[ExI] pronunciation standards and cow lifeforms

[spike]

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
...
> 
> "This is a care-f," said the woman's voice, possibly from Sesame
> Street, showing a carf ambling beside a cow. "Say `care-f'!"
> 
> All the little Aussies dutifully cried: "`Caaaaaare-f'! Damien Broderick


This brings up two unrelated questions.

We use the internet as a standardizer of spellings.  Could not we figure out
some means of making it function also as a standardizer of pronunciation?
Consider that American society once had a standard of pronunciation back in
the bad old days when our main information pipe was the television, or back
further in the worse old days when there were only three channels.  (Yes my
young friends, it was that bad.)  That standard was the evening newscaster
Walter Cronkite.  He sounded like he knew things, he had no detectable
regional dialect.  Everyone could understand him.  But network news has been
on the decline for some time, certainly ever since the internet showed up.
Cronkite's network CBS has burned away its credibility as a news source, and
besides we can read faster than Cronkite or anyone can talk, so now we use
the internet.  How can we use it to help standardize pronunciation?

Since you mention cows and "carfs," we often see references to cowboys,
usually in the rugged independent persona of the American cowboy.  We can
picture an American cowboy, with the leather chaps, the bandana, the six
shooter etc.  But nearly every country on this planet devours beef, so they
must have cows too, so they need cowboys.  Would not the European cowboy or
cowhuman have all the same needs as her American counterpart, and would not
the European cowpeople develop all the same characteristics?  Would not the
European cowperson share much of the same equipment, and develop the same
attitudes, a similar independent cussedness?

spike