Actually … your nephew is just worldly . That is how you correctly pronounce Tobias is German and probably Spanish and most other languages. And who knows? maybe even Hebrew, where it comes from.

My mispronunciations always come from me just ignoring things I can’t pronounce when I’m reading to myself. I just half-ass it if it’s weird and the keep ignoring it, because my brain doesn’t care how to say it, it just cares what it means. Then eventually people are talking about it and I say the name out loud and realize I never bothered to figure out how to pronounce it …

For me it is the Gaelic names in Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series. I have to wait for her to explain how they are pronounced or I have to listen to the audio books to figure it out. Gaelic is a crazy language.

Tobias is the Greek version of the Hebrew name, so the krauts likely aren’t pronouncing it correctly either.

Well, then I guess we need to look up the Greek pronunciation:

http://www.greek-language.com/Alphabet.html

ah! you nephew is actually a biblical scholar

That isn’t how they would pronounce it in Germany anyway. The “i” would be pronounced like a long “i.” the “o” would be pronounced like a long “o.”

The Germans would pronounce it pretty much like it is supposed to be pronounced, says this German American with six years of German foreign language classes….

In German you get the “ee” sound when an “i” is involved only when the “i” is followed by an “e.” “Diese,” for example, is pronounced “deezah.”

Otherwise, the “i” sounds like an “i,” though sometimes a long “i” and sometimes a short.

Ike bine Deutscherine

Come to think of it, I wonder what the Germans WOULD do with that word, since it is hard to pronounce the “i” as a short “i,” and typically an “e” proceeds the “i” when the “i” is going to be long.

Ich bin aus Deutschland?

Ich bin eine Deutscherine?

Sorry guys. All in good fun.

but check it out:
http://www.forvo.com/word/tobias/

I’m not a German, though i did live there for 3 months. Can’t recall ever having heard it in Germany, but I def heard it pronounced in Yiddish once, which is very similar.

Whaddya know? There is the “i” being used as an “ee.” LOL Those are hard to find in German, but there it is. So perhaps it would be Tow-bee-us after all.

Scratch that. It’s “Deutscherin,” not “Deutscherine.” So it isn’t an example of “ee” after all.

The Sorry guys. All in good fun should have gone here: I was picking on you saying the i was a long i. When you say the i in all of those works, it is the short i. It’s “Ich bin Deutscherin” all short.

As I say, though, you could be right about the “ee.” “I” by itself (without an “e” before it or after it) is typically a soft “i” in German, but it wouldn’t be easy to pronounce that way with the word “Tobias.” And since long “i”s are rare in German, it probably is “ee.”

Wow. Major sidetrack. LOL But, hey, it’s what I do.

Hah! Didn’t see your post and posted the same thing, essentially. Yes, we agree that “i”s are typically short in German, which is why I’m not sure what they would do with that name. “I” by itself isn’t “ee,” either. You typically need an “e” after the “i” for that.

It is the fact that “i” IS sometimes long–often long, in fact, though we’re talking when proceeded by an “e”– that made me think they might go with that even though there is no “e” there.

At any rate, I had the same problem with Nynaeve, Christy, only I looked at the pronunciation–NIGH-neev–and thought he meant the “i” to be short. It wasn’t until later than I woke up from my stupor and thought of the words “nigh” and “night” and realized that it was a long “i”. Silly me. It took me a year or two to start pronouncing it right, because I was so set on the other pronunciation by then.

You guys are both Amber. That is confusing.

@lego-Amber I think it’s the fact that it’s not a german name and if you try to say it with a short i, it almost ends up sounding like the ee already. It’s not just you. I could talk about language all day.

I read the Wheel of Time series and am now going through it in audiobook format, which I strongly recommend.

As such, I can tell you that Egwene is pronounced “ehg-WEEN” for what it’s worth.

(I strongly recommend the audiobooks, if not for the first readthrough, then for the second).

How about “Melniboné?”

I read it MEL-na-bone in my head, though I guess it would be MEL-ne-bo-NAY?

I would pronounce that Mel-NIH-boh-nay myself. But it beats me.

Ah. I just looked at Wikipedia and it agrees.

A word that length doesn’t tend to have the accent on the first syllable.

Monosyllabic being an exception.

Four-syllable words…. A lot of those stress the second syllable, as in the example of the name. Longer words can stress the first syllable.

But then there’s Mississippi. Hah!

Anyway…. It appears to be Mel-NIH-boh -nay if we wish to trust Wikipedia. I don’t trust wikis further than I can throw them mentally, but I do think this pronunciation is correct.

Syllables stressed. Hmmm…. Maximillian and Anastasia versus Penelope and Antigone. I guess it just depends. But MEL-nih-boh-NAY just sounded odd to me. It didn’t roll off the tongue. It is much easier to pronounce fluidly in a sentence if the second syllable is stressed.

As for Carlisle, I’d heard that name before. Hermione, too. I might have mispronounced Hermione when I read “Mute” by Piers Anthony as a kid, however. ( There’s a telepathic weasel in “Mute” with that name.) I can’t recall.

Hmmmm…. Maybe the weasel’s name was Hermine. It’s been a long, long time since I read that book.

Wheel of Time names are always great. And always something different from what you thought they would be. It is always fun listening to the audiobooks and then having to rewind three times before figuring out they are saying Cairhien.

Anything that’s got more than three syllables and not like average Terran names. Especially stuff with apostrophes. Everything from Lovecraft to modern.

But that’s probably because I’m dyslexic. It’s a PITA.

I was a horrible Hermione abuser. to me, she was Her-me-OWN-ee, and I was like “who would ever name their kid that?!?
Does anyone know how you’re supposed to pronounce Daenerys?

I pronounced Tobias’s name JUST like your nephew did the whole time I read Animorphs as a kid. I knew a girl who pronounced it the correct way, and I too refused to change my ways. I’m 23 now and am re-reading them. Wow, I had no idea how much they shaped who I became as a person. Anyway, now that I’m rereading them, I have inexplicably reverted to the correct pronunciation and can’t bring myself to call him tow-bee-us anymore…. Oh, well. Say, to your nephew for me.

Aww, it wouldn’t let me add the thought-speak brackets… It just took out “hello” altogether. Lame. Anyway, now that I think of it, I used to pronounce the Hork-Bajir “Hork Bajaar”. I’ve reverted to the correct pronunciation on that one too.

Charlotte – I pronounce daenerys as “ah-sum”