
Yeah.
And also the fact that they're reading off a teleprompter, right?
Usually when they're in studio.
Yeah.
I think that naturally lends itself to just really isolating the words outside of typical conversational English and it makes it a more stage-based English right.
Exactly.
And yeah, exactly about how formal the language is.
So, so many different things to think about here.
But so for example, if I said like for all ears English, I'm Michelle Kaplan, right?
So that would be if I'm reporting and at the very end, or like, for example, here's another one.
Today in New York City, a new hot dog shop opened and everyone is in line to try it.
Right.
You have.
And imagine you going to a party and saying that.
Right.
Hello.
I'd like to tell you about this new hot dog shop.
I tried.
They'd be like, Michelle, are you OK?
What's happening?
Oh right yeah, i mean, it also goes along.
I mean even lindsey, when we, when we we use an announcer voice, sometimes when we're doing the um titles uh, this is an all ears english podcast.
You know there's a different cadence.
I'm not gonna say this is an all ears english podcast.
Hi, i'm michelle.
Oh right, it's a title.
It makes sense.
It deserves to be a little bit elevated right right, right.
And another thing that i always love is newscasters.
You might hear they use a lot of puns and stories like very cheesy, do they type oh yeah, it's always like yeah, like at the ends it's especially of human interest stories, there's always some sort of yeah yeah yeah yeah okay, i know what you're talking about.
Yeah, it was so funny yeah, so it's just a lot of a lot of fun to listen to.
But are those puns written into the script or do they make that up on the spot?
Is that?
I think both.
I mean, sometimes I think I think, again, it's more on the end of like more human interest stories.
Yeah.
You know, the fluffier thing is like dogs rescued or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
So you might kind of especially in local news you might hear pretty, some pretty cheesy things on the news when the stories are lighter.
So kind of interesting.
You can look out for those.
Yeah.
Really interesting.
Interesting.
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Do it the right way with Indeed. all right Michelle so let's teach some idioms today we've talked a little bit about what so the answer for our listener is it's completely different right I mean that newscaster cadence is going to be very different and it's but it's not really about accent they use a standard accent usually but it's more about delivery rhythm cadence but don't go to a party speaking like a newscaster is kind of my takeaway so far in the episode Yes, exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
Don't let that be.
Don't learn to speak like a newscaster unless you're actually going into that field.
Yeah.
Don't shadow.
I mean, it doesn't hurt to be able to do it, but don't use that as your primary material.
If you're shadowing, use something like a podcast like what we're doing here.
It's a much more natural cadence going on.
Right?
Exactly.
Yes.
Exactly.
So we're just going to talk about some expressions you might hear on the news that it is possible that some of these you might hear also in a different way, but they come from the news.
So Lindsay, what's the first one?
Yeah.
So the first one here is breaking news, right?
So people use this even just in casual life.
And that's the funny part.
So you'll hear this, you know, on CNN when there's...
It feels like everything is breaking news.
Oh, I was going to say that too.
On CNN, everything is breaking news.
It didn't used to be that way.
I really think they make a lot of money on the fact that everything is breaking news and everything's always red and flashing.
But what does breaking news even mean?
I realized we didn't explain.
I mean, I guess it means something new that just they just learned.
Right.
Something that just happened.
Big new news, especially election nights.
Oh, my God.
Talk about going crazy like we have a new election update.
Oh, my gosh.
It's like you feel crazy at the end.
But how do we use this in everyday life?
So if you don't want to bring your announcer voice to a party, but you maybe want to use the vocabulary, how do you do that?
Yeah.
You could say something like, breaking news, Cliff got engaged.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's fun.
That's fun because you're taking something that you're nodding to the news, right?
It's like a nod to the news, but you're applying it to your social life.
That's kind of cool.
Mm-hmm.
I think.
And you don't need to say it like a newscaster just because you take breaking news.
You don't need to be like, breaking news, everybody.
Cliff got engaged, right?
You don't need to do that.
No, no, no.
Totally.
Yeah, your cadence was very good the first time you demoed it.
It was clearly not using that announcer voice, right?
Right, right, right.
So the next thing is on the record or off the record.
Yeah.
So this is about if something can be officially quoted, right?
So you might hear somebody say like a source said off the record, right?
It's about if you're allowed to share exactly a quote, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sure there are all kinds of laws or rules that journalists follow.
In terms of what they can report and what they can't and sources and all that stuff.
So but we do take this into our everyday life, too.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, maybe you might just say to your friend off the record I heard that you know Mike and Carrie are getting divorced.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But on the news like or or maybe a reporter might be talking to another reporter.
