VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Gregory Best]

Now I'm hearing it everywhere. A TV news anchor and sports guy both said off-Ten (they were on News8 not 10News, maybe that's it) twice in ten minutes last night. Then the anchor said add-ult for adult. Geez.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[Foog]

UH oh, Gregory. Now we're veering from a word I never have a problem with, to one I can never figure out!

ah-DULT and ADD-ult.

Both are technically correct, and I've been told that one pronunciation is more likely to be used in adjective form than the other. But which is which is beyond me. All I know is that the pronunciation I choose is inevitably the wrong one.*

My craptastic pseudo-phonetic spellings above remind me of another reason why crowdsourcing pronunciations may not be entirely silly or unprofessional. Have you folks seen the phonetic spellings in some dictionaries? fɜrgɛddɑbbaʊddɪt! It's all Greek to me. Often literally. Offen. Often. ...oh dear.



*I am the living exemplar of Murphy's Law. And what's worse, I can't outwit it by just doing the opposite of what I think is correct. No, no... Murphy is one step ahead of me making sure that on THAT occasion I would have been right to heed my instincts.
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Andrew Fogarasi

[Kristin Lennox]

[vkuehn]

All my adult life we have lived in communities distant to our 'ancestral home' and so we made a lot of road trips through the years. Most of you have probably made the same observation that I have: America has become homogenized, and woe be unto the Voice-over person who has an UN-homogenized set of pronunciations.

Here is my pronunciation dilemma for the day; I will be narrating a book on hostoric Kansas communities and personalities. My 'ancestral home' (well... my WIFE'S home is AR-kansaw. But I have traveled to that wheat growing real estate in years gone by and know that the river when it exits that state has to get it's passport stamped and validated, because out there (in years gone by) it was the ar-KANSAS river. (which flows into Oklahoma and then into.... ar-KANSAS.)

So is there a time in history as I cruise through the book that I switch from the historic pronunciation to the current day version? (Or have they not switched even today?

Guess who will be on the phone this week getting his tongue correctly trained.

[Gregory Best]

According to Webster adult whether noun or adjective is pronounced the same: ah-DULT. ADD-ult is incorrect.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[Foog]

Oh mannn! This is why I hate IPA pronunciation guides. I could have sworn that Webster's has both as legit, but it's all Greek/Latin/WTF-like to me when I really get down to it:

[kevinpowe]

Completely sympathise, Foog.

THREADJACK:

I'm in the process of learning IPA at the moment (in order to wrap my head around Original Pronunciation Shakespeare) but I have the advantage of doing that with a linguist/language teacher who's keen on learning OP too.

Listening to her talk to a fellow language teacher about technical details is fascinating, but mind-boggling.

I've found the intro to IPA in Animation for Voice Acting really good, if you ever look at digging into it: http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Over-Animation-Jean-Ann-Wright/dp/0240810155
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http://kevinpowe.com
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[Gregory Best]

Andrew, I an also going by 62 years of life experiences and a doctorate. I teach college classes. Mis-pronunciations and misuse of words are like fingernails on a blackboard to my wife and I.

"Ain't" may be in the dictionary, but usage doesn't make it proper grammar.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[chrisvoco]

Not to threadjack a threadjack'd thread, but in situations where the greatest concern is purely pragmatic in nature, we call this "localization." Not the kind you do in your operating system - choose between keyboard layouts, date/time formats and currency - but of granularity, for example, down to how street and neighborhood names are pronounced by the locals, and even "creek" or "crick." And, yes, for you folks in the Great White North ("Taaake offff! It's a beauty way to go!" - G.L. ) even the differences in "about" and the letter "z." For purposes of synthesized speech in actual emergencies affecting the public, the output must be tailored to the localized common usage - whether that's appropriate through any other lens doesn't matter.

I guess you could say it's all very "vulgar," eh.

Anywho, that's to say it's sometimes not only okay to mangle, but imperative.

...I know, synthesized speech is generally a no-no, and I agree in nearly all cases aside from this one.
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Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.

[Foog]

[Frank F]

Look folks, this is getting out of hand. The dictionaries are the Experts (a.k.a.: has been drip under pressure) and we are all adults -- said a-dolt or otherwise known as "A - stupid person"

If we use the English language as it was intended we would say off-en properly too, two, or to many times in Feb-rew-aeire as long as we are in the moun-T-ains which is imporTanT.

Good night ladies, good night ladies, good night ladies we're going to leave you now.

Frank F - said as it is written.
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Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

[Gregory Best]

Frank, we are just getting old and croch-a-T. Isn't there a difference between evolve and devolve?
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com