Q&A 1
14 Aug 2018 · page 827 of 1306
Don't worry if you've been pronouncing it wrong in your head for a while, he gave on up the proper pronunciation after ending up in England, as have many before and since.
You may have noticed that I've changed the date for the return of the next book- I kinda had to, or I'd have been vastly underprepared for it, and I'd rather give you guys a good story two weeks late than a sub par one on time. There'll be Q&As til then, maybe with answers less long than this one- feel free to ask things in the comments!
Widdershins updates will resume on September 4th, til then please check out the Kickstarter for Volume 7!
Comments (63)
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Oh, how full and detailed this answer is! :) Thank you!
> Don’t worry if you’ve been pronouncing it wrong in your head for a while
Not only in my head, but in my fanfics in Russian, too! :/ Well, I had a thought to fix it when I got to know that, but I tend to get accustomed to things like this, and it hurts to change them. :)
I console myself with the thought I pronounce Wolfe's name as his best friend does... even if Ben in my place would be more accurate. )) Well, I use Mal, not O'Malley, unlike Ben. :-)
It's tricky to convey foreign pronunciation in English spelling, but best I can do is "Volf-e", where the e is like it is in 'editor'. (this is based on how I would pronounce it, maybe 19th-Century-Prussian-Wolfe disagrees :P)
My knowledge of Russian is somewhat limited, but I think it's actually easier to transcribe in Russian, because you have all the same basic sounds and your spelling is close to phonetic: Волфэ I think comes very close, except the stress is on the O.
I have been writing his name (incorrectly, thinking it sounds as an animal) as "Вольф", where "ь" is rather matter of taste and the vowel may be closer to "у", really. [As a bit offtop, I see Russian translators writing the surname of Nero Wolfe (the famous detective) as "Вол(ь)ф" and "Вул(ь)ф" both, but he wasn't German, he was born in Montenegro and became an American citizen, so I have no idea how his surname is supposed to be pronounced. :)]
About "Vul-fher"... well, it seems to me it sounds more like "Вальфе" ("е/э" is a matter of taste, too). And I suspect this form would look a bit exotic in Russian texts. )) I think I'll put that into disclaimers. ))
Haha! Heylir, if you look at the Google Translate link I posted, it gives the Russian output as the same word (i.e., no transliteration), but if you click on that, it gives four different choices for transliteration! XD
So, "Wulfey," then? Yeah, I can see why Wolfe decided to just cut his losses there. :)
No "y" or long "i" or "ij" in there: it's somewhere between "ah", a short "oh" and "eh", like any good little [schwa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa") should be.
English also does various schwas. Just ask any Kentish lad or lass who made the mistake of trying to buy a cuppa from an out-of-the-way tea room in deepest, darkest Cumbria, Yorkshire or Lancashire unprepared. ;)
My headcanon is that Ben would take great pain to pronounce it the right way, because he's all about doing things the right way and he'd see Mal doing it wrong as a sign of disrespect.
Of course, I also see him as someone who would correct/have to use great willpower not to correct Wolfe every time he misspoke/mispronounced something in those early days until Mal snapped at him about having respect for someone trying their best to learn a new language. This led to Ben apologizing, and in my head to a trade off: Ben reaching Wolfe proper pronunciation of words he's having trouble with, Wolfe teaching him German.
In my head, not so a sign of disrespect as more an instance of Ben's general idea "O'Malley doesn't care about Important Things". :))
But I'm certain Ben did it the right way, yeah. Well, unlike me, Ben had heard how Wolfe pronounced his name, at their acquaintance. :)
Yeah, I like the way you put that better.
I definitely agree about Ben making an effort to pronounce it right, but I can also see him having trouble not slipping into the incorrect pronunciation, since that's what he hears Mal use all the time (sort of like how he unthinkingly said "buggerup" instead of "malform" when discussing Sid's magpie at the beginning of the Greed segment).
Yeah, and even in the second book he had to struggle with this impulse once: [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-30th-2012/ "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-30th-2012/") ))
I'd forgotten about that bit!
...wulfe'r ? is that how it's pronounced ? ^^; I pretty much pronounce it like the first half of my name, Wolfgang.
The phonetic spelling explanation is complicated a bit for Americans, we have to remember "oh, but the Brits are not actually pronouncing that final R". (At least not as an American thinks of a R sound.)
Uuuurgh. French here : I barely know how british or american english is pronounced, haha
Oh, French R's are a whole nother story! :) I wouldn't be sure how to pronounce Wolfgang in French either.
The same as in german ! Or almost
Is that why you put a space before your question marks and colons? I don't know much French, so I don't know if that's a French thing or just a you thing, but your English is good. I never would've guessed.
