jkb@sdcrdcf.UUCP (John Barbee) (06/26/84)
Subject: Pronunciation
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
I was having a discussion about the upcoming Dune movie with my
friend on the way to work this morning, and the conversation got around
to the pronunciation of people, places, and things in general in the
world of sci-fi. She was saying that when she reads an "unpronouncable"
word, she stops trying to pronounce it altogether because a) she doesn't
want to go to the trouble every time of trying to remember how she said
it the last time or, b) doesn't want to mis-pronounce (read: pronounce
it differently than the author intended here) the word.
I saw an interview with a relatively well-known sci-fi author (Asimov
or Bradbury or ?) sometime back, and on the same subject he said that he
didn't care how people pronounced the words in his books.
If he was concerned about how they were pronounced, he would include
a glossary/dictionary with pronunciations in the back of the book. I'm
I'm curious as to how y'all out there feel about and deal with this
problem.
Yours until the gophers come home,
jbrh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (06/28/84)
I think that what I do with unpronounceables is about what I do with really long names: just use the random collection of letters as a pointer to the character that my mind has assembled. Of course, this will only occur after several mentions of the character. Another help is that if the character is ever referred to by a nickname, I will usually use that as a handle. I try to stay over 400 wpm (I don't time myself, I'm just estimating based on my max of 800 on newspaper articles (narrow columns) and 600 on most books), so I usually don't labor over the name. I just finished "Time Enough for Love," and I was thrown a little by the fact that Hamadryad was referred to as Hamadear, Hamadarling, and other such things. Once, someone was asking a question, and to address it to her added "Ham?" I thought he was asking if anyone wanted some of the salted pig meat. (She's also called Hammy, and that's very funny to us at this facility, but the rest of you won't get it...) -- Randwulf (Randy Haskins); Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh
duntemann.wbst@XEROX.ARPA (07/09/84)
While on our way to a hamfest Sunday we were discussing the Dune trailer, and found to considerable amusement that we had four different ways of pronouncing Aetrides (God, I hope that's spelled correctly...) It's a problem that comes up only in discussion, fortunately, as I reserve the right to choose how I pronounce nonstandard words. You'd be surprised how vehemently some people defend their own way of pronouncing something as The Real Thing. I also write the stuff, and the second most frequently asked question (after where you get those crazy ideas) is, of course, where do you get those crazy names. My answer is both simple and honest: I get them from my high school yearbook. The following names were classmates in woodshop: Czuchra, Hkrepech, and Labiak. Bajh was originally Bayh, whom I named after the Governor of Indiana, and changed only after my sister cautioned me against offending politicians. (Who are simultaneously the most vicious and most powerful people in America.) Many slavic names sound (and look) amazing alien-like to WASP types. Not all Polish names end in ski or wicz; my mother's maiden name was Przybytek (Polish for "chalice") and a personal favorite Polish word (strur, "rat") will be an Evil Emperor type in a novel I have on the drawing board. If your high school class were all WASP types, get yourself a Chicago phone book. I forgive people who can't pronounce my story character names quite readily, as it's a rare person who can pronounce "Duntemann" correctly without some coaching. And hell, what's in a name, anyway? --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@xerox