They could say something like I spoke to a reporter but told him it was off the record.
So don't worry.
Yeah, perfect.
Okay.
So that's one.
And then the last one, Michelle, is what?
Back to you, right?
And Do we use this in regular life?
Not so much.
I mean, you could as a joke.
Yeah, you could as a joke, but you need to make it a joke, right?
So sometimes things mirror another environment so much that we actually need to make it a joke for it to work.
Does that make sense?
Like it's so much about the anchor space back to you that if you don't sort of say it in a silly way, People will be like does she think she's on the news right now?
Like, what's happening?
There goes that girl who always thinks she's on the news.
Oh, God, this episode is cracking me up.
It's cracking me up.
So what would that sound like in a socially acceptable way?
Let's say at a party.
What do you think?
Oh well, I mean like let's say, we're all you know around and maybe you kind of interrupted someone.
You interrupted this guy named Chris and you took the attention.
Then you might just say, OK, sorry, back to you, Chris.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
Good stuff.
So let's do a role play.
Michelle, what are we doing in this role play here?
Do we have any anchor speak?
We are reporters.
We are reporters.
Uh-oh.
Okay.
Let's see if I can do it.
You have all this experience.
I don't know.
So here we go.
I'm at the anchor desk and you are on the scene.
So you are at whatever.
Yeah.
So I'm the one that gets to stand out in the hurricane, right?
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
Here we go.
All right.
Okay, so we are going to take you over to Lindsay McMahon, who has breaking news.
Lindsay?
Thank you, Michelle.
I just spoke to a source off the record who said the shop on 33rd is officially closed down.
We'll have more information as the night goes on.
Back to you, Michelle.
How was that?
Give it a C minus, right?
No, I thought that was good.
No, but exactly.
And like, but you did, you weren't speaking in the same way that you're used to, right?
No, it wasn't the normal, it wasn't even the normal cadence for this podcast, right?
There was something elevated about it.
I mean, you are on stage and you are, you're right, you're punching each word a bit more.
You're really being thoughtful about which words are going to get kind of elongated or get more emphasis in the Senate.
Yep, exactly.
So really interesting.
So let's go through this.
Um, I said, take you over to Lindsay McMahon, who has breaking news.
And then I said, Lindsay, right.
They do that too.
They'll just, they'll just say the person's name, Lindsay.
Right.
Right.
I always wonder about that.
Yep.
And then I said, thank you, Michelle.
I just spoke to a source off the record who said, and I just punched that a little bit.
That's like one of those keywords, um, Who said the shop on 33rd is officially closed down.
Right.
And I added Memphis is there added a little drama is officially closed down.
Okay.
What else did I say, Michelle?
Well, then you continued to share information and then you said back to you, Michelle.
Nice.
Yeah.
So I feel like it's a very clear answer for our listener here on this.
What anchor?
The way that anchors speak anchor people, anchor women, anchor men is not the way that people speak in normal conversation.
Right.
And it's a great example what you said earlier.
Compare Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve, when he kind of riffs with Andy Cohen for hours at a time.
They are like, I don't know, they're like two little boys just like joking around.
And the cadence is nothing like when he's on CNN at 8 p.m.
Every night, right?
Yeah, as an anchor.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's very interesting, the different hats we wear the different ways.
I mean I mean there are probably tons of different ways that we can go further into even.
I mean you speak in a different way in many different contexts.
It's not just about the news.
I mean, you know, talking to you know, your boss talking to, you know, like, it's not like it.
It's not I think this is very stark, the difference.
So not, not everything is this much.
But there are slight differences sometimes depending on who you're talking to level of formality so many different things to listen out for.
But I mean, this was such a good question.
And really good to kind of.
It seems like this listener was observing that there's something different about the way they talk on the TV.
Well, that's a really important takeaway for our listeners here.
I want to highlight what you said, Michelle.
This could be an invitation to our listeners.
You guys are at the right level to start to pay attention to cadence differences.
As Michelle said, very stark difference.
We hope you noticed it.
But there are other environments.
Let's say, when you walk in to talk to your boss, then you walk out of your boss's office, then you talk to your coworkers in the corner.
Different cadence, right.
Most of the time that's something that's a little more subtle, but you should start to notice it, start to hear it, listen for it in other people.
That's going to be put you on the path to fluency, right?
Exactly.
All right, Lindsay, thanks for talking about this with me.
Thank you, Michelle, for your demo, your anchor woman demos.
We love that.
Thank you.
And everybody, we hope that you've enjoyed this episode and that you have a great day.
I love it.
So good.
All right, Michelle, talk to you soon.
Have a good day.
All right.
Bye.
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