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What it's like to talk to your voice
The first thing I said was "Hey, you have a much better voice than I do!"
The guy who heard that -- I won't tell you his name -- is reading the audiobook CD book and audiocassette versions of Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.
He called me for advice on how to pronounce various words in the book. My surprise was how many words and names I wrote that I didn't really know how to pronounce.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 28, 2007 at 07:32 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Such as?...
You really ought to right a suspense thriller next time, if you leave me this wanting at the end of a blog post...
Posted by: Pup, MD at Aug 28, 2007 8:23:28 AM
I have noticed a significant difference between my visual abilities and verbal ones when it comes to language. There are many words that I recognize visually that I don't really know how to pronounce. This happens a lot when reading Russian novels (or something by J.R.R. Tolkein) where the names are about as long as my arm. I don't bother saying them, I just recognize them. I'm learning Arabic right now and the whole visual/verbal thing has been shoved in my face. I find that they are much more closely linked in Arabic than they are in English and that is both a blessing and a royal pain all at the same time. Coming to grips with my differing abilities is one of the benefits that have come along with learning Arabic, but I guess there's always positive externalities whenever you learn something new, right?:-)
Isaac
Blogging in Yemen!
www.isaharr.com
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Aug 28, 2007 8:27:57 AM
I've noticed there are lots of words I use in writing that are rarely used in conversation. I've also noticed that the constructs people expect in writing and in conversation are not the same. With time I've concluded that written and spoken English aren't exactly the same language.
Posted by: Perry E. Metzger at Aug 28, 2007 8:28:46 AM
Hm, I don't get it. Is the reader of your audiobook supposed to be anonymous? Why is that? Do you want people to think you sound like him? If so, then why make this post?
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Aug 28, 2007 9:33:06 AM
m-w.com pronounces words for you.
Posted by: Biomed Tim at Aug 28, 2007 10:28:16 AM
Whne I was about 20 years old a friend of mine had a staggeringly large vocabulary. He would, and still does, use all kinds of words that normally just don't come up in conversations, although one reads them all the time (assuming one is reading something all the time).
He used all these words properly, at least as regards meaning. The problem was he was mispronouncing a fairly high percentage of them, which I simply found hilarious, namely the notion of being sophisticated enough to know a word, but ignorant enough to not know even how to pronounce it. To be fair, I had the same skill/problem, but I simply refused to verbally use words I didn't know how to pronounce. My friend was more brave/foolish.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Aug 28, 2007 11:54:35 AM
is the anonymity because it's a work under construction and anything could happen before publishing is finished?
hopefully the reader's name will appear on the package when the audiobook comes out.
Posted by: natalia at Aug 28, 2007 1:18:46 PM
"...many words and names I wrote that I didn't really know how to pronounce."
Thank God. I thought I was the only one.
For instance:
Haphazard is a mystery to me. Half-hazard, or hap-hazard?
Omniscient
More foreign names than I can remember
Hegemony (well, when I was younger)
Conclusion: I should converse with people that command a high vocabulary more frequently, and I'll just pick up the words. Or I should avoid them like the plague and I won't embarrass myself!
Posted by: Robert Olson at Aug 28, 2007 3:58:22 PM
happyjuggler, I had a friend like that too, very smart guy. It seems to happen a lot with Asians, although
I (a non-Asian) am often guilty of it if I haven't heard the word spoken before. Examples
adjacent -> ADD-juh-cent
homage --> [thought the h was spoken]
rapport --> [though the t was spoken, also thought the spoken version was spelled "repoire"]
The Fountainhead was a wealth of them, and suprised me when I saw the movie. I thought:
Francon --> me: frahn-sohn, movie: FRANK-en
Wynand --> me: wih-NAND, movie: WYE-nend
Toohey --> though the h was pronounced, it's not
Posted by: Person at Aug 28, 2007 3:59:11 PM
Person, happyjuggler -- I used to do that when I was younger. I guess it was a combination of being both smart and too stupid to know better.
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Aug 28, 2007 6:47:57 PM
Homage is pronounced with an "h" when you are talking about people doing
homage. It is an English word derived from
the French "hommage" that has been in English since Norman times. It is
not a modern borrowing from French.
People say "omage" when they are talking about artists paying tribute
to each other, but this pronounciation is based on the erroneous idea
that the word is borrowed from French.
Posted by: jb at Aug 29, 2007 5:34:55 AM
I would think this would be a fairly common trait among heavy readers.
Posted by: spencer at Aug 29, 2007 10:28:59 AM
Happens to me all the time. Richard Feynmann also had the same problem - apparently when he first arrived at university as a freshman he had no idea how to pronounce "Bernoulli", as he'd never had a conversation with anyone about a Bernoulli or their work.
Posted by: Robert Scarth at Aug 29, 2007 5:38:35 PM
It's definitely a problem I had when I was younger, but these days only happens to me with names or some French (or German or Italian) imports - if I speak the foreign language, I can never tell how Americans who don't will typically butcher the word. "Foyer," for example, I can never decide how to say. "Hegemony" was one that tripped me up when I was younger, also, and when I was very small I remember my parents making extensive fun of me for mispronouncing "delicatessen" the first time I saw it written out in full. Names I have recently spent time pondering over: (Michael) Chabon, (Tyler) Cowen.
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