Blowsy Pronunciation Quotes

One of the things that I'm realizing is that in voice-over work, you have to actually do more work with your facial muscles and your mouth. You have to kind of exaggerate your pronunciation a little bit more, whereas with live action, you can get away with mumbling sometimes. ~ Mark Valley

The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with everything we know of the workings of the human mind, and with every sound idea formulated by mankind. If it prevailed in the whole modern world we'd still be in the Thirteenth Century; nay, we'd be back among the Egyptians of the pyramid age. Its only coherent contribution to Western thought has been theosophy-and theosophy is as idiotic as Christian Science. It has absolutely nothing to offer a civilized white man. ~ H.L. Mencken

Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines. ~ Bill Bryson

For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny - I mean, a small German hare. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I have good pronunciation no matter what language I speak. Maybe it's because my specialties are rapping and imitating others ~ G-Dragon

And in his third essay Herodius (not Herodotus, a mistaken pronunciation, perhaps) said 'We can contend with the evil that men do in the name of evil, but heaven protect us from what they do in the name of good.' ~ Richard Boone

If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation. ~ Charles Saatchi

she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and conversation. ~ Bernardine Evaristo

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words "village" and "age" whatsoever. ~ Jakub Marian

I think my style as far as vocal delivery and even down to the pronunciation of certain words is so deliberate. ~ Miguel

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural like Jy-ei. They have a proverb to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for that the female sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to deal with in the individual. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air. ~ Cormac McCarthy

But perhaps nothing speaks more clearly for the absurdities of English pronunciation than that the word for the study of pronunciation in English, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways. ~ Bill Bryson

Poetry's the speech of kings. You're one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
's been dubbed by [Us] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [Us]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers. ~ Tony Harrison

Yiddish has a down-to-earth quality that makes it remote from high-flown rhetoric, and it has a catch-as-catch-can charm derived from its stunning variety-of syntax, spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary-from region to region. ~ Israel Shenker

There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth! ~ Daniel Wallace

Most of the people who have verbally asserted that 'there is no master of pronounciation' have intentionally made a claim and unintentionally made their claim believable. (It is 'pro-nun-ciation' not 'pro-noun-ciation'.) ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Sandwich Spanish will have you speaking and understanding Spanish with ease, using native-like pronunciation, and demonstrating culturally appropriate behaviors. You will be ready to take that vacation or live and thrive among the world's Spanish speaking societies! ~ Carol Ann George PhD

Hyperbolic Suggestion is - as one might infer from the term's literal interpretation - a method of suggestion induced upon the subject (or subjects), in question, through the blatant and immoderate invocation of hyperbole. Simply stated, excessive exaggeration induces a trance upon the recipient, rendering him or her remarkably susceptible to suggestion. Thus, through the use of a multitude of descriptive adjectives and superlatives, neural mechanisms and pathways are overloaded, as canals and bypasses are burrowed into the thick of the gray matter. The dendrites are, through this process, tuned to a predetermined frequency by which the seeds of suggestion can be sown. When this occurs, the subject becomes incredibly compliant to any orders given at a certain tone of voice. In some cases, orders need not be given. The subject's attitudes might well be so affected by the hyperbole as to affect his natural tendencies...Emmanuel silently wondered if there existed a perfect combination of words or phrases that could somehow - as in the case of Hyperbolic Suggestion - subvert even the most stubborn of wills. Then again, maybe it wasn't so much the words as it was how they were spoken: if he achieved exactly the most desirable intonation, rhythm, timing, pitch and pronunciation in his speaking, would his verbal appeals somehow make greater inroads in garnering their consent? There had to be some optimal combination of aspirated consonants, diphthongs, facial expressions and inflect ~ Ashim Shanker

Remember that lettuce doesn't grow on a spruce; and it also doesn't rhyme with it. ~ Jakub Marian

My uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but my pronunciation isn't terrible. ~ Moby

