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.)

ObNothing: user icon created from my own photo of spinny light shiny bits at tyrsalvia's most recent party.

Comments

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

have you heard the recording of a live reading he did in NYC?

in the preamble to that he says he only has five voices: quiet sport, loud sport, quite posh, loud posh, and australian - but given that there aren't actually any australians in hitchhiker's, you have to work it out from just the four.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know there was such a thing. Sounds neat!

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

Tis.

Cheap, too (http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/product.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2108223452.1091391839@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjadcmdmigjjicefecegedfhfdhfi.0&uniqueKey=1091392474160&pageType=preliminaryResults&productID=PF_DOVE_000029)!

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

Remember that there are hundreds of different "English" accents so what you see on Red Dwarf does not have to match what you hear on Hitchhiker's/Adams. There is also a generation gap between Adams and the guys on Red Dwarf so that could explain some of it.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

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. ;)