A Tip on Pronouncing the Names of Foreign Writers

Perhaps you know this already. If you didn't - allow me to educate.

Czeslaw Milosz is not pronounced "Coleslaw Milosovich" as I previously thought but "Chess-wov Mee-woash." Who knew? I am putting this into everyday use along with Simone Weil (which I now know is pronounced "Vey" not "While.")

(This is a picture of the poet himself.)

Comments

Erin said…

Thank you for the tips, how very inswagh-swagh I feel.

August 17, 2010 at 10:57 PM

The School of Hard Knocks

It is my current hope to go to graduate school for English literature next year: a certain school in a certain place, both a goal and an insurmountable challenge. Having been out of college for a year already, and having graduated as a music major, I am rusty. Trying to compensate, I googled “books every english major has read” but have had a difficult time finding a list that suggests what every (generalized) English major should have read by the time of (undergraduate) graduation. As a person who attended a high school whose meager syllabus prescribed the study of one novel, one play and four poems a year, and who could only scrape enough college literature credits for a minor, I feel woefully behind. Most American kids got a head start in AP English (seriously – who are those freaks who read Ulysses in high school?). American high schools may have their weaknesses, but a strong and ambitious push to read literature consistently is not one of them. There are gaps, and I fear that wh

A Shelf of One's Own

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