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--- Begin Message ---Hi Jesse, I'm still having trouble posting to the group, so if you'll just forward this I'd appreciate it. On 10/9/03 at 1:03 PM jesse white wrote: > Starting with the man Conan himself: the >disagreement seems to be around the final vowel sound >in the name; whether it is a schwa or a flat 'a' >sound. (I think everyone agrees that the initial 'o' >vowel is a long vowel as in the word "cone") Novalyne Price Ellis told me that Bob always pronounced the name KO-n'n -- emphasis on first syllable, long o sound (sorry JB, but she said that's how he pronounced it -- and if there is no long O sound in Irish why does Conan O'Brien pronounce his name with the long O, and my friend Ronan pronounces *his* with a long O -- and why does every single person whose name begins with the O' patronymic pronounce it as a long O?), and as you say, the vowel sound in the second syllable is a schwa. She was very emphatic about the pronunciation of the name -- she said that parents get to name their children whatever they want and decide how it is pronounced, and authors should have the same right with regard to their characters. She even related a conversation in which she and Tevis Clyde Smith wondered where in the world ko-NAN came from. > Next is the name Belit. <snip> > I have noticed that the disagreement about Belit >centers around again the last vowel, and how it >functions with the final consonant. Despite the >circumflex, I have never encountered anyone who didn't >pronounce the first syllable of the name as "Bell". >As hinted at before, 'e'-circumflex does not appear in >English IPA, so if you have any ideas, lay them out! Well, I won't claim any particular authority for this one. Way back when I was a Religious Studies major I remember the name of the god Bel pronounced with a vowel sound that was somewhere between "bail" and "bell" -- call it "Behl" with the Canadian "eh" sound. Add "eet" to the end and that's how I pronounce it, with an ever so slight emphasis on the second syllable. > Another character is the enigmatic Thoth-Amon. Again, influenced by the way I heard it pronounced by Religious Studies professors/students. I've heard "Thoth" with both long and short vowel, I prefer the long. I recall "Amon" as "Ah-m'n", emphasis on first syllable, a soft "ah", and a schwa sound for the vowel in the second syllable. With regard to "Conan," there is no compromise for me, I go with the way Howard (and people I know named Conan and Ronan) pronounced it, but for the others your way is as good as mine, or maybe even better. Rusty
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