Pronouncing the unpronounceable

[Extrocomp]

I sometimes enjoy reading Star Trek books out loud but it's not always easy to do when writers come up with lots of bizarrely-spelled alien names.

Anyone know how to pronounce ;At from Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders? Or Kh!lict from V. E. Mitchell's Windows On A Lost World? Does Greg Cox know the correct pronunciation for (*) from his Q Continuum trilogy?

 

[F. King Daniel]

When I would see "(*)" on the page, I'd hear a *bing!* in my head like when a microwave is finished. Not sure if that's what Greg had in mind.

 

[Christopher]

Or Kh!lict from V. E. Mitchell's Windows On A Lost World?

An exclamation point is often used to represent a tongue click, like in the !Kung language of southwestern Africa. It specifically represents an alveolar click, basically clicking the tongue off the roof of the mouth. If you recall the Alien Nation TV series (and movie, maybe), they used that click a lot in the aliens' language.

 

[Extrocomp]

Maybe the word Khlict and the click inside the word are meant to be be pronounced simultaneously in the aliens' native language, but the closest the human mouth can approximate is "Kh-(click)-lict" or "(click)-lict".

 

[Greg Cox]

What's really embarrassing is when the audiobook people call to ask how a certain name is pronounced and you have to confess that you have no idea.

"Um, it looked good on the page . . . ."

 

[Christopher]

What's really embarrassing is when the audiobook people call to ask how a certain name is pronounced and you have to confess that you have no idea.

The people who did the Only Superhuman audiobook corrected my own assumption about how the name "Arkady" is pronounced. I thought it was like "arcade-ee," but it's "Ar-kah-dee." On the other hand, I intended the name "Lydie Clement" to have a French pronunciation, and they gave it an English pronunciation where the first name rhymed with "Heidi."

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, it's not just made-up alien names. The Eugenics Wars books were full of Indian names and locations that I was no expert on pronouncing.

"Um, I don't know how that village's name is pronounced. I found it on a map."

But did that ask me how to pronounce "Puyallup," a city in Washington state? No, they clearly did not .

(To be fair, nobody outside WA gets that right. I have dim memories of Johnny Carson mangling it on "The Tonight Show" aeons ago . . . .)

 

[Christopher]

^It's "Pew-Al-up," basically, isn't it?

 

[Greg Cox]

^It's "Pew-Al-up," basically, isn't it?

Yep. Alas, poor Anthony Steward Head utterly mangles it in the EW audiobook.

On the other hand, Darrin McGavin got it right in the THE NIGHT STRANGLER, when Kolchak is assigned to cover the Daffodil Festival in Puyallup (which is a real thing, btw).

"Puyallup?" he exclaims in disbelief?

I keep waiting for somebody to try to say it on iZOMBIE.

 

[Timewalker]

Yeah, it's not just made-up alien names. The Eugenics Wars books were full of Indian names and locations that I was no expert on pronouncing.

"Um, I don't know how that village's name is pronounced. I found it on a map."

But did that ask me how to pronounce "Puyallup," a city in Washington state? No, they clearly did not .

(To be fair, nobody outside WA gets that right. I have dim memories of Johnny Carson mangling it on "The Tonight Show" aeons ago . . . .)

I once heard a weathercaster from Ontario try to pronounce "Ponoka" (a town in my province). The accent is on the second syllable; the "o" is long. She tried several times and finally blurted out "PO-no-ka!"... whereupon everyone in Alberta promptly had a reaction.

And just before the writ was dropped for our federal election last summer, I got a phone call from an obnoxious Conservative campaign worker who demanded to know if I planned to support the party candidate in "the riding of Red-Deer-LAY-comb."

Well, that's not remotely how "Lacombe" is pronounced (think of the French scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; that's how it's pronounced). So I asked where she was calling from, assuming the answer would be somewhere in Ontario. To my disgust, the call originated from Calgary, the next city south of here. There's no excuse for that level of ignorance other than illiteracy.

 

[Greg Cox]

True story: I once got a solicitation call from a telemarketer wanting to know if I was interested in "Exana" videotapes. Took me a few moments to realize that she meant XENA, as in the warrior princess . . .

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe there's some Federation committee that decides how to pronounce 'unpronounceable' alien names when a new world joins.

And also how to work it out if two races with the same name try to join up!

 

[Christopher]

True story: I once got a solicitation call from a telemarketer wanting to know if I was interested in "Exana" videotapes. Took me a few moments to realize that she meant XENA, as in the warrior princess . . .

Not a student of Greek, I take it.

Although sometimes it goes beyond pronunciation to misinterpreting the whole word. At Cleveland ConCoction recently, I was puzzled when someone asked me what I thought about the Star Trek: Abraxas films, until I realized he meant Axanar.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I am often frustrated when I hear bad attempts at Asian names by English speakers who have obviously encountered plenty of people with Asian names before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_(PCC-772)
Back in 2010, I saw a news report wherein U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pronounced "Cheonan" sort of French-style like "shuh-nahn" instead of properly "chuhn-ahn". I shook my head a lot at that.

But in fairness, a lot of names in the world are totally lousy for anglicizing in speech. Case in point, the modern Mandarin rendition of this Chinese emperor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Xuanzong_of_Tang

 

[Maurice]

Ask people in Nevada about this. People who live there pronounce it Neh-vad-ah, while everyone else insists on saying Nuh-VAH-da.

 

[Stevil2001]

That goes for lots of places. I live in Connecticut, where they say "new HA-ven," but the rest of America says "NEW haven."

 

[Enterprise1701]

Ask people in Nevada about this. People who live there pronounce it Neh-vad-ah, while everyone else insists on saying Nuh-VAH-da.

Really? Everyone I know in Indiana pronounces Nevada how you say it should be.

 

[Christopher]

I remember how weird it was for me when we started getting buses with pre-recorded voices giving the destinations, and the voice -- presumably recorded somewhere else in the country -- pronounced some Cincinnati locations wrong. Like "Bur-net Woods" instead of "Bur-net Woods" and "Ma-rie-mont" instead of "Ma-riemont" (like "Mary-mont").

Although that's nothing compared to GPS gaffes. I encountered a really bizarre one when leaving the hotel at the end of Cleveland ConCoction. I had to turn onto a road called Brookpark and the GPS inexplicably pronounced it as "Brew'k-pair'k."

 

[DonIago]

Heh heh...I had a GPS pronounce Boston as "Boo-ston". Friend-passenger and I got a good laugh out of that every time it came up!

 

[Timewalker]

Maybe there's some Federation committee that decides how to pronounce 'unpronounceable' alien names when a new world joins.

And also how to work it out if two races with the same name try to join up!

If so, they did a lousy job during the TNG era.