closing

In my previous entry, I discussed the pronunciation of 'next station' in the Singapore MRT announcements. One other feature of the pronunciation of the recordings on the North-East line that struck me is for the word closing (as in 'Doors closing.'), particularly the vowel in the first syllable.

The vowel in the first syllable of closing might be pronounced in three ways:

• [əʊ] : the old-fashioned, traditional RP British way
• [oʊ] : with some diphthongal movement, but not very much; a bit like how Americans would pronounce it
• [o:] : a long monophthong, which sounds very Singaporean

The announcer uses the first of these, which to me sounds rather ridiculous. It sounds like she is trying to pretend to be the Queen of England!

Unlike the careful enunciation of 'next station', which I argued enhances intelligibility, I see no value in using [əʊ] for closing. It seems to me that either [oʊ] or [o:] would be far more appropriate in the context of Singapore.

One other thing that surprised me is that the hyper-correct pronunciation of closing occurs in the utterance 'Doors closing' (in which there is no article and no auxiliary verb ― it would be rather more standard to say 'The doors are closing'). The use of a very careful pronunciation of closing in this abbreviated utterance with non-standard grammar sounds rather strange to me.