Random Literary confession from my childhood

[vodkafan]

Hi . When I was little, like everyone else my age I had a lot of Enid Blyton books. On the front cover, her name was always written signature style with that big intricate "E". As I had the books from the time when I was first learning to read and recognise letters, I mistook the "E" for a "G". I never bothered to tell anyone this, so nobody corrected me. So my confession is that right until I was about 18 I thought the writer was called "Gnid" Blyton. Sad but true !

Edited July 27, 2011 by vodkafan

[Janet]

I had a Chip 'n Dale annual when I was little (you know, those Disney Chipmunks!) and for years I thought it was pronounced "Chip nuh Dale" (The 'nuh' being said the way children pronounce a 'N' in lower-case), rather than "Chip en Dale"!

[Nollaig]

Not quite in the same vein as the OP but, when I was a kid I had a blue issue of a Animals Of Farthing Wood magazine with the title in big red letters. When tired, if I sort of shook the magazine in front of my eyes, the letters appeared to bounce. I used to use it to estimate how tired I was. And also because it was what I imagine what being on drugs is like at about 8 years of age, though I'm applying that view retroactively

[Chrissy]

I had been reading and loving The Chronicles Of Narnia for some time before I heard someone else say the name Narnia, and I was floored. For some reason my head had alwayd read the word as Nar-Rar-Nia. Not much in it I know, but enough to send a shiver of doubt through me.

 

PS that E in Enid always bothered me, although I like the use of a signature.

[emmylou]

I felt like this after watching the first Harry Potter movie, there were so many words (mainly names) that I had been saying differently in my head, Hermione and Hagrid being the most important. I was pronouncing Hermione as Herm-ee-oh-nee and Hagrid as Hay-grid!

[Easy Reader]

I am forever mis-reading and mis-pronouncing names in books I tend to look at the first letter and guess the rest which can be embarrassing when discussing books and I keep referring to the wrong name.

 

for example just this weekend I was talking about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and was saying something about "Cee-drick"

 

The above name blindness I have doesn't help when reading books such as the "Thursday Next" series when some of the names have comedy values to them.

[vodkafan]

Some interesting "confessions" coming out!

[pickle]

For a few years I pronounce my Nancy Drew book The tripe Hoax as HO-AXE!!!

 

I also used to get confused with Asterix and Obelix as the majority of the books I read in Spanish as they were my cousins for years I didn't realise that when they write JA JA JA Ja they mean Ha Ha Ha (as in laughter) cause the Spanish J is hard. I did on the other hand learn (very usefully) that the Spanish for Wild Boar is Jabali!!

[oceansoul]

Slightly different: When I was in primary school there were 2 levels of official books to read. The second level were the legnth of a short story made into a little novel thing. There were some of them that I just could not bring myself to read. They were so pathetic. One was about getting a pet hamster, if I remember rightly. I would look at them and then pick one up and just cry inside. I used to tell my teachers that there were none left that I hadn't read, so they'd let me pick a book from the library. lol

[emmylou]

I was exactly the same with my school official books. We used to have to keep a record of all the books we had read, and even though mine was full (mainly of Enid Blyton at the time) they still said I had to read these depressing stories (and I use the term loosely) about the migration patterns of swallows or whatever lol.

[Easy Reader]

oh me too

 

I had to read "magic key" books and after each one the teacher would ask you questions on it to check that you had read it. They were sooooo boring I couldn't read them and you had to finish one to get the next one and there were like a million in the series and I remember my friend who actually liked them was allowed to skip them as she was reading them so well.

[Hayley]

I'm sure I used to read magic key books at school too

 

I also remember thinking that the 'E' in Enid Blyton looked like a 'G', glad other people thought it as well!

[Ooshie]

I had been reading and loving The Chronicles Of Narnia for some time before I heard someone else say the name Narnia, and I was floored. For some reason my head had alwayd read the word as Nar-Rar-Nia. Not much in it I know, but enough to send a shiver of doubt through me.

 

It was many a long year before I heard someone else talk about the books and realised that it wasn't pronounced "Nair-Nia". Oh, the shame!

[jjzazzy]

In grade 9 (about 14 years old) we had to read To Kill A Mockingbird in school. I made it the whole way through thinking that the Scout character was a boy. I got a very poor mark on my essay about it.

[LittleW]

I also remember from school that I didn't like those books we had to read there. And that we used to read them one chapter per week. For, whenever the story became a little good, we stopped. Also not that nice.

AND I remember classmates, who only read those books they had to!!!!

