Sunday, January 18, 2015

Or Maybe Not

The 22 Celebrity Names You’re Probably Saying Wrong 

8 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

Cry-der, right?

;)


Jeff

Jeff Meyerson said...

Actually, I did know most of them.

Jeff

mybillcrider said...

So did I, but not all.

Deb said...

Well, thank God that article saved me from the shame of committing a dreadful faux pas the next time I have to introduce Benedict Cumberbatch to Rachel Weiss.

/My last name is Pfeifer. Can't tell you how often that spelling and pronunciation of that gets mangled. But, seeing I'm a non-celeb, I suppose I'll just have to deal.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Deb, some British pronunciations seem arbitrary to me. For instance, why is Davies as in Alan (Jonathan Creek) or Mandy Rice- pronounced "Davis"? A lot of people in England would pronounce my name Mayerson, which is wrong.

Jeff

Deb said...

Don't forget my favorite British pronunciation of all time:

Featherstonehaugh = "Fan-shaw"

I also like St. John = "Sin-jin" but Monty Python seemed to take care of that one.

mybillcrider said...

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things / To low ambition, and the pride of kings.

Anders E said...

There's no way anyone outside Scandinavia will get Peter Stormare right. This supposedly correct way is in fact hilariously wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXgJA54q5-k

It's three syllables, Stor-ma-re, but the difficult part is the prosody. Swedish prosody is highly sophisticated (some might say absurdly over-complicated).