WELL-beck? THOR-o? Definitely not. In French, the accent ALWAYS goes on the final (pronounced) syllable.

it’s wellBECK, not WELLbeck.

true enough Coelho’s surname is portuguese, but isn’t the “lh” in portuguese pronounced kind of like “ly” or like the middle of the english word million in pretty much all lusophone countries? makes me wonder about the accuracy of this thing in general…of course, i could always be wrong. o, yeah, and the whole idea of this is pretty silly. who expects their name to be pronounced identically in one linguistic context much less different ones? why not let let normal socialization take care of this rather than codifying it in some stupid document?

Goethe is noticeably absent from this list

Borges was Argentine, dammit!

I was halfway down the middle column, memorising them all with lots of “Oh! REALLY? That’s not how I’ve been pronouncing it!” until I noticed that it was the “incorrect” column. A. That’ll teach me to read things properly before trying to commit them to memory - and - B. Now I’ll NEVER get them right.

Pronouncing words and names in the accent of the source language rather than using the standard, conventional, anglicized pronunciation is a hallmark behavior of a pompous know-it-all. Resisting the natural and universal process of linguistic assimilation only makes you sound like a jerk.

ummm dostoevsky? nietzsche?

When Thomas Pynchon was on “The Simpsons,” he apparently mispronounced his own name: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR0588DtHJA

They should include more German authors on this because the way they pronounce shit makes me think they shouldn’t even be using the Roman alphabet. When I first heard the pronunciation of Goethe I thought someone was playing a trick with me. And why Nietzsche has a “tz” is beyond me.

FUCK, I’ve been saying Matt Groening wrong for ALL THESE YEARS.