David, from Recorded Books, rang the other day.
He had a list of words he wanted to run through, to hear how we wanted them pronounced.
Recorded Books have done this for every book so far. It’s mostly names. People’s names and place names.
Believe you me, some of these words, when spoken with an Australian accent, come out very flat.
Some of the words we were asked to pronounce.
- Tse
- Henri
- Merchett
- Ghyslain
- Aeolus
- Hebe
- Hella
How would you pronounce them?
Tse. Tss – ee, but short, not long. Emphasis on first syllable
Henri. On-ray. Emphasis on second syllable
Merchett. Mer-chett. Emphasis on second syllable
Ghyslain. Giz-lane. Emphasis almost even here, but a little heavier on the second syllable.
Aeolus. A (as in hay)-ole-uss. Emphasis on the second syllable. (Most people, we think, do it on the third).
Hebe. Hee-bee. Emphasis on the first syllable.
Hella. Hell-ah. Emphasis on the first syllable. The ‘ah’ is very short.
Engen. Enn-gen. The g here is a hard g, not a soft g. (That is, not the g in engine, more like the g in gas.) Emphasis on the first syllable.
How’d you go?
8 replies on “The Sounds of Confluence”
Reading these I’d have assumed…
‘tsɛɪ̯ — single syllable, (t)say, but very short.
ã’ʁi — in the French pronunciation with nasal E and guttural R
gɪ’len — again as French proper name, there is an alternate pronunciation d͡ʒɪz’lɛɪ̯n but it’s rare enough that it’s not have occurred to me.
Hebe and Hella as given except… had I seen Henri and Ghyslain first then I might have gone with the Francophone vibe so ‘ɛbɛ and ɛlɑː (eh-beh, eh-lah).
Our Tse comes across as very Ocker compared, with its long, drawn out vowels. (Using Ocker here to mean an Australian accent.)
Any idea when the audiobook will be released? I listened to the first two on Audible and they were great, can’t wait to hear Confluence too.
Pat, we don’t know when the Audible version will be available, but we do know they’re recording it this week.
Got ’em all save Engen. Now I have to un-learn my mispronunciation as I continue reading…
The great thing about reading is that it doesn’t matter how you pronounce names. Provided you get a clear idea of who that person is in your head, it doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the story.
The audiobook version of Confluence was released at Audible.com in the US today. Yeah!
Yay.
Thanks so much for letting us know.
Much appreciated.