Pronunciation issues?
I had a booking rejected internally for the following reasons:
"At the start, “thank you” sounds like “Danke you”
At :12, “www” should sound “double-u, double-u, double-u”
Here is the file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x1gl779lzvuwtt/holiday%20closed.wav?dl=0
I am a native English speaker with a neutral American accent (having grown up in the Pacific Northwest). The first word still clearly sounds like "thank" to me. (I got another odd rejection once telling me I pronounced "email" like "enail" despite clearly saying "email", so...some of these seem pretty arbitrary?)
In regards to the second bit, while I suppose "double u" is TECHNICALLY correct for how to pronounce the letter "w", I have almost never heard it pronounced like that in colloquial spoken English. Being that a lot of clients prefer natural sounding voiceover these days, I tend to deliver copy the way a person would speak in natural conversation---and every other native English speaker I know pronounces "w" the way I did in my initial read. Enunciating "double u" - as I am currently doing in my revision - sounds very clunky and awkward and I feel that delivering it this way just to get past QC will result in the client shooting it back saying it sounds strange.
Is this just a regional thing? Am I crazy in thinking that saying "double you" rather than "dubbayou" when reading a web address sounds strange/unnatural?
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Hi Kira,
Thanks for sharing this case with us. Usually, we ask for the most neutral pronunciation as we've had clients who reject projects for regional accents and non-standard pronunciations. In the case of 'www' it depends on the speed required, IVRs tend to be quicker than normal so nowadays it's more common to hear it pronounced as you did. Still, to be on the safe side we prefer the normal pronunciation given that the client didn't specify if they wanted a more colloquial read.
As for the first word, it sounds like 'denk you', the 'th' sounds more like a 'd', but it's not a big issue.
We strive to deliver reads that the client will be happy with from the get-go, hence these revisions.
Hope that helps,
-Seb
Hi Seb,
Thank you for your clarification on this issue. I was just puzzled by it since it's not the way people speak in normal conversations (I brought up where I grew up to show that I have a neutral American accent, hence I don't THINK it's a regional thing, but maybe I'm crazy).
I still don't think I pronounce my th's as d's, and I've honestly never gotten that note before from any of the directors or clients I've worked with so it's odd to hear, but I guess others are hearing something I'm not.
Either way I revised it and the new one passed QC.