Well, maybe I might've guessed if I'd known prior to this that the wonky (for English) punctuation is a French thing (assuming that it is a French thing), but that's beside the point.
Yes, the space thing is how most french get caught. Ingrained habit XD
This is way too cute!
My original headcanon for the reason behind Mal's nickname went something like this:
"Now that we are friends, may I call you Jack?"
"Nffh. Never liked th' name."
"Ah. Then perhaps something else? O'Malley... Malley... Mal! How would it be if I call you Mal?"
"...Mal. Huh. Not bad."
"Mal." "Not bad." I see what you did there.
Entirely unintentional, I have to admit!
Ahahaha, yes, the evils of the German final e! My name has one as well, and while I appreciate people wanting to pronounce my name "correctly", they usually end up with some kind of "-ay" sound, which I have a horrendous dislike for...
Dear Wolfe is being charming and witty about it as usual <3
I studied German as a teenager and then again in my 30s when my kids began learning German. Multiple teachers, texts and videos, understand, over a time span of twenty years, although take into account that none of my teachers were native speakers.
The “ay” you hate so much is what’s taught as correct pronunciation, unfortunately! In all that time, I’ve never come across “ehr” as even a remote possibility for how to pronounce that final “e.” So it’s more a fundamental flaw in teaching methods, which is sadly even worse than a few people mangling your name.
I was never taught "ay". Rather "uh" - it's more like a schwa.
Well, yeah, it was closer to a schwa than “ay.” I learned “eh.” But there was a lot of room for individual interpretations of “uh/eh” and some people were always closer “ay.”
This is why we have the IPA, folks! :D
[http://www.ipachart.com/](http://www.ipachart.com/ "http://www.ipachart.com/") (It's clickable)
Oh, I hope it didn't come across as an attack on the people who pronounce it that way! Like I said, I do appreciate the effort, and I know that their intentions are pure. I absolutely do not blame them for getting it wrong, especially if they were taught that this was the correct way to say it. It's an odd sound, which I don't believe exists in the English language - us Germans have similar fun when first attempting to pronounce the English "th", and I have witnessed teachers struggle to explain it to their students.
(A possible explanation is that the "-ay" is closer in sound to the "é" (of "Olé" fame), which exists as a final sound in several other languages, as well as in French loanwords in the German language.)
Lol, no, not at all. I’m indignant, but at having been taught incorrectly in the first place. And looking at the comments below about how an American would hear a Brit pronounce a German word (which is different again from how that Brit would write out the phonetic spelling!), I have thrown my hands in the air and given up on the whole thing. :P
Haha, my life in a nutshell. XD
For anyone who wants to hear it: [https://translate.google.co...](https://translate.google.com/#de/ru/Wolfe "https://translate.google.com/#de/ru/Wolfe")
helpful, thanks!
This was really helpful, thank you.
I've done this a few times in a few PMs on HER to help out a few interested users on how to say my middle name. It helps out a lot.
I've studied German, and I've never heard it as "Vulf-ehr". It would be "Vulf-uh" . Is it a dialect thing? What dialect does Wolfe speak?
i'd read those the same out loud!
As an American, I mentally hear strong final Rs and have to remind myself that Brits don't.
Very fun little comic! Take the time you need - must be tough to handle Kickstarter and start a whole new book at the same time, and I appreciate that you give us these to tide us over!
So in other words, the real issue is dialects of English, not German :) To me 'ehr' would sound just like 'air' .
Easiest solution would be to use a dedicated phonetic script like "SAMPA". It does look pretty strange and needs to be learned, though. Should be picked up while learning languages, helps a lot.
And in this case, as a german, I read the name with a german pronunciation and have absolutely no idea, what was tried to be conveyed here, as there is neither a "u" sound nor an "r" in "Wolfe" in the german pronuciation of that name (at least in "standard" german, dialects may differ).
I did know the IPA a while ago but that would have made it a little impenatrable to anyone but linguists!
