My worst example was the word GIF pronounced like the peanut butter instead of properly as in Graphical. It’s worse because Amanda Montell was writing a linguistics book about the history of language and words.
Recent example was “eschew” which is pronounced Eh-shoo but the narrator said “Eskew” and it confused me so much I had to Google it to make sure I hadn’t been saying it wrong my whole life. What exmaples have you found?
Listened to Takano Kazuaki’s books and the VA did not put in any effort to research japanese names, places etc. I lived in japan at the time and was cringing the whole time. (German audiobook version, otherwise really like the VA, iirc it was Uve Teschner)
The main narrator for the Game of Thrones books frequently mispronounces names that he gets right 99% of the time. Jeffery for example. I’m not talking about book to book where they might have gotten an update about pronunciation, but with in the same book.
Reminds me of Stephen King pronouncing Roland’s last name as “Des-chain” in the audiobook of The Wind Through The Keyhole.
Not quite the same, but I listened to a Stephen king book narrated by Anne Heche. It had a few New England localisms that she wasn’t familiar with. One that stuck out was a jingle that you just know if you’re from here… she made up her own version…
Personally I don’t think acronyms like GIF have a “correct” pronunciation. A favorite pronunciation might emerge by consensus, but not by rules. Sure “graphical” might have a hard ‘g’, but if you spelled the acronym out you would say ‘jee eye eff’ because once detached from the word, that hard sound is lost. If there were an organization Christian American Charities and the acronym was CAC, would you pronounce it kak, chatch sass cass, or what?
In Anna Faris’s autobiography she pronounced “short lived” as “LIVEd”. Weirded me out.
The narrator of Frackers doesn’t know how to pronounce the oil services company Schlumberger. It was humorous to me.
I had the narrator during a steamy scene say “he wretched into his pocket” instead of “reached”. Completely ruined the vibe for me lmfao
Titan pronounced like TEE-tawn, for 26 hours.
I understand that some English words are pronounced differently depending on where you are from.
That said, I don’t remember the book but the American narrator pronounced “lilac” as “lilock”. I had never heard it pronounced that way and couldn’t figure out what she meant.
In the Magician’s Land, there’s an Australian character who identifies a galah, but it’s pronounced gull-a not ga-LAAR.
(The otherwise good reader really doesn’t sound convincing as Australian, especially a rich girl from Tasmania).
I’ll never understand how anyone thinks that GIF is pronounced as JIF. It’s one letter different to the word gift. Do people give each other Christmas jifts? The G also stands for graphic. We say graphic not jraphic. Even creators can just be plain wrong at times.
Do you try to start “GIF” war in this sub or something ?
I love the narrator of The Witcher not knowing how to pronounce “Dandelion”
The narrator of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer consistently mispronounces the name of one of the nazi newspapers as Volkischer Beo-bachter instead of Volkischer Be-obachter. It’s like saying “The People’s Obs-erver” instead of “The People’s Ob-server”.
Funny thing is that I heard the same mispronunciation in a recent news program on MSNBC or CNN or somewhere like that.