My worst example was the word GIF pronounced like the peanut butter instead of properly as in Graphical. It’s worse because Amanda Montell was writing a linguistics book about the history of language and words.
Recent example was “eschew” which is pronounced Eh-shoo but the narrator said “Eskew” and it confused me so much I had to Google it to make sure I hadn’t been saying it wrong my whole life. What exmaples have you found?
Narrator here.
I recently did a fantasy book with a made up word in it. The made up word was almost identical to an existing English word (albeit one that isn’t used much), so the director and I agreed to pronounce it the same way.
A few weeks after recording, the producer reached out and asked us to re-record each instance of that one word (more than 500 instances) because the author requested a different pronunciation. We did it. It took hours.
The book got released with the corrected pronunciation, and almost every review mentions that I’m an idiot for not knowing how to pronounce the word.
You can’t win.
I think it’s awesome that you’re a narrator. How did you get into the field?
Why don’t more fantasy authors provide pronunciation guides for their “bespoke” words?
Like the one Robert Jordan so kindly provided at the end of each of “The Wheel of Time” books?
That seems like a recipe for disaster to me for narrators and their editors.
Sorry to hear that you got this backlash. But also good you offer some behind the scenes info on that, because I don’t think many people know how audiobooks are recorded. I really love the Rivers of London audiobooks, read by Kobna Holbrooke-Smith and in some books there’re interviews with him and Ben Aaronovitch which give some insides into how these audiobooks are developed and produced. Really interesting stuff and I only realized how much work actually goes into these audiobooks when I listend to the interviews. Maybe you could do an AMA or something here about your work at some point. I think many people might be interested.
Reminds me of the character ‘Lady Dimitrescu’ from Resident Evil Village. It was written out for months and when it was finally officially pronounced for the first time people complained because it looks like a Romanian name, but apparently it’s pronounced like ‘Domitresk’ or something like it. The writers told the complainers to fuck off and now it is what it is.
For anyone curious this seems to be a series called Alex Versus by Benedict Jacka. Found an old ama and even there audiobook listeners compilation about the intended pronunciation feeling off.
Ugh. I’m sorry that happened. Based on your profession, it feels reasonable to assume you take some degree of pride in your language skills. So, even if they’re a bunch of philistines, I could imagine it still being a bit galling to read that same criticism over and over.
For my part, I recognize that nobody can know everything about everything all time, and that even masters of their craft take missteps from time to time. And, of course, I’m not gonna bust somebody’s balls for not knowing how to say, I dunno, an IUPAC name, or not using an Italianate pronunciation for binomial nomenclature. But when I hear a narrator I admire make a gross pronunciation of a word that is neither “made-up,” nor foreign, nor esoterically technical…oh yeah, I get super-judgy about it. Sure, every now and again, I have one of those little “oh shit, have I been saying this word incorrectly my entire life?!” moment, and I’ll pause the narrator to go look up the pronunciation. But often enough, it’s more like "motherfucker, you do words for a living, and you don’t know how to pronounce ‘canoe?!’"