How many Smith's and Lee's are there? My surname is Spanish but looks like a perfectly good English word, and people pronouce it that way. I will correct them it if makes sense, and it's a little accent thing about where the syllable breaks are.
But this county guy in NJ is named "Laughlin" but it's pronouced "LOCK-Lin." Apparently it was significant because the AP people writing about some alleged crime in NJ included the phonetic spelling in the wire.
Oh, when I was looking up Rosey's homeland, she's part Rhodesian ridgeback, the hard copy atlas showed me Zimbabwe but it's phonetic spelling was \rō-dē-zh(ē-)ə\. I laughed and laughed; they edit and proof like I do, poorly.
It doesn't always work for me. There is a reporter in Phoenix whose name is Sean but he pronounces it Seen. Annoys the snot out of me. It just smacks of someone mispronounced at some origination point and now they are trying to pass it off as "meant to do that."
If we were in Spain, wouldn't we roll the R in your name too? In that cool Antonio Banderas way?
Posted by: Laurie | July 30, 2008 at 03:21 PM