Hermione

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, November 20, 2001 9:07 pm +0000 "James A. Landau"
<JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

> In _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_, pp 418f of the hardback,
> Hermione is trying to teach Victor Krum, who is from Bulgaria, how to
> pronounce her name.
>
> Victor:       "Hermy-own"
> Hermione:  "Her-my-oh-nee"
> Victor:        "Herm-own-ninny"
> Hermione:  "Close enough"

I wonder if Rowling put this in the book because she discovered how many of
her readers were pronouncing it wrong.  My goddaughter and her mother had
read all the books aloud reading 'Hermee-own', and then they got the audio
version and panicked that their perception of the world was _wrong_.

> P.S.  My daughter wants to know why I'm posting a question about BRITISH
> speech on the mailing list of the AMERICAN Dialect Society.  Shouldn't I
> be looking for a British Dialect Society?

Haven't we proposed before that we're the American [Dialect Society] rather
than the [American Dialect] Society?

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320