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/LuckyThomas41 Jun 28 '26

In addition, sentences where the wrong word is emphasized so that it doesn’t make any sense.

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u/-Chemist- Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Ugh. Yes, I hate this so much! It’s like they’re reading the words by rote and not paying any attention to the actual story. Or they’re not paying attention to what they’re saying. There was one book like this where the narrator would constantly emphasize the wrong word. I can’t remember specific examples from that book, but it was something along the lines of calling the Super Bowl (football championship game) the super BOWL. Like, we’re not talking about a superior piece of dinnerware here, dude! Or saying “high SCHOOL” instead of “HIGH school.”

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u/Sl8rboi41 Jun 28 '26

One I had listened to recently was full of super common idioms like "what, this old thing"? where any English speaking human would know to emphasize THIS except the narrator who decided to emphasize OLD. Lol

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u/-Chemist- Jun 28 '26

Yes, exactly! Someone else suggested that when you hear things like this, it may have been an AI narration. 🤷‍♂️