Lois’s answer to “How would you pronounce "Dendarii" and Galeni? I recently listened to a couple of audiobooks and in…” > Likes and Comments
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Having lived in continental Europe for much of my life, I always tend to give an average-European pronunciation to any words that aren't obviously English. So the dar in Dendarii would be as in dart, and the len in Galeni would be as in lent. English-speakers, including Americans, have really weird ways of pronouncing words. If you want to pronounce Galeni as guh-LEAN-ee, it should be spelt Galini. OK, rant over, you can pronounce these names however you like. The luxury of reading a book (as opposed to listening to an audio book) is that we can all use our own preferred pronunciations. The author's preference is not entirely uninteresting, but I feel entitled to ignore it in the privacy of my own home.
Since you were commenting on the audio books, I want to shout out to Grover Gardner. I've not bought the audio version of other novels I love because the narrator's voice is annoying. Mr. Gardner does a terrific job bringing your stories to life.
I've wondered for years whether authors and narrators connect before recording and whether readers read the books before recording. Long time ago I listened to a book where a female character was named Jaime and the text explained that she was named after actress Jaime Lee Curtis. Yet the narrator chose to pronounce the name "Hy-mee" and I just could not continue to listen. Jai = Hy, as in the game Jai Alai, I can understand at a very long stretch, but the Jay-mee pronunciation was right there in the text. Still scratching my head and laughing over that one.
Vivaine: Jaime is a Spanish/Portuguese name, equivalent to James in English, and the correct Spanish pronunciation is something like Hy-meh. So it wasn't at at all strange that your narrator chose to pronounce it in something like the Spanish way. However, in Spanish or Portuguese, Jaime is normally a man’s name.
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Jonathan
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Jun 07, 2022 08:36AM
Having lived in continental Europe for much of my life, I always tend to give an average-European pronunciation to any words that aren't obviously English. So the dar in Dendarii would be as in dart, and the len in Galeni would be as in lent. English-speakers, including Americans, have really weird ways of pronouncing words. If you want to pronounce Galeni as guh-LEAN-ee, it should be spelt Galini. OK, rant over, you can pronounce these names however you like. The luxury of reading a book (as opposed to listening to an audio book) is that we can all use our own preferred pronunciations. The author's preference is not entirely uninteresting, but I feel entitled to ignore it in the privacy of my own home.
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Since you were commenting on the audio books, I want to shout out to Grover Gardner. I've not bought the audio version of other novels I love because the narrator's voice is annoying. Mr. Gardner does a terrific job bringing your stories to life.
I've wondered for years whether authors and narrators connect before recording and whether readers read the books before recording. Long time ago I listened to a book where a female character was named Jaime and the text explained that she was named after actress Jaime Lee Curtis. Yet the narrator chose to pronounce the name "Hy-mee" and I just could not continue to listen. Jai = Hy, as in the game Jai Alai, I can understand at a very long stretch, but the Jay-mee pronunciation was right there in the text. Still scratching my head and laughing over that one.
Vivaine: Jaime is a Spanish/Portuguese name, equivalent to James in English, and the correct Spanish pronunciation is something like Hy-meh. So it wasn't at at all strange that your narrator chose to pronounce it in something like the Spanish way. However, in Spanish or Portuguese, Jaime is normally a man’s name.
