Feel this in my bones. I enjoy reading books, but they go down the memory hole fast for me, especially names.
Rocinante and the only reason I know is because of The Expanse.
For me it’s “An Animated Description of Mr. Maps” by The Books.
For me it’s because of One Piece
I only know it because of Limbus Company XD
What about John Steinbeck? Travels with Charley.
For me, the problem with “Rocinante” is I don’t know how to pronounce it. So, while reading, I’d skip past it, recognizing that it’s the horse, but not parsing it as a word.
If asked that question, I’d need to explain that, but I’d stumble over the word.
If a book has too many oddly (to me) spelled names, I’ll skip it for this reason. Apostrophes in the middle and no vowels, and I’m not going to read your book.
Ro Cin An Te
Roh sin ahn the
Rocinante
Thin, not sin.
Ro as in rod. Thin as in, well, thin. An as in ant. Te as in tent.
So you are saying it’s
raa - thin - an - teh??That’s wild… I’m convinced you are not pronouncing ‘ant’ or ‘tent’ “correctly” for those to be your suggestions…
Why would you make it a ‘th’ at the end??
The weird ‘th’ handling of ‘c’ isn’t just a Catalan thing? Is that all of Spain? I know I’m biased as a North American, but preference for Mexican Spanish.
Autocorrect is a motherfucker
Is this not a trick question?
Maybe I’m mistaken but didn’t he ride a donkey not a horse?
Sancho Panza (his servant) rides the donkey.
Rocinante is, as his name states, a rocín (an old horse)
I never actually read the book I just remember his whole thing was riding a donkey instead of a horse so I was confused
Wasn’t it a donkey? I think it was named Rocinante? Idk, I read it like 16 years ago.
Edit post-Wikipedia: it was a workhorse, not a donkey, but I nailed the name. I’ve wondered in the past if Geralt’s horse Roach in The Witcher was a nod to Rocinante
I for some reason thought Don Quixote rode a donkey too… Where’d that come from?
I think his “squire” had one, so maybe they get conflated XD
Kind of, maybe? But probably not.
In the original, Geralt’s horse’s name is “Płotka” - has technically the same meaning as Roach (a small, cheap kind of fish), but the term is also sometimes used for easy, inconsequential and irrelevant things.
Good to know! It’d be a cool reference, but I guess it wouldn’t really fit with Geralt’s character. He’s pretty far off from Don Quixote XD
The names of the 3 musketeers regularly come up in crosswords and no matter how many times I see it I can’t remember one of the 4. There’s Porthos, Athos, and I believe D’Artagnan was the one who joined later. Doesn’t help that their names sound vaguely like the 3 fates: Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis.
Aramis is the one you’re missing, and he’s also the one I always forget. I can remember porthos and athos because they sound similar, and d’artagnan was the name of the company my old job used for some supplies, but Aramis is too easy a name to forget.
Maybe both of you guys issue is that you think of Porthos first, Athos, Porthos, Aramis is burned in to my mind, never read any book about musketeers either and I am terrible with names
I watched an entire movie once where they didn’t give protagonist a name. Realized about a week later in shower and had to look up to confirm.
Tenet?
Fight Club?
Is it Juan Quixote?
Juan Robinson
Horsey McHorseface
That’s a shitty question though. Totally irrelevant to the meat of the story, and definitely not a proof someone read the whole thing and thought about it.
Questions like that are good to know if somebody read the thing. You don’t get details in resumes.
No, it isn’t.
Most people will not retain the name of an animal that doesn’t speak. The horse has zero impact on the story, and only serves as a piece of Quixote’ personality signifiers
Welcome to the school system
Same experience with a really old German book. He wanted to know the color of the hat one of the side characters was wearing. I had no clue, after investing so much time into trying to understand it. That kinda made me give up - why try to participate when the outcome is the same as if I didn’t?
Rocinante
That’s one badass horse right there
It’s pronounced legitimate salvage
The guy from One Piece?
Well duh, it’s a book about Doflamingo after all.
I only know this because of The Expanse.
Beltalowda!
Hhnnggg the cultural depiction of belters is the greatest in any scifi everAAAAAAHHHH
I only know the name of the ship from Moby Dick from MGS V.
I never read the book, and I knew this somehow
On pizza?
Are we supposed to say “ask me a harder question” in this situation?
Anon should be disappointed in their teacher, honestly.
only remember the name because of The Expanse
But if you pronounce it like the show, every Spanish speaker has the right to whoop your ass just once
when i moved to austin and everyone was pronouncing guadalupe “guadaloop” and looking at me funny for pronouncing it guadalupe, i got murder eyes for like a month.
I’m going to need reports on how you say Koenig and Mueller too. As you are quite aware, moving to Austin requires multi-factor identification. /s
the german way unless it’s an american name, in which case i gotta get damn verification
I’m sorry sir, but you’re going to have to move. /s
Kay-nig
Muh-ler
Guada-loopThey’re old codes, but they still check out.
i did move, i’ve been back in california for over a decade
i lived in a since-gentrified apartment complex on may-ner down from the amy’s
like fuck texas, that one was English
and i refuse to pronounce it Kaynig. Kenig is the furthest i’ll go
you have a favorite out in Lockhart?
Thank you for visiting Austin, the live music capital of the world. We apologize if the rest of Texas disturbed you during your stay, and we thank you for your patience with this matter as we are still researching dimensional translocation possibilities. As you are a valued Californian, we would like to ask you to please take 5 minutes out of your day to go online and recall all the robotaxi’s y’all sent us. Keep it weird, and come back soon.
~Come back soon is an invitation for a vacation not to exceed two weeks. Buying real estate to move your podcast offices to is strictly prohibited. Fans of Joe Rogan’s comedy are discouraged to apply.~
laughs in Baaathelona
If that principle applied throughout history, anglophones would have evolved either an armored ass or no ass at all. I believe they are pathologically incapable of grasping the phonology of foreign languages. Just ask any native English speaker the name of the Soviet Union’s general secretary that succeeded Stalin and preceded Brezhnev… realistically, nine out of ten will have no idea, and the remaining one will say he was some “cruise chef”.
Step 1: Seek to prove that anglophones can’t pronounce foreign words.
Step 2: Ask a history question that has less to do with pronunciation than it does with an awareness of political events that happened on the other side of the globe, likely before the respondent was born.
Step 3: Ignore that even the people who were alive in that time were likely only getting their pronunciation from whoever was anchoring the news and may be blameless for only hearing an incorrect pronunciation.
Step 4: Feel smug, I guess.
As a linguaphile, I’ve always tried to pronounce words from other languages as correctly as possible. People tend to think that makes me weird.
Xenophobes think I’m being a snob, and “inclusive” people think I’m mocking the language or making some offensive joke or something. Literally the only people who don’t get upset about it are the ones who speak whatever language it is.
Literally the only people who don’t get upset about it are the ones who speak whatever language it is.
It depends on the exact word and context, like if you go to Japan and say Hay mmmburrrgurrrr をいただきたいです, it sounds so bad.
