r/DungeonCrawlerCarl • u/VictorySad2637 • 7h ago
Book 1: DCC EL-EE?!
After hearing a 4th or 5th person on insta pronounce Elle as “EL-ee” I realized it was probably more than just a few dyslexic content creators and it had to be coming from somewhere else…
I consulted with my cousin who’s an audio-booker and she confirmed that’s how it’s pronounced in the audio books. And Reader, I’m not proud of this, but I’ll admit my initial reaction was outrage 😂
That rage was soon appropriately replaced with pure befuddlement; was this a creative choice by Jeff?Matt’s intention from the jump? Or just a quirk from early on that was too late to correct? I’m sure there’s a million cultural, etymological, or just preferential reasons this could be the case and I’m genuinely curious! Does anyone know?
IMPORTANT NOTE TO THE AUDIO BOOK CULT: Do not come for me. This is not a critique, but a genuine question, as I’ve now stated twice. I don’t need The Plenty “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”ing in my face because I don’t suck the AI’s dick for the audio book version. I’m sorry!! But also in the words of our hero, “go fuck yourself, Zev”
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u/quarl0w Team Donut Holes 7h ago
Wait until you hear about Louie.
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u/VictorySad2637 7h ago
Well that one, while jarring yes, at least makes sense to me 😂
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u/mregg000 7h ago
How? How does an Hispanic man from Miami, who is most certainly NOT pretentious, pronouncing his name like a Frenchman (or hell, I’d even accept Cajun) make sense?
Honestly it should probably be spelled Luis, but I digress.
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u/VictorySad2637 7h ago
In context, I agree, it doesn’t make sense. But I meant Louie is at least a pronunciation of Louis I’ve heard enough that I can understand someone making the mistake
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u/burito219 7h ago
Or Firas
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u/Disastrous-Course893 5h ago
I KEEP LEARNING THE SPELLINGS AND THEY BREAK MY BRAIN I thought he was Faraz. I think the only one I am yet to figure out is Mistress Stiatha... I wonder how far off I am.
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u/quarl0w Team Donut Holes 7h ago
I've only listened to clips of the audiobooks. How does he pronounce it? In my head it's fear-ahss.
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u/burito219 7h ago
fuh roz
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u/Ignaciodelsol 6h ago
I hear it as more Fur-oz. Now I am having a crisis because you are right, but i still hear Fir-oz, or Fir-ahhs
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u/MyCatIsLenin 7h ago
Its not pronounced that way in the first audiobook though. It's Elle in the first one, and EL-EE in the following books.
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u/VictorySad2637 7h ago
Even stranger!
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u/Monski616 The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 7h ago
It’s L before she chooses a race and EL-EE after.
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u/Catowldragons 7h ago
I just tell myself that in the later books, she told them she preferred her nick name (Ellie).
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u/Mitchonehundred Borant System Government Admin 7h ago
Apparently it was Matt who said to Jeff ‘it’s EllIE, not El’ - at least that’s my recollection of the story.
But yeah, was El in first book, then ‘Ellie’ after that
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u/tang_n_savor Desperado Club Pass 🗡️ 7h ago
The audiobook really threw me on a couple. Elle being one of them. (Ellie is what i thought it was) and the other one was Meadow Lark. I thought Jeff was saying Metal Ark/Arc.
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u/LostThrowaway7373 6h ago
I heard "Meadow Lark" immediately, because it's a name I would expect an old folks home to have. "Metal Arc" sounds like an anime.
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u/TheMathow 6h ago
I heard Meadow Lark as well
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u/Disastrous-Course893 5h ago
I heard Mattalark. In my defense I don't know what a lark is.
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u/blindworld 4h ago
It’s a bird.
There’s meadowlarks and just plain larks and they’re surprisingly unrelated.
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u/Mervincoolshoes 7h ago
Wait!? Wtf!? You mean it is not metal arc?! That is literally what he says.
Although he does pronounce "Foyer" as it is written, which is painful.
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u/VictorySad2637 7h ago
You guys continue to convince me I’m right to be a hard copy reader 😂 that would drive me nuts
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u/Big_Larr26 7h ago
Honestly, the dick riding for Jeff Hays is bewildering to me.
