For a long time, I've rather wished that I'd started a list of egregious mispronunciations in audiobooks, but the thought was never sufficient motivation. My current listen, which I'll get to, has pushed me over the edge.
I identify three categories of mispronunciation:
- The first are common and not-so-common ordinary English words. They should be part of the stock in trade of the professional narrator, but it's a common falling. What makes it worse is that these books have producers; most errors should be caught in the production process. Or maybe they are, which is a scary thought given how many get through. This is by far the worst offense and flatly unforgivable, IMO.
- Second are the more esoteric proper nouns. I understand that the narrator might not know how to say these off the cuff, but as professionals, they should find out! I've been listening to books on colonial America lately and a local river comes up fairly frequently. If a narrator sees "Piscataqua" and has never heard it spoken, that should be a flag. Instead they just go with it, stressing the first and third syllables. (It should be the second and fourth.) This also is unforgivable.
- Third is the toughest. It's when a seemingly innocuous proper noun has an unusual pronunciation. Nadia May's mispronunciation of Lady Mary Coke comes to mind. This one is understandable, but it still grates.
It must be obvious how much this irritates me. One mispronunciation takes me right out of a book. Several have the power to send me into a simmering rage. I listen to a lot of non-fiction and I think that's part of the issue for me. For one thing, I think the incidence of mispronunciations is far higher, given specialized vocabularies and proper nouns. Unfortunately, with a novel I'd just abandon it, but with non-fiction if the book itself is worthwhile, I'll generally grit my teeth and keep on.
Off the top of my head, I'll name Xe Sands, Johnny Heller and Cassandra Campbell among others as prime offenders. I'll never willingly listen to a book by them again. And the current narrator who has set off this diatribe is Malcolm Hillgartner. I'm listening to a book about the culture of the Depression (
Dancing in the Dark by Morris Dickstein). It's 24 hours long; I wonder how many times, in the course of a book about the Depression, I'll be forced to hear "afFLUence" and "afFLUent"?