Listener Reviews of Books Would be Great

[rita1075]

Oh, thank you, thank you for all of the kind words!!
I will not give up recording.
annise wrote:
I wondered how I could convince you to keep on , so I went and downloaded your reading of Pied Beauty and listened. I enjoyed it very much.
Thank you so much, annise. I majored in English literature, and that poem was the very first poem I memorized during my Introduction to British and American literature.

[John Lieder]

With the wide spread of the English language, who is to say what is "correct" pronunciation? American English differs from British English, which in turn differs from Australian English...which is "correct"? And the differences between regions of the US...Northeastern, Southern, Texas twang, Midwestern...are any of them "wrong"? Not to speakers from those areas, although others might think differently.

The English language is wacky anyway and I admire those who can speak it as their second language, even if they are not especially fluent. Who would think that you apply for a "job" (jahb) but read the Book of "Job" (jobe) and "polish" (pah-lish) your shoes but eat your "Polish" (Poe-lish) sausage? (So you pronounce these words differently when they're capitalized???) And who outside of my great state of Illinois would even guess that here we pronounce our cities of San Jose as San Joe's, Cairo as Kay-roh and Milan as MY-lun.

[PaulW]

Oh, thank you, thank you for all of the kind words!!
I will not give up recording.

I wondered how I could convince you to keep on , so I went and downloaded your reading of Pied Beauty and listened. I enjoyed it very much.

Thank you so much, annise. I majored in English literature, and that poem was the very first poem I memorized during my Introduction to British and American literature.

Then I think that one factor alone makes it that much more special to us here at Librivox, and all the more reason you should finish it. What a wonderful contribution it will be!

[kayray]

Oh, thank you, thank you for all of the kind words!!
I will not give up recording.

HOORAY! This is good news :)

[AGSec]

Perhaps someone can direct me to this wonderful directory of exactly how "English words that any educated person should know" should be pronounced. Who compiled it, Shakespeare? Oh no, it couldn't be him, he had a Warwickshire accent. God perhaps? Or Cranmer?
Also, is it available for mp3 download? I hope it's PD

WELL, it is available as automatic psychic download at any good Educated-English centres near you. Compiled by the overlords of the Elevated-English-Society; it is copyrighted, unfortunately, but every download comes with a licence-to-use which also gives you the right to feel entitled, and the mission to defend the good-spoken-ness of English around the world.

Didn't you get the memo?

For Andy (i.e. British English speakers), but not necessarily Jc (i.e. non-British English speakers - "You say tomato; I say tomato."), the Concise Oxford Dictionary is a good starting point.

[Hokuspokus]

I will not give up recording.

[sjmarky]

You know, maybe here should be a sticky at the top of this forum titled "Librivox Policy on Listener Reviews". I know it's in the Wiki, but maybe needs to be more prominent - might head off yet another one of these posters who seem to come around every couple of months.

I don't know why the sf-naples of the world feel the need to be able to publicly humiliate volunteer readers, which is what it comes down to. None of his type ever want listener reviews so that they can pay compliments, do they?

[ExEmGe]

For Andy (i.e. British English speakers), but not necessarily Jc (i.e. non-British English speakers - "You say tomato; I say tomato."), the Concise Oxford Dictionary is a good starting point.

Thank you but I prefer SOD to COD. Let's be clear - dictionaries, guides etc. are only descriptive not proscriptive. They are, at best, only an indication of the majority view. There is scarcely a word in the language that can't reasonably be pronounced in more than one way; and in any case, pronunciation changes over time. It's highly unlikely that I shall ever buy another edition of SOD, let alone OED so I shall soon have it wrong (again!)

And, for what it's worth I always thought that Wilfred Pickles was an excellent newsreader. (Now beat that for an obscure reference!

[lomond]

Greetings -

I am wondering how much a PL'er should say about pronunciation in their notes after reading a section. I agree that it is poor form to arbitrarily tell someone, "You sure mangled the pronunciation of 'borquayish' in the last section you read!!!"

But is it acceptable to ask the reader why they chose to pronounce a word a given way and to offer an alternative pronunciation?

And what about the situations where it is absolutely necessary that a word or name be pronounced in a particular way, i.e. to maintain a rhyming sequence?

I want to be constructive with my comments and queries about pronunciations, but I absolutely do not want to come across as obsessively critical or arrogantly omniscient.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Lomond

[Cori]

Hmm, Lomond, I think a safe course would be to feedback to the BC in a private message, and let them decide whether to tackle it with the reader or not. And if it came up while PLing for a soloist (or for the BC of a group project), then contact the MC. I don't think it'd ever be okay to mention pronunciation in a project thread, unless the reader had explicitly asked for that kind of feedback. (Or perhaps it could be raised in a general way, in a group reading, where people might want to find a consensus for saying a particular name, before too many files are recorded. That's pretty rare, though. And would only apply to, say, the name of the author, or the main character -- something that came up constantly. Anything else would be chalked up to individual taste.)

