• 15 days

      A surface dwelling dark elf society that’s established a sizeable banana empire in the tropics of Faerun.

      • 15 days

        You have no idea how hard it was to end up here and not there. No idea, Michael.

        Pans to the Aztec Tomb

    • 15 days

      I listened to the audio books, so I can pronounce it but I can’t spell it

      • I read the first few Wheel of Time books, then got the audio books for the next 8 or so, and when I first made the switch, I spent a good quarter of a book having to re-learn who all of the characters were, since I’d been mentally mispronouncing so many of them.

        • I read the books 4ish times. 1st time, RJ died so I took a few years off and read it start to finish on my 2nd attempt. Another couple years pass, and I got to book 10 and couldn’t do the hunt for Falie again. Stopped. My last attempt was last year. I got to book 4, and then my kid got a PS5 for christmas. I was a real gamer back in the day, and I read all day at work, so I just stopped. I don’t read recreationally at all now. It’s kind of like how the last thing a chef wants to do when they get home is cook.

          Anyway, there’s no way in hell that I’d ever pronounce the names right. Some of the more intuitive ones, maybe, but the rest? I’d probably blunder.

          • 15 days

            Arguably the worst book in the series is 10. I got slagged for 4 years at that point until surrendering to the audiobook. It felt like a disjointed midpoint with nowhere to go. So, feel you on just abandoning joy because quitting wasn’t an option.

        • Eye of the World as an audiobook sounds horrible. I’ve always assumed Jordan brought books 1-3 to a publisher and that’s how the series got published.

  • 15 days

    The worst is when you read a book or series when you’re young and pronounce it in your mind one way. Then they make a movie or something and it’s pronounced very different, and you end up just staying mad about it every time you hear the other version.

    • Hogfather.

      Teatime.

      Pronounced:

      “Teh AH tim eh.”

      Terry took the time to type that.

      The actor in the movie? (Marc Warren)

      “Tee a TIME ay”

      He and the movie are otherwise quite good, Michelle Dockery is excellent, but it irks me.

    • 14 days

      I was like this with ‘aes sedai’ in Wheel of Time. Apparently the ‘aes’ is meant to be pronounced as “eyez”, but for me it’s “ace” 🤷

  • 15 days

    And then you listen to the audiobook and realize it’s just a super fucked up way of spelling steve

    • The first time I tried to pronounce ‘Hermione’ outloud, I somehow ended up with ‘Her-Moyn’.

    • 14 days

      Damn, I’ve gaslit myself with the movie pronunciation that I forgot how high school me would’ve pronounced. Maybe back then I was just giddy to see a book I loved reading on the silver screen.

  • 15 days

    When you talk with someone about that book you’ve both read and realize that you both have a very different pronunciation of a character’s name.

  • My personal favorite is when you think your brain is pronouncing a coherent guess at it until the first time you try to say it aloud and realize your folly.

  • 15 days

    I’ve heard that people who were born completely deaf can read much faster than hearing people, because they don’t have to pronounce the words in their head in order to process them.

  • 15 days

    The mining gnomes are the worst. And no I won’t attempt to spell them.

  • No such problems, when your native language uses phonetic alphabet! Is the pronounciation like the author intended then? Likely not, but you can still pronounce every word, without having to think.

    • 14 days

      haha I’m the same with Hungarian :) Finno-Ugric high five!

  • 14 days

    I find this weirdly sad. I always tried to understand the name of the character and how it may be pronounced (I’m seriously going to include a glossary with IPA for all proper nouns if I ever produce anything for real publication). To me it’s a part of the world-building and I almost recoil at just replacing it with nonsense.

  • Coriolanus, CORIOLANUS?? illegible and like come on, the author ended the name with ANUS and was like yes that’s perfect?? My daughter read the whole book before she realized his name wasn’t Cornelius cause her brain auto corrected it to a real name

    • 15 days

      TIL that I’ve been blazing over his name for years. In my head, he’s always been Preponte (and probably always will be).

    • I pretty much only do audiobooks. Looking up characters from Sanderson books or DCC can be… challenging