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Sir Gawain

PostPosted: June 2nd, 2008, 8:39 pm
by repectabiggle
Okay, I really just put this thread in here to get it some visibility, but if asked, I'd mumble something about Malory as an influence and Roger Lancelyn Green and Charles Williams writing Arthurian fiction and poetry.

That aside, I'm wondering how everybody here pronounces the name Gawain. I grew up thinking it was pronounced guh-WANE, but the meter of some poets seems to require GUH-wane. I've looked around online and found some folks who say it is GAH-win or something like that.

That's one of the problems, I suppose, with having interests that most people are unlikley to share and therefore unlikely to talk about: it's too easy to mispronounce a word for years and years. (I misread Cair Paravel as Cair Pavel for maybe upwards of six or seven years as a child, only catching my mistake when watching the BBC production of LWW.)

PostPosted: June 2nd, 2008, 9:15 pm
by Stanley Anderson
Seeing as how our son's name is Gawain, I suppose I can answer at least from one point of view:-)

We pronounce it to rhyme with the first part of the phrase "NOW ANd then" out of convenience, but we were told by a medieval literature scholar many years ago that close as that pronunciation is, properly, the second syllable has more of the ai sound as in the name "Wayne" (with the first syllable still emphasized. We originally used that pronunciation, but it is a bit unweildy to get around the tongue and tends toward the "GOWan" form after a while -- especially when the name needs to come out quickly in order to keep a child from running into the street or sticking his hand into a socket:-)

Perhaps a native of Scotland can say what the modern version would properly be.

--Stanley

PostPosted: June 18th, 2008, 7:04 am
by blindlemonpie

PostPosted: June 18th, 2008, 10:38 am
by Mr Hooper

PostPosted: June 18th, 2008, 1:45 pm
by repectabiggle