The thing is, there are SO many different global-regional pronunciations where each person completely takes for granted theirs is the One Correct Way ... that in many (most?) cases it couldn't be decided whether the reader or the PLer was correct / closest to the intention of the author. However, the reader is the one doing the work and taking the risk of putting their voice out there in the first place, so they get the benefit of the doubt. And even where a BC or MC might offer feedback, the reader would still be within their LibriVox rights to say "thanks, but I'll keep it the way I read it."

[annise]

I agree there are times when it is a temptation as a PL to comment on these things but what I do is go back and read the PL requirements . So my PL OK means - all of the requirements have been met.
My views on accents, pronounciation, reading speed interpretation etc. aren't asked for or given

However I have notified the BC by PM if there is something I feel maybe should be addressed and left it up to them.

And Cori's comments on pronunciation says it beautifully - of course mine's perfect , everyone else's is either odd , very odd or even odder

Anne

[Starlite]

Hee hee I have heard many times the word "boatswain" pronounced exactly at it is spelled knowing that it should be pronounced "Bo'sun". I still knew what the reader meant and smiled to myself. This is just the Librivox way.

Esther

[kayray]

I am reminded of Hugh's delightful and unique pronunciation of "muslin" in his Beatrix Potter story :) I wouldn't change it for the world.

[kristin]

And what about the situations where it is absolutely necessary that a word or name be pronounced in a particular way, i.e. to maintain a rhyming sequence?

This is not necessarily true. The words could be imperfect rhymes like stone/frown. In the case of some poem we did a while back (I can't remember at the moment which one) the rhyme was intentionally wrong to give the feel of an older poem and the words would not have rhymed in the period it was written.

I do find myself saying "really?" at pronunciations sometimes but then again my pronunciation isn't perfect, though I do try to look up words I don't know, I've found a few that I thought I knew how to pronounce and discovered I was quite wrong (DET retus vs. de TRITE us, I'd always heard it the first way (perhaps it's a regional thing) and the correct pronunciation sounds so very wrong to me.) I would like to know if I'm pronouncing something incorrectly but think this should be a reader's choice. I would advise any readers who would like to be notified of this to ask their proof listeners for that type of comment but in general, no, it shouldn't be part of the proof listening process.

[Leni]

Greetings -

I am wondering how much a PL'er should say about pronunciation in their notes after reading a section. I agree that it is poor form to arbitrarily tell someone, "You sure mangled the pronunciation of 'borquayish' in the last section you read!!!"
(...)

And what about the situations where it is absolutely necessary that a word or name be pronounced in a particular way, i.e. to maintain a rhyming sequence?

Lomond

I somehow feel this comment was directed at me. Probably not the author's intention, but, as pronunciation is something I've been struggling with since I started contributing to LV, that seemed to meet my deepest concerns. I am a (most obvious) non native English speaker, and very often I've been feeling like rita in her first post in this thread: ready to just give up on any chapters I've claimed. I laughed at the thread about how long it takes you to complete a certain amount of minutes of recording - while people counted the time they spent getting acquainted with the text, recording, editing, I have to add to that a significant amount of minutes of dictionary, since I have to check the pronunciation of many words. That is probably due to the fact I picked very "learned" books, with some complicated vocabulary. I noticed then that I wasn't sure about the pronunciation of words I am very used to reading in scholarly material - but never heard people speaking. That's probably also due to the fact I am VERY worried about the quality of my work, and want to avoid making (too much of) a fool of myself - or sound like an uneducated person.

Since I started contributing, I've been waiting for a PLer or BC to send me a message saying "Hey, that word was mispronounced, can you please re-record it?" or something like that. Of course, that hasn't happened so far, and soon I learned that's the LV way. People here in general are really nice (hey, that's number one rule! ), I certainly felt really welcomed and encouraged in all my efforts. However, and while I do understand many people don't want that, I'd like to receive more feedback regarding my work. I'd rather receive a pm from a PLer saying I should re-record and edit something in my file than having it cataloged wrong (even though I suspect that 3 words in the last chapter I submitted in English were most likely incorrect).

So, is there any way for people who do want that kind of feedback to get it, without stepping on the toes of people who would prefer not to? I certainly do not want to disturb LV's excellent environment, or any change in policies whatsoever. I just wonder if there is anyway for me to tell PLers and BCs etc that I am willing to hear more about my mistakes than a standard "good job, thank you", without having to post each and every file in a topic with with "CC" in the beginning. Mainly cause, if I can get more feedback about what I did wrong, the "Good job" feedback will be much more meaningful.

Leni