Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

Barbara Babbles;
I'm sure I must have been a victim of FLOES many times but for the life of
me can only recall a single example, which was from Frank Herbert's "Dune";
city Arakiss I pronounced as if it was a gaelic place name "ara-kiss" -
other SF fans were quick to correct me to say "Ay-rak-iss".

FLUES however......well, growing up and living in Ireland as I did one got
used to tourists mangling place names such as Ahoghil (the a's weak and the
gh is an /X/) as "Ay-hawg-hill" or Arakeen (ara-keen) as "Ay-rak-een", and
none of that bothered me: it was expected. Americans and Germans were worst,
the Japanese would at least point at the word and ask "how say?" and then
would mangle it anyway as the poor dears couldn't quite get to grips with
Irish "L"s and "R"s.

But when fantasy authors got hold of gaelic legends it was really painful to
hear their readers speak of geas (gay-sh) as "gee-ass", "Ossian" (Aw-sheen)
as "Ohe-see-an",  Conan (kon-an) as "Koe-nan", or worst of all the Morrigan
(mao-ree-an) as "mor-rig-gan" <shudder>.

I really enjoy shows like Hercules and Stargate - they're fantasy set in a
make-believe world. So how come I can accept Greek gods walking the earth
making 20thC pop-culture references reading scrolls sideways, and "tame"
wormholes for traveling in a universe where the first language aliens
(inevitably called "race" rather than "species") is American English, and
yet visibly wince when they mispronounce an ancient word? <shrug> ;-)

Barbara

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