Saturday, February 7, 2015

How do you say it?!

This is my second discussion post and I decided to make it a weekly thing (yay!) since the first one seemed to strike well with my followers.

So this week's topic will be...

Names: how do you pronounce them?

I'm sure all of us have been in a scenario like this:

*reads book*
*encounters a complicated looking name*
*makes up their own way of saying it*
*finds out it's wrong*
*changes way of saying it*

If you've never done that, I believe it's am indication that you haven't been reading enough, or I'm just really bad at figuring how to pronounce names.

Some of my common (and foolish) mistakes have been:

Caleb----- I say Ca-lab instead of Ca-lub. I remember having an argument about this with my friends, especially when even Divergent featured the name. (They won. I say it the right way now)

Penelope---- There was a Penelope in Harry Potter. Book club was how my obsession for HP started. We were all sorted into houses and there were activities to help us score points for our houses. I was in Slytherin- I know, I know, but we actually got the most number of house points because of me (take that, Gryffindor!). OK I'm going off-topic. I actually used to say Pen-a-lope. But the teacher in charge of book club corrected me after I correctly answered a question about this minor character. I've been trying to adapt to saying Pen-a-lop-ee, but it's hard. *cries*

Eragon---- Me: E-ra-gon
                   Other people: A-ra-gon
                   Me: OK OK, you win!!!

The worst thing is when a book is filled with weird looking names. Throne of Glass, I'm talking about you!!! How do you even pronounce Celaena Sardothien? And Ellywe? Eltentiya? I loved this book, but these unique names sure have my head pounding at times.
Thank god for this useful pronunciation guide!!



That's all for today!!! What about you? Do you find trouble saying characters' names when you read?

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