We do love our IPA! : )
we were meant to memorise it for Phonetics exams, which is perhaps why I did not do very well in that module :|
I always surprised myself in Phonetics... I always felt like I was going to fail but then did ok XD ...but now (as a foreign language teacher) I always find myself falling back to this fantastic little cheatsheet, [http://www.ipachart.com/](http://www.ipachart.com/ "http://www.ipachart.com/")
I (not german) teach german, and I have to say that, whereas in my country most of the children learn to read their mothertongue with the assistance of IPA (thank you non-transparent language); it is of no use in my Unterricht, because: 1/ long vowels are a part of IPA that is not used in the country's language 2/ accent 3/I learned german in the northern part of Germany, where accent is closer to what they imagine to be english (never heard a scot they have) and I tend to make reproduce this rather than the alemannic-badish one that I can only half pronounce... and 4/schwas are not always pronounced the same (yeah, IPA, what are you doing, sky-cross-thunder-weather-bloke)
When I was in school, our schoolbooks for languages used a phonetic script (don't know which one that was) to add the pronunciation next to every word in the vocabulary section. If one payed a little attention one could pick it up while actually learning the vocabulary, at least the more common phonetics. Been a while since I used it though and I can attest that it does get rusty without use. I still think it's the best solution to write out pronunciation of foreign words. Especially if the alternative would be the english writing, since there are countless differences in the english pronunciation depending on the region of origin. And some phonetics simply do not exist: Have fun trying to type the correct pronunciation of "Eichhörnchen" in english :D (And no, "squirrel" does not count :P)
If not perfect, Highshurnshun would be the closest I'd argue, but if the sound behind the ch-laut is vowel, you can always render it with th semi-vowel y... so High y'shurnshun?
Wow someone actually tried to do it! And it's even a very good try :D I'm especially fond of the "urn" to simulate the "örn" part. Problem is still the "ch" wich simply does not exist in english. To make it even more confusing, there are multiple pronunciations of the "ch" depending on the origin and the positioning. Most words with latin origins and a leading "ch" have it pronounced simmilar to the english "ch" in "christ". Sometimes it is pronounced like the english "sh". And then there is the "ch" like in the "Eichhörnchen", with no equivalent in english. The best tips to pronounce it that I can come up with are this: open the mouth as if one would be pronouncing a long "Aaaaaaaaahhh", then place the tip of the tongue at the bottom of the mouth and push it backwards so the rest of the tongue gets raised and then breath out through the mouth.
Which defeats the entire purpose of having universal pronunciation guides. What the hell, linguists?
Yep, I've been pronouncing "Wolfe" wrong the whole time:)
I have a slight quibble with this comic, but as Ms Ashwin has recently tweeted she hates quibblers, she's a bit stressed at the moment, she owns a big night stick and she knows where I live, I believe that, this time, I'll keep my big gob shut.
I'm safely on the other side of the big pond, so, night stick or not, I'll be brave and say I do wonder... Mal is illiterate. He goes by ear, not spelling. He's only ever heard Wolfe's name the way Wolfe himself pronounces it, so why would he get it wrong? I mean, maybe he'd be a bit off, but he shouldn't have a big problem reproducing what he hears. English basically does include all of the necessary phonemes, or close approximations, right?
It's only those of us whose brains are hard-wired to words on a page who are going to misinterpret that initial W!
Yes, that was it. You think 3000 miles of ocean will be enough!?
It's only a quibble, really, if this page is canon. These between-chapters sketches are more like Kate being playful with readers. There's some canon-truth, but a fair bit of joking around, too.
Kind of by definition, her readers are not illiterate. Many of us are uni-lingual in English and have indeed been hearing Wolfe's name wrong in our heads. So this page tells us -- or reminds us -- of a thing useful to remember.
There's actually one possible explanation which I would have not thought plausible, except for my own foreign-language-learning experience. Foreign-language names can be hard to remember, so suppose when they were first getting to know each other, Wolfe told O'Malley that his name is like the English word "wolf" to help him remember it. But then after this, all O'Malley remembered was the word "wolf". After all, any word in your native language is going to be far easier to remember and pronounce than anything else.
Again... I would not think this a plausible explanation, except that I've experienced this -- in the country where I live, there are people I've been introduced to quite a few times, and still I can't remember their name correctly -- I can only remember the "English" version of their name.
Omg, the cute.
Never had a problem with that side of German. Mind you, growing up with Afrikaans helped quite a lot.
It was all that complex grammar that tripped me up, instead. And, the dreaded ü. As well as inconvenient false friends. :P
Far, far, far and away too cute.
If I may ask a question - Why didn't Vee's spirit change its colour while all the other spirits did (during the battle with Lux)?
I am.... actually german so i've always been pronouncing it that way in my head.
That’s cheating.
Sooo... If we can ask questions here to be answered in the future....
What kind of "welcome" did its siblings give Mr. Lux when he was finally expelled from the Earthly Plane and back into whatever is the domain of the Sins?
Florrie: WHO. IS. YOUR. HUSBAND.
That's not as helpful as it would have been if I'd heard it out loud. I see "hr" and the end of a word and my mouth doesn't know what to do with it.
When I first read the comic I asked a friend who's taken German how to pronounce "Wolfe"! Obviously my inability to speak German means I don't say it perfectly, but at least I haven't been saying "wolf" :D