The Worst Audiobook Narrations EVER!

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by llcj

Ditto for anti being pronounced ant-eye .

Ooh! And quaze-eye.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by issybird

Sigh. You know it of course. "Saul." Like it was French or something!

Ha. When I first saw that as a kid, I said Salt Saint Marie. Yeah, I didn't even get Sainte right.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

It's got a soft c. It comes after the hard c. Seriously, just like accident. Or coccyx. I'm sure there are other examples. If it were spelled flacid, like acid, that would be different.

ETA: Or vaccine!

Flaccid is pronounced like flasid.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Flaccid is pronounced like flasid.

Nope. Like flaxid.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Issybird mentions Xe Sands. She does seem to be popular, but in the series of books I've listened to which she narrates, her "breathy sexy kitten" voice drove me crazy. That's the voice she uses for the non-dialog. Her dialog voices fit the characters, as best as I remember.

I'm not a fan of Xe Sands, not because of anything specific; I just don't care for the sound of her voice. Ditto Tavia Gilbert. Cassandra Campbell is getting on my nerves lately too.

I LOVE Madeleine Maby. She's my current favorite female narrator.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Cassandra Campbell is getting on my nerves lately too.

Hah! Another in my Hall of Infamy, after mangling Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.

Why can't these narrators read, or at least skim, a book before they record it and if a word or place or name is unfamiliar, find out how to say it, instead of winging it?

[llcj]

Checked my Canadian Oxford English Dictionary and the only pronunciation it gives for flaccid is 'flasid'. 'Flaksid' has got to be a U.S. pronunciation.

[llcj]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Ooh! And quaze-eye.

LOL. That one is doubly bad.
And sem-eye and mul-teye, etc. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard.

[llcj]

Originally Posted by issybird

It's got a soft c. It comes after the hard c. Seriously, just like accident. Or coccyx. I'm sure there are other examples. If it were spelled flacid, like acid, that would be different.

ETA: Or vaccine!

Often? Silent 't' or is it vocalized? Language is like that, isn't it?

My apologies for going of topic.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

When it comes to locations, unless it's near me, I probably wouldn't know the difference. I have no idea where "Sault Ste. Marie", let alone that it's said "Soo", not "Salt". I probably personally butcher all kinds of placenames. I listened to a book that recently had a bit of Welsh dialog and names in it. Assuming the narrator was right, I can only say I wouldn't have gotten any of the pronunciation right!

I personally don't care what they use, as long as it's consistent.

Back to the original post, I'd have to say to some degree, whether a narrator was "good" or "bad" would be subjective.

Not always. I've listened to a book (can't remember which one it was...), or rather tried to listen, but it was so badly narrated, in a monotone, that I just couldn't hear where one sentence ended and the next one started.

[issybird]

Yup!

Originally Posted by llcj

Often? Silent 't' or is it vocalized? Language is like that, isn't it?.

Often is an excellent analogy. Frequently mispronounced and still wrong. . Another case where everyone says similarly constructed words (hasten, soften) correctly, but some inexplicably go awry when it comes to often.

[llcj]

. So true.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

Often is an excellent analogy. Frequently mispronounced and still wrong. . Another case where everyone says similarly constructed words (hasten, soften) correctly, but some inexplicably go awry when it comes to often.

It's an acceptable alternative, per Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary. Which also lists "flassid" as the first pronunciation for flaccid, with "flaksid" as the alternative.

So ... you want the narrators to use the secondary pronunciation for flaccid but the primary pronunciation for often?

Me, I don't care, as long as it's a legitimate pronunciation. Spelling, though--that's another matter. Maybe that's why I have become a convert to audiobooks--no spelling horrors to make me cringe.

[AnemicOak]

For pronunciations, one that always takes me out of a book is Helo (like, "We have a Helo in bound). So many narrators pronounce it Hello (as in the greeting) when it's military jargon for helicopter and pronounced Heelo.


As for worst narrator. One that comes to mind is Ellen Travolta who did some of J.A. Jance's Joanna Brady books for Books In Motion ages ago. It was pretty obvious she'd had no training (or had and was just bad at it), but she would pause in odd spots to breathe or swallow and it just made things feel off. You could also faintly hear her turning pages as she read which is probably more of a general production quality issue than the narrators fault. AFAIK all of those books have been redone and put out by another publisher at this point.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Nope. Like flaxid.

Flaccid is mostly pronounced flas-id with the secondary pronunciation being flak-sid. Given that flas-id is the most used pronunciation, that what I would go with. Also, it sounds better.