Life imitates Art…

Updated on June 17, 2011 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

I just had a kid come into the library and request a book with “So-crates” (one syllable for the last part) in the title, and so yes, he pronounced it just like Bill & Ted and seemed equally confused when I gave back the actual pronunciation.

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  • KeithB

    I used to have this problem since a lot of my vocabulary was devloped by reading and not hearing the words. How many times might you hear “Socrates” in a conversation?

  • Ericb

    I first came upon the name (in writing) as a kid by reading a Hardy Boys novel (or some similar scholastic book that I don’t remember the title of) and that’s how I pronounced it in my head while reading.

  • roger h

    “macabre” is one of my favorites. I knew the word but, did recognize it in print, and I did not get it right until about freshman year in high school. I was delighted when I had college friends pronounce it wrong but, use it correctly.

  • Ericb
  • Gamera

    But ‘So-crates’ is how the great Keanu pronounced and Keanu can’t be wrong can he??? ;)

  • As we know from the COLOR ME BLOOD RED trailer, it’s pronounced “Ma-KARB”.

  • John Campbell

    And here I thought Ken was going to tell us that Sandy had finally gone off the deep end and was re-enacting HGL movies in reality!

    I kid!!

    I do remember hearing someone pronouncify “macabre” as “muh-cab-ree” and “mac-uh-bree”.

    Engrish! Catch it!

  • Mr. Rational

    Thank God he didn’t come in and request a book BY Socrates.

  • BeckoningChasm

    At least he didn’t ask for a book by Stephenie Meyer.

  • Rock Baker

    Oh, the macabre thing! I knew how to say it from childhood because I knew of the early 60s horror pic of the same name (which I have yet to see, by the way). I never considered myself very smart, so imagine how dumb my ENGLISH TEACHER sounded when she read the word aloud to my HIGH SCHOOL class as Mak-a-bray! And then those supposedly lerned narrators on television saying macab-reh? What’s wrong with this picture? (Then again, we live in a universe where no one holding public office can say “nuclear.”)

  • “All we are is dust in the wind, dude.”

  • sandra

    I once turned on A&E to watch a biography of Caesare Borgia. What I saw was one about ‘See-zar’ Borgia, who was painted by that famous Renaissance artist ‘Titty -ann’. I couldn’t decide if the people responisble were really that ignorant, or if they figured that’s how the American public pronounces the names.

  • Spelling can be a funny thing. I remember my uncle once pronouncing “subtle” while sounding out the “b”…

  • Dear God, reading this page… the pronunciation of Socrates, macabre, subtle… NO WONDER EVERYONE POINTED AND LAUGHED AT ME!

  • Rock Baker

    When I was a kid, I thought ‘both’ was spelled ‘bolth’ because it seems people have a habit of saying it that way. Then again, I grew up in a part of the country where wasps were constantly called ‘waspers’ and people shop at ‘WalMarts’ to this day! It was my desire to be an actor that had me training myself since childhood to speak minus an accent. I don’t know how I’d sound around high society, but I sounded like Richard Burton around my classmates.

  • Grumpy

    Some people are myzled by the application of fonix.