Ask people in Nevada about this. People who live there pronounce it Neh-vad-ah, while everyone else insists on saying Nuh-VAH-da.
Let's call the whole thing off.
Ask people in Nevada about this. People who live there pronounce it Neh-vad-ah, while everyone else insists on saying Nuh-VAH-da.
Indiana is smarter than I thought.Really? Everyone I know in Indiana pronounces Nevada how you say it should be.
Hmm. I have a vintage Pete Barbutti comedy album (is there any other kind?) in which one of the jokes involved fishing rights in the Puyallup River, and Petey got it right.
And more than a decade before that, I read a whole exchange of dialogue involving the proper pronunciation of Puyallup in, of all things, a Bobbsey Twins novel (I think it was Forest Adventure, the very first one I read, in [I think] first or second grade.)
How is Caeliar pronounced?
^It's "Pew-Al-up," basically, isn't it?
Yep. Alas, poor Anthony Steward Head utterly mangles it in the EW audiobook.
On the other hand, Darrin McGavin got it right in the THE NIGHT STRANGLER, when Kolchak is assigned to cover the Daffodil Festival in Puyallup (which is a real thing, btw).
"Puyallup?" he exclaims in disbelief?
I keep waiting for somebody to try to say it on iZOMBIE.![]()
I think it's "kay-lee-ahr." Like "Kaylee, are you going to share those strawberries?"
That's close to what I thought but I have heard 'Kay-Lar'.
I grew up in Puyallup. It was years and years before I understood that some people just can't manage the word.
How is Caeliar pronounced?
Indeed it is. David Mack has confirmed it multiple times on this board.I think it's "kay-lee-ahr." Like "Kaylee, are you going to share those strawberries?"
Now I'll have to read it.I was born there, as were both my parents. As I like to joke, I grew up with sensible names like Puyallup and Duwamish and Snoqualmie, as opposed to those weird East Coast names like Schenectady and Poughkeepsie . . ..
Getting back on topic, for a while there I was sneaking Pacific Northwest names into all my Trek books. (I think there's a "U.S.S. Puyallup" in my DS9 book.)
The worst thing about dialogue is when the author attempts to convey a thick accent. Too often it ends up with whole sentences made up of words spelled "wrong" or clipped with apostrophes all over the place. It's supposed to "read like it sounds", but I'm reminded of the screen in the movie BRAVE where the big guy talks, and everyone looks at each other like "WTF did he just say?" Just toss in a few simple words with the accent and leave the rest spelled correctly, please. We'll get the gist that Scotty has a brogue accent.
Oh, and I have the same issue with foreign / alien character names. If they're too weird, it makes my brain stumble every time I see it. I have a character in a story named Sarisha Sahani. She is of Indian decent (Hindu, not Native American), so she has a unique name, but it's not unpronounceable. I cringe when I see characters named something like Ps'K'houewe'T'sca'woo. Seriously, why do that to your readers?
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