On pronunciation . . .

DeRamos · Post by **DeRamos** » August 6th, 2009, 1:44 pm

TriciaG wrote:Place names are some of the worst, and that's a fact!

You'd think Buena Vista, Virginia would be pronounced like... well, like that. But no - it's BYOO-na Vista! Methinks the "locals" sometimes butcher the locality name, and then get offended when people don't pronounce it right.

New Orleans. Exaggerated touristy pronunciation? Actual local pronunciation? Neighboring regions pronunciation? American broadcast TV pronunciation? Francophone pronunciation? Discuss. (Even The Animals' recording of "House of the Rising Run" featured at least two discrete ways to say, er sing, the name: "New Or-le-ons" and "New Aw-leens.")

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » August 6th, 2009, 2:38 pm

Kent is full of weirdly pronounced place names. My father-in-law told me that he was born in Fair Beneath. It was a long time before I realised that it was Fairbourne Heath.

One of my bookmarks (because it would be really embarrassing if I pronounced a Kent place name wrong

) is http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/content/articles/2007/06/07/places_pronunciation_feature.shtml First prize goes to Trottiscliffe, pronounced by ye venerable locals as TROZZ-lee.

Ruth

Post by **chocoholic** » August 6th, 2009, 2:59 pm

I've been having fun with this book (unfortunately on Google Books so not accessible to all):

The Pronunciation of 10,000 Proper Names, copyright 1901
"Giving Famous Geographical and Biographical Names, Names of Books, Works of Art, Characters in Fiction, Foreign Titles etc."

It has come in handy a few times.

*****
Oh look, it's on Archive too:
http://www.archive.org/details/pronunciationpr01mackgoog

And NO, I do NOT think we should record this.

WildCityWoman · Post by **WildCityWoman** » August 6th, 2009, 3:07 pm

Hey! Thanks to all of you for your replies - and thanks to Penny for tipping me off that I have messages here - didn't mean to be rude and run off.

It's just that life (and work) gets in the way, eh?

I'll go over the posts that have been made since my last visit and reply to them.

Thanks again, to all of you - it has been (so far) a very interesting discussion.

WildCityWoman · Post by **WildCityWoman** » August 6th, 2009, 3:31 pm

Zelzega wrote:I completely understand about pronunciation. The book that I am currently listening to has, in 1 of the chapters, a list of famous Artists. The person reading that particular chapter mispronounced nearly every Artist's name. As an art history student, it upset me greatly to hear such common names (some of the most famous artists in history) being mispronounced so horrifically. Since I have to hear these names on a daily basis, I know the names quite well.

I want to volunteer for LibriVox (which I may do soon), but I want to make sure that I can read clearly and I want to make sure that I know how to pronounce names correctly before I read them on a recording.

There are also a lot of scientific terms in this book and you can hear the readers pause for a second before reading the words, but they read the scientific words well, it makes me smile to listen to those.

Eggzactly . . . that's what I mean. This isn't a 'race' thing I'm on about - it isn 't because I don't like the way a certain race of people talk . . . it's just that if a word like 'discipline' is being used, I would prefer the reader not pronounce it as dis-SYPE-line . . . I don't exactly remember the words that were mispronounced, but it was stuff like that.

That is just a hypothetical example . . .

Let me tell you something - English is my first language - my French is terrible - I know enough of it to read the backs of the soup cans.

IF and only IF I were going to try reading a book in the French language, I would make darn sure I was pronouncing those words correctly. I'd have somebody listen to it first, for one thing . . . somebody here said it might have been the editing that went wrong.

Well, it might have been - but here I am NOT going back to my listening experience of [edited by admin].

Yes - some old English words, I'm sure but they were NOT words that are out of use - they are ordinary everyday words.

I find some people insist on re-writing the English language - they arrogantly insist words are pronounced as they want them to be pronounced.

Ever hear newscasters on the TV? They change the names of people, places - they pronounce those names just how they want to.

I've seen journalists interview somebody who has actually said his/her name out loud and the journalist still mispronounces it.

If you were face to face with me and I introduced myself as 'CAR-lee', as in Carly Simon - would you not pronounce it that way when you addressed me?

Or would you just go ahead and call me 'car-LEE', just because you wanted to say the name that way?

Again - a small hypothetical 'what if' . . .

It is like taking a picture of the Queen of England, then distracting the viewer by putting a lot of striped balloons in the foreground - ridiculous example, ok . . . but it would be distracting and it would spoil the picture.

Well, reading is like that.
I don't expect anybody here to be a pro - and I do expect maybe three or four mispronounciations in a reading - but certainly not every second line or so - it's just too much.

About blaming the editors - isn't that the other readers? Maybe the other readers didn't want to say anything. Maybe they were just too polite to say anything.

WildCityWoman · Post by **WildCityWoman** » August 6th, 2009, 3:34 pm

DeRamos wrote:
TriciaG wrote:Place names are some of the worst, and that's a fact!

You'd think Buena Vista, Virginia would be pronounced like... well, like that. But no - it's BYOO-na Vista! Methinks the "locals" sometimes butcher the locality name, and then get offended when people don't pronounce it right.
New Orleans. Exaggerated touristy pronunciation? Actual local pronunciation? Neighboring regions pronunciation? American broadcast TV pronunciation? Francophone pronunciation? Discuss. (Even The Animals' recording of "House of the Rising Run" featured at least two discrete ways to say, er sing, the name: "New Or-le-ons" and "New Aw-leens.")

Heh! Heh! A lot of people saw NAW-lins.

See? That's where I would be wrong - I would have said 'There is a house in New Or-LEENS, they call the rising sun . . .

You would have said OR-lee-ons.

But if I was recording a chapter of a book here, I'd expect my editors to say - hey! Carly . . . re-do that segment - you're saying it wrongly.

WildCityWoman · Post by **WildCityWoman** » August 6th, 2009, 3:38 pm

Well, like I said - my pronunciation is terrible too. I fumble with words a lot - that's one of the reason I don't record my readings.

One of the reasons I enjoy listening to audio books/stories is because I learn pronunciation that way. I actually write and use words to find out later I've been saying 'wrong all along' . . . wrongly, eh?

But seriously - I like to put on a recording of a book, along with the text version then listen and read - it helps me with French phrases, or Spanish phrases.

I like reading Cormac McArthy (I think that's his full name). He uses a lot of Spanish . . . and I love listening to somebody read it, so I can impress everybody by reading the phrases aloud.

I always forget them an hour later though - ha ha!

WildCityWoman · Post by **WildCityWoman** » August 6th, 2009, 3:40 pm

Anyway - feel free to contact me on the e mail program here - I'll get a notification and come back to it.

I'm immersed in a bit of work right now, so I can't hang in here all night.

Thanks again folks for your interest in this topic. I think we're all learning a lot from it.