Study Notes Test 4.1.  Dictation: Diana and the Media

 Double click on a word to see its meaning.

We bring you the first part of a BBC interview with Diana, the Princess of Wales. She talks openly about the problems of being a famous woman at a very young age. Later in the series you will hear her speaking about her more private life

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Today, we hear part of a unique¹ interview with the Princess of Wales,...

in which she tells Martin Bashir what it was like to become the most famous person in the world at the age of 19.

I wasn't daunted, and I'm not daunted by the responsibilities that that role creates.

It was a challenge - it is a challenge.

As for becoming Queen, it was never at the forefront of my mind when I married my husband.

It was a long way off, that thought.

The most daunting aspect was the media attention.

Because my husband and I, we were told, when we got engaged, that the media would go quietly, and it didn't;

and then when we were married, they said it would go quietly, and it didn't; and then it started to focus very much on me.

And I seemed to be on the front of a newspaper every single day, which is an isolating experience;

and the higher the media put you, the bigger the drop - and I was very aware of that.

Study Notes

Generally, before a consonant we say A, and before a vowel we say AN

But in this case the word "unique" begins with the sound |j] (like "you" or "yes"), so we say "A UNIQUE INTERVIEW"

Diana's emotion can be understood from the fact that she does not say "an" before "isolating experience" When you are nervous, you make strange mistakes when you speak The word "experience" is a countable noun, and so it is necessary to use an article or a determiner, or to use the plural form

Throughout her life as a princess, Diana was worried about the possibility of being destroyed by the media The expression "the drop" is in this case her own destruction In English there is a popular saying "What goes up must come down", and Diana wanted to avoid the drop for as long as possible She talks about her strategies for being strong, and about her weaknesses, in later Dictations in this course.

The expression "what it was like" is similar to "how it was". The Princess of course became the most famous person in the world when she was first engaged to Prince Charles and then married him in 1991.

"Daunted" is a word which Diana used quite often to speak about her life Later in the series, she will talk about how she learned to love crowds of people, even though she was "daunted" (or worried) about her ability to talk to lots of people The words "that that" are necessary, because the first is a relative pronoun like "which" (for example in "The language that American people speak is different from British English") and the second is a determiner - the opposite of "this" (for example in "That man is looking at me")

Diana could have said "I'm not frightened by the responsibilities which the role of Princess has given me"

We understand that Diana's life was difficult at the beginning of her marriage, and the way in which she stresses "it is" tells us that it continued to be difficult until the end of her life. But we realise that she accepted her responsibilities-they were a challenge, not a problem.

Phonetically, some people think that Diana repeats exactly the same words, but after listening several times, it is easier to hear the word "was". The difference between the present tense and the past can be very small!

If something is "at the forefront of your mind", then you think about it quite often Diana is saying that she did not think very often about the possibility of becoming Queen when she married Prince Charles.

Elizabeth II, Prince Charles' mother, is still on the throne of Britain at the time of writing When Lady Diana Spencer became the Princess of Wales, she knew that Elizabeth would continue to be Queen for many years - the thought of becoming Queen was "a long way off" - in other words far away from her mind

Again Diana uses the word "daunt" - she found it difficult to accept all the stones about her in the media, and the constant presence of photographers It is ironic that 'paparazzi' on motorcycles were involved during the last moments of her life.

One of Queen Elizabeth's most famous phrases is "my husband and I", and clearly the Princess of Wales has been influenced by her mother-in-law. Diana is not happy that people told her that the media would not be a problem, because after she was engaged the media was not "quiet". One of the vowel sounds which distinguishes upper-class English speech can be heard in this course in which Diana says "quietly", in such a way that it sounds almost like "quatlay" When people imitate this "posh" accent, they often pronounce "ly" as "lay"

At the time of the Royal Wedding in 1991, the media spoke about Charles and Diana together, but then after a few years, the stories were all about Diana

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