Douglas Adams

[arethinn]

Lately, I've been listening not only to the radio show of Hitchhiker's, but to recordings of Adams himself reading the books. I've been somewhat confused by the fact that he is clearly reading the UK printings (evidenced by certain vocabulary words), and yet pronounces "Z" (as in ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha) as "zee" rather than "zed", "zebra crossing" as "zee-bra" rather than the "zeh-bra" I'm used to from Red Dwarf, etc. All in all very enjoyable, though. Hearing him make the screaming noises of agony for Arthur and Ford at the Vogon poetry reading was particularly amusing. I'm slightly disappointed that he seems to have been imitating the radio/TV voices, though, rather than coming up with his own interpretations for the characters. (Then again, as he is supposed to have written the radio part of Arthur specifically for the actor who played it, maybe imitating that voice is "his own interpretation", in a way.)

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Comments

[arethinn]

There's also the fact that at the time of the recording, I believe he had been living in California for some time, so he may have picked up a bit of a mishmash of pronunciation there. *shrugs* It just seemed self-inconsistent, was all. Zee-zed really threw me since I'm used to hearing and saying "zed" what with all the Canadians I fraternize with. ;)