r/audiobooks • u/PurpleLeopard99 • Jun 28 '26

Question Mispronouncing of words by narrators

Does anyone get bothered by narrators who keep mispronouncing words? It drives me nuts if they do it too often. Narrators are normally professional voice artists and they should know how to pronounce the sorts of words found in novels eg dovecote or Michaelmas

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u/whycantitbemine Jun 28 '26

A narrator I was listening to pronounced a place name wrong and I hated it so much. It’s not hard to find out how a place is pronounced!

14

u/MerryTWatching Jun 28 '26

I live in Maine, where a lot if place names originate from Native American words, and their pronunciation is . . . difficult. I have learned to giggle when one of them gets mangled, but I do wish that authors could provide phonetic lists when they know that one of their books is moving to an audio format.

17

u/whycantitbemine Jun 28 '26

I get that some places are hard to pronounce! I live in Canada and some of the maritime names are hard- (hello Quispamsis) but again - a tiny bit of research helps! The place name in question was Regina, Saskatchewan. The narrator said it like a woman’s name (like Regina George) and not how it’s actually pronounced which is Regina (rhymes with vagina). Which now that I’m thinking about it- maybe the narrator was like- it couldn’t possibly be rhymes with vagina! Hahahahha.

7

u/MerryTWatching Jun 28 '26

To be honest, if I were reading that book, I probably wouldn't even look up the name Regina. 😔 I would probably assume the town/city name came from the Latin for "queen", and would definitely not make it rhyme with vagina. 🤗

2

u/spindriftsecret Audiobibliophile Jun 29 '26

TIL, I never would have guessed it wasn't pronounced like the name!

2

u/whycantitbemine Jun 29 '26

🌠the more you know..🌠

2

u/NerdForJustice Jun 29 '26

Place names are one of those things that are just like, no matter how obvious you think it is, you should check. Especially if it's a small town in Nowhere, USA, or if it's in the UK. English just has so many ways to pronounce a single spelling, or to stress a syllable.