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

Ailith: A-lith ("noble war"; "ascending, rising")
Andriana: An-dree-ana, or Dree, for "Dri" ("warrior")
Asher: Ash-er ("happy one")
Azarel: Ah-zah-rell ("helper")
Bellona: Bell-oh-na ("warlike")
Chaza'el: Chazah-ell ("one who sees")
Kapriel: Kah-pree-ell (variant of "warrior")
Keallach: Key-lock ("battle")
Killian: Kill-ee-un ("little warrior"--though he's not so little in my novel!)
Raniero: Rah-near-oh ("wise warrior")
Ronan: Row-nun ("little seal"; I know. Not as cool, right? But he was named Duncan at first draft and I had to change it due to publisher request, and "Ronan" sounded like a medieval, cool warrior name to me. I overlooked the real translation in favor of the man he became in my story. And that guy, to my mind, is more like a warrior, with the spray of the sea upon his face as he takes on the storm--which is like a seal!)
Tressa: Tre-sah ("late summer")
Vidar: Vee-dar ("forest warrior") ~ Lisa Tawn Bergren

Schwa: The faint vowel sound in many unstressed syllables in the English language. It is signified by the pronunciation "uh" and represented by the symbol upside down e. For example, the e in overlook, the a in forgettable, and the o in run-of-the-mill.
It is the most common vowel sound in the English language. ~ Neal Shusterman

Punctuation is the art of dividing a written composition into sentences, or parts of sentences, by points or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense, and an accurate pronunciation require. ~ Lindley Murray

This is a huge foyer. She spun in a slow circle, taking in the high ceilings.
She'd said the word using its French pronunciation, foy-ay. Cletus said it that way. The rest of us said foy-er, like it's spelled, because we lived in the United States and weren't pretentious nut jobs. Not that I thought Sarah was a pretentious nut job or made such a judgment about all people based on their pronunciation of that single word.
Just Cletus. He said foy-ay and was most definitely a pretentious nut job. ~ Penny Reid

My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision. ~ Stephen Colbert

I used to pursue the need for excitement and creativity excessively by sleeping around, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and occasionally using drugs. I was in a rock and roll band and I thought I was a real bad boy. I even have the tattoos to prove it. After I told Yogi Hari my story at his ashram, he joked around when he was introducing me and said: He used to be Bad-John, but now he is Good-John. (It's a pun on the pronunciation of my name Gudjon – and if you ever meet me, I'll probably use it to get you to pronounce my name correctly). ~ Gudjon Bergmann

Glass. A broad resembles the a of the German; as all, wall, call. Many words pronounced with a broad were anciently written with au; as sault, mault; and we still say, fault, vault. This was probably the Saxon sound, for it is yet retained in the northern dialects, and in the rustick pronunciation; as maun for man, haund for hand. The short a approaches to the a open, as grass. The long a, if prolonged by e at the end of the word, is always slender, as graze, fame. A forms a diphthong only with i or y, and u or w. Ai or ay, as in plain, wain, gay, clay, has only the sound of the long and slender a, and differs not in the pronunciation from plane, wane. Au or aw has the sound of the German a, as raw, naughty. Ae is sometimes found in Latin words not completely ~ Samuel Johnson

But you say it "in-TREE-ging", LJ, not "in-trig-you-ing".' I said it back to her, 'In-TREE-ging.' (Okay, this is a problem with books. But the only one.) ~ Stephanie Butland

Many lyricists rhyme as they pronounce, and their pronunciation is simply horrible. They can make "home" rhyme with "alone," and "saw" with "more," and go right off and look their innocent children in the eye without a touch of shame. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The mown grass is growing again nearly to our knees; we will take a second crop of hay from this field, rich and green and starred with moon daisies, buttercups and the bright, blowsy heads of poppies. ~ Philippa Gregory

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better. ~ Dashiell Hammett

His English was exceptional. There was a glottal sound in his voice, but it was not harsh. I'd often asked him to help me with my sparse Arabic, trying to get my pronunciation of this or that word right. "Shukran." "Afwan." "Qumbula." Thank you. You're welcome. Bomb. ~ Kevin Powers

Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding. ~ Janet Fitch