Yeah, from http://www.neilgaiman.com/faqs/booksfaq/ (http://www.neilgaiman.com/faqs/booksfaq/):
Cora-LINE. I pronounce it so that it rhymes with horror-wine.
Though there's also this bit from one of his journal entries (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/06/death-coraline-and-oh-whats-word-for.asp):
When the book was out in proof editions, I remember checking e-bay to see how much people were selling them for, and discovering that people were selling things connected with Coraline corsets -- and I found the sheet music for a Victorian song called Coraline and paid my less-than-five-dollars for it. It was one of those songs about a sad young lady who had died in unfortunate circumstances that were never really spelled out, and all of the rhymes for Coraline were "een" words, like queen and been and mean. (I pronounce the title of the book, and the name of the heroine, in English, Coraline, to rhyme with Horror-wine, although when I'm in France I pronounce it "corraleen". But am happy for people to pronounce it any way they want to. In Poland they pronounce it Koralina, and spell it like that as well.)
Among the many many things I love about Tolkien is the fact that he took the trouble to explain how his invented names and languages should be pronounced. I wish other authors -- esp. SF/fantasy writers -- would do this.
Just to be contradictory, because I'm that sort of person, I really strongly dislike it when authors tell me how to pronounce things.
Particularly when they tell me to pronounce "emphasis" as "eem-PAH-sees" or some such thing. I feel like I should pronounce it the way they want, but since my innate phonics suggest it be pronounced some other way, I keep getting jolted out of the story. Since names are so unimportant[1] to a story, I find it really annoying when it happens.
[1] Alpha-renaming. I could search and replace all occurrences of "Mordor" in Tolkien with "Dormor" and the story wouldn't change one bit.
Oh, well, that's kind of a different case. I'm talking about names that don't look like anything I'm used to seeing, and that could be pronounced in any number of ways. I tend to "hear" things in my head when I'm reading them, and I find it annoying when I don't know what I'm supposed to hear. If we spoke a language in which the relationship between spelling and pronunciation was more straightforward this would probably be less of a problem.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 07:36 am (UTC)I went to the reading in Berkeley when he read the whole thing aloud. It was great. What a voice that man has.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 12:13 am (UTC)Particularly when they tell me to pronounce "emphasis" as "eem-PAH-sees" or some such thing. I feel like I should pronounce it the way they want, but since my innate phonics suggest it be pronounced some other way, I keep getting jolted out of the story. Since names are so unimportant[1] to a story, I find it really annoying when it happens.
[1] Alpha-renaming. I could search and replace all occurrences of "Mordor" in Tolkien with "Dormor" and the story wouldn't change one bit.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 01:23 am (UTC)I could search and replace all occurrences of "Mordor" in Tolkien with "Dormor" and the story wouldn't change one bit.
It would make a difference to anyone who couldn't read that without thinking "Dormouse".