That should, of course, have been 'idea ... comes from' and 'not even from Alistair Cooke'.

@Afzal - OK, I concede on Alistair Cooke's British birth; I made a mistake. I was a regular listener to Letter from America, however, and would maintain that he had gained a soft American accent, no doubt from his Harvard days - what the Oxonian Review called 'the hint of a Boston Brahmin accent '.

But that's really by the by, unless you can provide a link to what he said about the pronunciation of the stressed indefinite article. I have found an article by William Safire, in the NYT , where he certainly talks of Cooke deploring the strong pronunciation of weak vowels in names etc by radio and TV announcers - what Safire calls 'the subversion of the shwa', but it makes no mention of indefinite articles.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19810405&id=FrlPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=agYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6881,2467842

On the other hand, I've also found a book where it is suggested that when presenting Masterpiece Theater, Cooke sometimes used AY (not a as in AT) where unstressed UH would have been more usual. Incidentally the book mentions only two pronunciations for a - UH and AY.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=YtojrMr0Ft4C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=alistair+cooke+indefinite+article&source=bl&ots=FLKHXTemnc&sig=TDLK8R5WgvOliEC-KTBcCh2Z0pc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YB9BU-aFN6rR7AbXsYH4Aw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=alistair%20cooke%20indefinite%20article&f=false

People who can't say 'one'. Does there really have to be only one way to pronounce things? Is everyone who doesn't speak with an RP accent 'wrong'? Sorry, but that is linguistic nonsense.

And talking about people who mistakenly use a strong a instead of a stressed an is, I would suggest, simply confusing the issue.

I'm afraid your apology for 'pretentious illiterate idiot' is rather negated by the 'ad hoc asinanity', but never mind, I imagine it's par for the course.

So just to finish off, this is from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, also obviously run by a lot of asinine idiots, as they, like me, also distinguish between the pronunciation of strong a and strong an:

a - /ə/, strong form /eɪ/ - (i.e. as in day)
an - /ən/, strong form /æn/ - (i.e. as in pan)

The same strong form for strong indefinite article a is given at Oxford Online, Macmillan, Cambridge and Collins online dictionaries (and there seems to be no difference between BrE and AmE here), so where your idea that this is disastrous and that 'the emphatic is to be pronounced as in the sound in 'pat' come from, I have no idea, and I suspect not even Alistair Cooke. I think you're out on a limb on this one.

@Moucon - I wonder what you mean exactly when you say 'I've got' is the subjective form. The term subjective usually applies only to pronouns (as in subjective case), and 'I' is subjective in both 'I have' and 'I've got', so I'm not quite sure what your point is there.

You're absolutely right that 'got' conveys no extra meaning, which has certainly confused some people, but it does suggest a difference in register. And I agree that in formal writing 'I have' is more appropriate. But I hardly ever do any formal writing, and in spoken language, at least in British English, 'have got' tends to be more natural, more idiomatic (in part precisely because it is less formal).

So in most of the situations that most of us use English, there is absolutely no need to leave out 'got', and 'have got' is just as 'correct' as 'have'. Informal (i.e. normal) doesn't mean incorrect. In fact many of us probably use both interchangeably, depending on context and the surrounding words.

Exactly the same applies to 'have got to' and 'have to'. And that's why we teach these constructions to foreign learners (together with their limits): so that they will sound more natural and speak good idiomatic English.

I'm glad, however, you don't consider Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Charles Lamb, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, et al. 'illiterate', seeing they all used 'have got'.

@Afzal - I'm intrigued as to just what nature of disaster occurs when I emphasise 'a' by pronouncing it as in 'say'. And although I might possibly use a stronger schwa instead, I can't imagine ever pronouncing 'a' as in pat, Alastair Cooke notwithstanding (and in any case he was American, while I am British, as I suspect are you). Although of course that's exactly what I would do if I was emphasising 'an'. The fact that here 'a' is followed by a consonant changes the whole thing, so I don't think they are comparable.

"The emphatic is to be pronounced ..." - according to whom? Do you have a direct line to God perhaps that you feel able to lay down the law like this? Does your somewhat idiosyncratic system of capitalisation perhaps come from the same set of rules, I wonder? Not to mention the rather quirky use of 'alphabetisation'?

But then, no doubt I'm simply a pretentious illiterate idiot.

@durendal - you might want to check your grammar before throwing brickbats at other people.

underink seems to have said it all, and I think this example sentence from Oxford Dictionaries Online shows how:

"The building looked as impressive in actuality as it did in photographs."

You could substitute 'in real life', but using actually would slightly change the emphasis, I'd say.

@Rashad - I enjoyed your first reply - it certainly made me laugh a couple of times, and I admire your quiet restraint. In your second one, you're getting there (in my opinion), but I think governmental would be something different altogether.

For example there has been a huge shift in public attitudes in Britain to things like marriage, the family and sexual orientation in the last two decades or so. OK, at local, group or individual level we can call this social change. But it has also has taken place at a societal level, regardless of government policies, influenced or perhaps reflected by civil society, including the media. Politics and the government have tended to follow the trend, not lead it. So I think you can talk here of a societal shift, but not necessarily of a governmental one.

Similarly the change of much of Britain to a multicultural society is a societal change, not a governmental change. Granted government immigration policies might have something to do with it, but it's the attitudes of society as a whole which will make it work or not. For example the general increase in mixed marriages is a societal change, not a governmental one. Yes, it's social change, but it's taking place at a societal level.

@Az - It is possible to constructively disagree with someone without insulting them, you know.

Nepal - from Wikipedia - in English - ne-PAWL; in Nepali: नेपाल [neˈpal] (you can hear both at Wikipedia) - so it look like the Aussies are closer to the native pronunciation.

I have to go with jayles - what exactly is 'superior' pronunciation? - is the southern English of pronunciation of grass etc /ɡrɑːs/ (as in arse) superior to northern English /ɡræs/ (as in ass)?

Is the RP and southern English pronunciation of poor as 'paw' superior to the Scottish 'pooer'?

Is a Dubliner's pronunciation inferior because he pronounces the u in Dublin more like the vowel sound in book than that in buck?

Of course not, it's all subjective. You prefer what you're used to, that's all.

Standard British pronunciation (which in British dictionaries tends to mean Southern English) largely comes from one dialect of Middle English (Central or East Midland) getting lucky by being in the right place at the right time - Elizabethan London.

Remember GBS's comment:

"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him"

Perhaps we need to extend it to include other members of the English-speaking family as well.

@jayles - I don't think HS's remarks were so much about the 'Indian' as the 'Antipodean' commentator, as the examples of he gives of the 'Indian' commentator are all in fact standard British English, or at least they are the same as my English, and of the pronunciation given in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary - whereas the ones he give as 'your', such as Tendulkar with "your hard ‘u’ (as in dull)" and Nepal with "your "‘pal’ " were presumably the 'Antipodean's' pronunciation.

My reading was that he was talking about differences amongst different strands of native speakers, not foreign learners.

My favourite dictionary (Oxford Advanced Learner's) defines 'politically correct' as:

'used to describe language or behaviour that deliberately tries to avoid offending particular groups of people'

which seems innocent enough to me, and I remember when it was first used it was generally considered a positive thing. I wonder when it started to be used pejoratively.

Who, incidentally, are the PCNSN?