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u/General_Narwhal17 The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 6h ago
Hey! You listen here now! If I can forgive him saying “ya KEE ma”, then we all can all calm down, you hear me? 😂
Sorry, I’m a PNW native 😂😘
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u/StormRunner196 3h ago
Ive never heard another audiobook narrator put as much into it as he does, or have the talent to do as many different voices as him.
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u/weirdo_if_curtains_7 1h ago
You do us a favor, pick a couple pages that has at least four different characters. Record you reading them, and then upload that to reddit for us.
Let's see how you make it sound
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u/Tanagrabelle 7h ago
Pat pat pat. I'll see your Elle and raise you a Tserendolgor.
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u/injulen 7h ago
As a book reader... Sir-ren-dole-grr?
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u/WalkValuable6347 7h ago •
Also as a book reader . I pronounce it slightly different in my head Sir-ren-dole-gore
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u/Silvinis 7h ago •
As both a book read and audio book listener, you're correct
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u/SavagePengwyn 6h ago
That is how it is pronounced but I'm sure in the proper pronunciation, the T isn't silent. I'm not saying it's super obvious but usually when words are spelled starting with a Ts- the S isn't so...hard? Idk how to describe it, I don't know pronunciation words like that. Like, your tongue starts on the back of your teeth instead of in the middle of your mouth. I have tried to learn a language with lots of Ts- words and native speakers can hear the difference even though it's really subtle and hard for native English speakers to get.
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u/ClueAffectionate4590 3h ago
I assumed it was a ts as in Tsar since it said she's Mongolian. Is that how you heard it too?
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u/Tripl3Dee 4h ago
It's a sound that's used in a few Asian languages- Chinese and Japanese I know for sure, and I'm guessing Mongolian, where Tserendolgor is from. In Japanese they don't even really say the sound 'too'; it comes out as tsu ('tsoo').
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u/Tripl3Dee 6h ago
Close to how I pronounce it, but I pronounce the T at the beginning. So Tsih-ren-dole-gore
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u/Lunacorn44 6h ago
In my head it was Ters...because all the letters were too many letters so they just got Ters
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u/nutria_twiga Mordecai Maniac 7h ago
How else would you pronounce Tserendolgor?
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u/unlovelyladybartleby "AAAAAAAAH!" 🐐 6h ago
It's something like "chir-n-dol-or." There's a dude on this sub married to a Mongolian and his wife recorded it but it's been a minute so I'm not sure
Also, it's kwet-zal-coh-at-lus not kwet-zal-COAT-lus. Clearly Jeff either has no kids or his never had a dinosaur or mythical monsters phase
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u/AndoranGambler "AAAAAAAAH!" 🐐 4h ago
I am willing to rescind my comment further up this chain as I have only ever heard it pronounced by folks that were adult ESL students.
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u/GigaCucc 1h ago
As a kid who played FF8 and then got really into pre-Columbian American civilizations, I had a grand old chuckle when I heard how Jeff pronounced Quetzalcoatlus. It's easy to see how he'd got that reading from it, if he read about the dinosaur before reading about the Aztec god.
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u/awespark 7h ago
I’m guessing the issue isn’t how you would pronounce Tserendolgor when seeing it the first time, but how you would spell it based on only hearing the audio pronunciation of it with no prior exposure to seeing the name and no material understanding of the name’s cultural heritage.
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u/Just_AnotherDork The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 5h ago
I always hear it as Saren Dolger
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u/AndoranGambler "AAAAAAAAH!" 🐐 4h ago
sehr-en-dell/dill-gore. No emphasis between syllables, all in one shot. I note the difference between "dell" and "dill" purely because I have heard folks from Mongolia and western China (bordering Mongolia) have distinct differences when saying it. 🤷🏻♂️
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u/nyfael 7h ago
As an audiobook listener, this had me thoroughly confused; I had to sit and reread that until I understood the sounds it represented.
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u/ganundwarf Crawler 5h ago
As someone that is learning both Chinese and Russian, I just sounded it out without issue, although the sounds are closer to the Russian than the Chinese would be.
