Today's wonderfully useful tip was sent in by M.X. Kremzen who blogs about fascinating things here and Tweets @MXKremzen. This is M.X.'s first tip submission so please visit and offer a warm welcome. Here's the tip!
When you're writing a book that falls into speculative genres like fantasy, you're bound to make up names/words along the way. While you have liberty as a writer to play around with spelling and pronunciation, you'll probably want your readers to say a certain name/word the same way you do. This is where a site like Google Translate comes in handy. You can type any word into the text box, hit the speaker icon in the bottom right corner, and an automated voice will pronounce the word for you. For example, I have a species in my sci-fi/fantasy book, The Dark Matter Chronicles, called the Dakarrians. The name was originally spelled "Dakarian' but I found that without the extra 'r', the emphasis fell on the wrong syllable.Tip Tuesday features writers' tips on craft, research, querying, blogging, marketing, inspiration, and more. If you'd like to send in a tip, please e-mail me at agentspotlight(at)gmail(dot)com.
It's also useful for figuring out how to pronounce the names of characters in books I'm reading.
-M.X. Kremzen
16 comments:
Great tip on where to find how to pronounce a name. Thanks!
Great tip. I write fantasy too and make up names sometimes. I'll have to check it out.
Thanks for the tip! I have been going with simpler names just for the sake of pronunciation, but this may help get what I really want and still be easy for the reader.
Interesting. I didn't know about this. I'll have to take a look. Not being able to pronounce names as I read a story is often frustrating.
trekking your blog!!! thanks for the tip. Very helpful.
cheers!
..TREK..
So true! I was mangling Hermione for years because I'd never heard the name. Once I saw the first movie, I realized how it was pronounced.
Great tip - thanks! I'm heading over to your blog now to see what other gems you have in store.
Very useful tip! Puts me in mind of Hermione from Harry Potter. So many people mispronounced that one. Maybe Rowling needed this tip ;)
Excellent tip! An automated voice, I love that.
I'm especially in tune with today's tip given I've read some stories where I had NO CLUE how to really say a character's name, which can be a bother when the name is for like, the MC and I don't really know how to refer to them except to make up my own nickname in my mind until I could find a key or here the author tell me how to say certain things.
That's a great idea! I never thought of using google translate. Huh.
Thanks for the tip!
What a great idea! That never crossed my mind - thanks :)
That's a clever idea. And helpful for me who has a hard time pronouncing some of the names I find in books. I usually just gloss over them.
I'm reading a book right now and struggle with some of the names. I wonder if the author's pronunciations match the Google pronunciations. Very interesting. Thanks!
Cool tip! I wish people would use it on my last name.
Clever tip! I would never have thought to use it for this. I know there's a site out there as well that pronounces authors last names. It's amazing when you 'think' of a name as being pronounced a certain way, and then find out you had it wrong all along, lol.
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