[chesilbeach]

Not sure how literary this is, but I still can't get my head around a silent G for Dennis the Menace's dog in The Beano, and still call him G-nasher.

[Janet]

Me too!

[Ooshie]

And me...

[Kell]

We had reading level books too. Fortunately, I had a reading age so far ahead of the rest of the kids that during the last few years of first school, they would order in books from the middle school for me. Unfortunately, thsi meant that once I started middle schol (I was only there for a year before we moved to Aberdeen), they had to order in books from the high school for me - LOL!

 

When we got to Scotland, I was mortified to be put into Primary 7 (the correct class fo rmy age) as I'd already studied everything they were doing. Unfortunately, they have no facility for advancing students during Primary school age here. I was doing the book reviews forms they used for 1st and 2nd year at the academy. Once I started secondary school at the academy, I had to move onto the book reviews forms they were using for the Standard Grade pupils in 3rd and 4th year.

 

At the end of first year, they devised a prize for me based on the hundred or so book reviews I'd written. The prize was a copy of What Katy did. I had read it about 4 years previously and thought it babyish then. I wasn't amused. Of course, I sais "thank you" and how lovely it was. Then I promptly gave it to my sister who is 3 1/2 years younger than me - LOL!

[Kylie]

Some very funny and cute stories here (especially Gnid Blyton ). I'm so glad I'm not the only one with pronunciation issues. I still have problems too. With my ex, I would sometimes use big or uncommon words in speech and was horrified to be corrected by him. I'm supposed to be an editor for goodness' sake, but it's hard to know if your pronunciation is correct when you've only ever seen the word in written form.

 

There's a trilogy of fantasy books a childhood friend and I used to read. The main character's name is Gemma and I remember my friend pronounced it differently than I did. Ever since then I've been paranoid about my pronunciation and despite reading the trilogy quite a few times I've never been able to settle on one pronunciation. I actually swap between Jemma and Gemma (G as in 'going') within the same reading. I'm so confused that I now can't remember how I pronounced it originally.

 

I have a report card from year 5 where my teacher complimented my love of reading but wrote that she wished I would read something other than Baby-Sitters Club books.

[ABC_Em]

For some reason, when my sister and I were kids, we used have have a copy of "Undone" by Paul Jennings (an hilarious book for kids, if you've not read it!) and we always pronounced it "un-doony." I think we just thought because he had a bizarre sense of humour, it couldn't possibly be pronounced normally!

[lauraloves]

I have two that are quite embarrasing actually, both Harry Potter ones too!

 

I pronounced both 'Accio' and 'Sirius' wrong, and only realised when I said them to my boyfriend and he looked at me like I had gone out!

[chesilbeach]

I have two that are quite embarrasing actually, both Harry Potter ones too!

 

I pronounced both 'Accio' and 'Sirius' wrong, and only realised when I said them to my boyfriend and he looked at me like I had gone out!

 

Well you shouldn't feel bad about Accio, as it's been pronounced differently on the audio books compared to the films, so I don't think there is a "correct" way to say it. (At least that's how I make myself feel better about my pronunciation anyway and if Stephen Fry says it Axe-ee-oo, then that's what I'm doing! )

[Chris2]

I had been reading and loving The Chronicles Of Narnia for some time before I heard someone else say the name Narnia, and I was floored. For some reason my head had alwayd read the word as Nar-Rar-Nia.

But you might be right. There's the line in Dawn Treader(?) where Eustace(?) says "people who talk about Narnia get gradually balmier and balmier" and the children say "Narnia and balmier don't rhyme." Don't they? So how IS Narnia pronounced?

 

But on the OP, for years I thought "Peanuts by Schulz" was a deliberate mis-spelling of "Peanuts by schools" - I thought the newspaper got school kids to send in the ideas.

Edited August 3, 2011 by Chris2

[Kell]

But you might be right. There's the line in Dawn Treader(?) where Eustace(?) says "people who talk about Narnia get gradually balmier and balmier" and the children say "Narnia and balmier don't rhyme." Don't they? So how IS Narnia pronounced?

I think they mean it's not a true rhyme. For example, "say" and "pay" are true rhymes as they have the same amount of syllables with only one letter changed (the first one, obviously) and are pronounced in the same way. "Narnia", although soudning similar to "barmier" isn't a true rhyme, as one ends in "nia" and the other ends in "mier". The "r" should legitimately be pronounced in the latter, whereas there is no "r" at the end of the former. Therefore Narnia should be pronounced Nar-nee-a, and does not rhyme with bar-mee-er.