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I participated in the Audio Publishers Association forum for about a decade till they shut it down and there was a lot of discussion among the participating narrators about pronunciation. It seems that "correct" pronunciation can be pretty problematic.
A good example is the state I now live in, Arkansas. It's pronounced Arkansaw by nearly everyone but the Arkansas river has the final "s" pronounced.
The word "rodeo" in Texas, where we should know better, is always pronounced with the accent on the "o" but it's a Spanish word and the accent should be on the "e". People outside of Texas usually pronounce it in the Spanish style.
I'm trying to remember other examples but that forum was shut down years ago and I don't really remember the words we discussed. Place names are especially problematic since they're often pronounced differently in various places.
That's true of other words as well. What's the old song about "tomato" with a long "a" or a short "a"?
I do know that, at least back then, narrators put a lot of effort into getting pronunciation right and they were embarrassed when they blew it. I have no real way of knowing if that's still true.
It's the rare ebook that doesn't have at least one misspelled word and many have a lot more. I'm currently reading Edna Ferber's "Showboat" and it's full of them and a lot of them are misspelled over and over. Most of the misspellings are clumsy and I doubt they're intentional although I really don't know that.
Barry
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