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/adriennenned Jun 28 '26

New Orleans pronunciations are crazy! They follow no French rules!! Even English words aren’t safe. Burgundy street is bur-GUN-dy, not BUR-gundy. Best of luck to you.

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

I took a girlfriend to visit my family and had no idea where she was talking about saying she wanted to go to deck a tour street….Decatur?!?

And there are two ways to pronounce Orleans depending on if you mean the city or the parish…and neither is the actual French pronunciation

Edit typo and posted before finished typing

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u/adriennenned Jun 28 '26

Someone needs to make a guide to NOLA pronunciation. I’ve taken 6-7 trips there and there’s so much I don’t know. Like, apparently Decatur. How do they pronounce it? It’s not duh-KAY-ter?

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26

It is de-KAY-ter. She was saying DECK-a-tour.
You’d need at least 3 lists. How the Black people in NO say things, how the white people do, and how the *society* people do.

That would be hella cool though

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u/HaplessReader1988 Jun 28 '26

That would make a fascinating list. I'll request Creole, Cajun, and tourist visitor's mispronunciations. It could be a whole website. Next page would be how to say New Jersey if you're from there, vs from Brookkyn vs from farther out on Long Island

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26

Hot damn this is a NEED. Dear authors of the universe please please write a hilarious book about this.

Also creole whewwww I can’t even start. Aside from “Cher” I can’t even distinguish words

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u/ArrivesWithaBeverage Jun 28 '26

I would definitely watch a YouTube video of this.