This may come as a shock...

Proper pronunciation can be a tricky thing, especially with different regional or national dialects and accents, and the mere fact that English can be such a hodge-podge of other languages. While you and I can argue about "tomato" until it's chopped for the salad, what about people's names? Surely, individuals should have the last word on how their name is pronounced.

Last year we did some investigative reporting to ascertain how to say "Junot", and we came across some other resources for properly enunciating authors' names. A new page of pronunciation has been making the rounds in Cyberland, and there are some surprises on here. It's been reblogged and retweeted many times, but it originally came from The San Francisco Panorama, a one-shot paper publication of McSweeney's. At a glance, I'm quite happy that my several-decades attempt to turn my tongue from PIN-shuhn to pin-SHAWN was never successful.

Take a peek, grade yourself, and prepare yourself for perfect pronunciation at your next literary party:


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