The Shadow Over Innsmouth - BBC Radio 4 Extra - Help Needed

[hokusbloke]

Hi all

Hope you remember me from producing last year's "AtMoM" on BBC R7 with Richard Coyle?

Well, the BBC have commissioned us to do another HPL 5 part series, and I am in studio today recording "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" with Richard. I was wondering if someone could help with acceptable pronunciations for the following words:

Pth’thya-l’yi and Y’ha-nthlei

I would of thought - Th-thya-lieya and yah-Hah-nith-lae

I'll let you know more details of the series ASAP. Thanks for your help

Neil

[Steff Worthington]

sounds about right to me Neil. Its de regeur these days to pronounce HPLs words as easily as possible. Any pronunciation that differs slightly from how Lovecraft wouldve said it has become apocryphal. R'lyeh is an excellent example. my players and i (and others separately) say 'RAR-lay'.

[WinstonP]

Imagine a fish saying the words to a frog and the frog saying them back.

[Tigger_MK4]

Congratulations - I look forward to hearing it !
I did write to the Beeb after the last one asking for more Lovecraft ,and especially Shadow - I'm sure many others did too - glad to see they've been listening

Unlike "Cthulhu", which seems to have reached a rough consensus in pronounciation amoungst many (but not all fans), I think with these words, there will be as many pronounciations as there are speakers.

...at the end of the day, I'd personally suggest : anything you come up with that doesnt sound too carefully pronounced should suffice. I've heard some audiobooks where the reader pronounced the words slowly and carefully, and it sounded very stilted.

Personally I pronounce :

Spoiler:

Y’ha-nthlei as "Y(u)h(a) - N(i)th-lay" , where the (u) (a) and the (i) are breathy,short and almost subvocal... I could also annotate it Y'h' N'th-lay
... y(u)h(a) being a bit like yo ho (and a bottle of rum) in its pacing and emphasis..... to be honest, pretty close to your suggested pronounciation, so if you find that comfortable, I'd say go with it !

Pth’thya-l’yi =puth* theee** -yaah luh-yee

*th a very strong, slightly lispy th/f with tongue firmly between teeth.
**th again lispy..."fee" rather than "the" .. yaah as in a sloane rangers "ok, yah".

The other suggestion I'd make is: I'd strongly recommend trying to get Zadok Allens accent and way of speaking right - or at least believably american. Getting that down well makes a world of difference (even to me, a UK listener). Of the existing adaptations of "Shadow over Innsmouth", my favourite is that of Wayne June (Dark worlds of HP Lovecraft) for exactly that reason.

If I had a criticism of your version of At The Mountains of Madness - which was generally very good, so please take this as constructive from someone who enjoyed your work - it was it was a tad too "english" for a supposedly American character. However, if the reader is not too confident with rural american accents, their own would be preferable than a bad one, of course

Otherwise I thought the first audio was very good - and several of my friends have also commented the same - and I look forward to hearing your next !

[Steff Worthington]

Hi all

Hope you remember me from producing last year's "AtMoM" on BBC R7 with Richard Coyle?

Well, the BBC have commissioned us to do another HPL 5 part series, and I am in studio today recording "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" with Richard. I was wondering if someone could help with acceptable pronunciations for the following words:

Pth’thya-l’yi and Y’ha-nthlei

I would of thought - Th-thya-lieya and yah-Hah-nith-lae

I'll let you know more details of the series ASAP. Thanks for your help

Neil

Is there an iPlayer link to this? I appear to have missed it.

[Justin F]

I was wondering if someone could help with acceptable pronunciations for the following words:

Pth’thya-l’yi and Y’ha-nthlei

My personal suggestion:
Imagine you are an alien aquatic thing with big lips and too much saliva. Now try to say those words in as few syllables as possible. If the listener doesn't end up with spit on their face, you're doing it wrong.

[Aurelius]

Is there an iPlayer link to this? I appear to have missed it.

Assuming you mean 'Mountains of Madness', it was a while back and you missed a fairly recent repeat last month, but I'm fairly sure it will come round again. However, there's also this .

[hokusbloke]

Many thanks to you all for the kind suggestions. I think we managed to muddle through!

Re: the Englishness of AtMoM and how we've approached this one - the BBC wanted an English take on the work, and since HPL was a bit of an Anglophile I didn't feel too badly about having it be an English voice. Also, to be fair, the character COULD have been a visiting English scholar (well, it is fiction, after all!)

For Innsmouth, of course, as we are working with Richard again, the narration is done in English, not American. BUT, the two other speaking characters (the travel agent and Allens) have been given American accents. In fact, episode three is 90% Allens! I think Richard does a fairly decent job of an American accent and I hope you agree.

I always appreciate the honest feedback from you all, so many thanks for that and for your continuing support. It isn't easy getting HPL on to the BBC but we are managing a little at a time

The series will run Monday 3rd to Friday 7th October 2011 at 18:30 UK time on BBC Radio 4 Extra (the old Radio 7). It will also be on the iPlayer and no doubt repeated several times. We also intend to release the extended version on audiobook download.

So...fingers crossed. I am very excited to be introducing more HPL to the BBC audience, let's hope they, and you all, enjoy it!

warmest wishes

Neil

[PoC]

Had a quick go, for a bit of fun.