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Yes, I find it distracting. To me, the problem is not so much if a name is hard to pronounce, but if it's difficult to figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced. Unless the spelling of a name...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T10:44:49Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41745 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Jay
·
2019-12-08T10:44:49Z (about 5 years ago)
Yes, I find it distracting. To me, the problem is not so much if a name is hard to pronounce, but if it's difficult to figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced. Unless the spelling of a name is somehow important to your story, if you're going to use made up names, I'd say to spell them phonetically. If Jiolluav is supposed to be pronounced Zholl-you-of, then why not just write it "Zholl-you-of"? This is especially true if you have multiple difficult to pronounce names that resemble each other. If there's a character named Jiolluav and another named Jaolvual, I think readers may well get them confused and find themselves constantly checking back. Sure, in a fantasy or science fiction novel, I expect names to be unusual-sounding. If you're alien from the planet Rigel 7 is named "Roger Smith", that would be very distracting. But don't give me a name with a baffling pronunciation, like Wadlkjaece. Give me something phonetic, like Wa-juto-case or some such.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-01-29T19:57:18Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 12