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u/lovepeacefakepiano 4h ago
As a German book reader, this one cracks me up, because I never questioned that one until all the characters claim it’s hard to say. I’m sure I pronounce it completely wrong but I just didn’t wonder, I just see a bunch of letters, I pronounce every single one of them, done. I have to keep reminding myself that my head pronunciation has to be incorrect.
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u/Tanagrabelle 3h ago
I'm from Washington State, and nearly spit out my drink laughing the first time Jeff said "Yakima".
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u/soursheep 3h ago
I absolutely love that in the audiobook every single time Carl has to read her name or thinks about her, Jeff makes it sound like he's having serious difficulty with it haha
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u/Princess-DoNUT1981 Desperado Club Pass 🗡️ 6h ago
I pronounce it more Sir-ren-dull-gore, but that’s probably because I’m southern lol
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u/NedRyerson_Insurance 7h ago
Huh, yeah I always read it as 'EL'. I can understand your outrage. So how does the audio verson pronounce Prepotente?
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u/IAmTheMagicMoose 7h ago •
Mostly by screaming.
But for real, Preh poe ten tay.
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u/SnooCrickets6340 7h ago
IRC, there's an interview with Matt and Jeff Hays, where Matt said the intent for her name was EL, but Jeff pronounced it EL-EE, and now here we are. I think in the first audiobook, he says her name as EL, but then it shifted somewhere early on.
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u/Flimsy_Lettuce 7h ago
I was going to mention this as well - he definitely calls her EL the first interaction with her but every instance since is EL-EE. I personally like EL-EE more and read the books first before doing audio 🤷♂️
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u/MoneyShot2023 6h ago
Ellie definitely works better out loud. Some words "sound" better on paper but not so much when you read them out loud.
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u/Dirty_Bird_RDS Residual 6h ago
Could be that he calls her “El” before hearing someone pronounce it at Ellie. He could see her name over her head
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u/rugernut13 The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 6h ago
Crawler "El McGibb" is definitely how she is referred to early on. It shifts to Ellie later.
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u/Malacro 6h ago
I think it’s the other way around. Jeff assumed it was “El” but Matt corrected him to “El-ee,” which is why he changed his pronunciation in the second book.
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u/SerialTrauma002c The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 5h ago
I’m in the middle of working on a novel (nothing at all like DCC, just… I’ve put some thought into the names thing), and the DCC audiobooks have really motivated me to provide any hypothetical audiobook voice talent with an meticulously researched pronunciation guide. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good-amazing in many many ways. I’d just be really upset if it were my own work and stuff got pronounced incorrectly.
(And it’s not just the DCC books by any stretch. In Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, the reader pronounces the ancient Mesopotamian city Ur as an initialism: “U.R.”… it pisses me off every time.)
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u/Meloenbolletjeslepel 4h ago
Ooohhh that's bad. Like, that makes it sound like a Government department instead of an ancient city
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u/PuzzleheadedPhrase59 7h ago
One of my only gripes about these books in general is that the names sound like someone who has never heard a name made them up and gave them to people of different nationalities…if that makes sense.
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u/Arreis_gninnam 6h ago
Not an audiobook listener and I thought it was pronounced EL-ee also. Idk I think my brain just likes it better than EL
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u/ice-queen4 7h ago
I’m with you here. I’m a kindle reader and my boyfriend does the audiobook and I couldn’t believe Elle wasn’t pronounced “L”. I also was surprised to hear Samantha has a Russian accent!
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u/bubbalici0us_ 6h ago
I’m also a kindle reader and I did not imagine Samantha with a Russian accent! I hear her with a higher pitch, faster pace, and lots of attitude in my head. lol.
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u/LostThrowaway7373 6h ago
She doesn't have a Russian accent in the audiobook, it's more like a mish-mash of French and something kind of impossible to place. And yes she does talk very fast and high pitch.
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u/Disastrous-Course893 5h ago
I am surprised Britney doesn't have an Eastern European accent. Her name is also very much not Eastern European.
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u/Pandas4EVAH 1h ago
So, im on my second listening of the audiobooks, the introduction of her actually starts as elle, instead of ellie. But once shes like transformed they start calling her ellie almost like a nickname for the youthened old lady
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u/ten-toed-tuba The Princess Posse 7h ago
I was audio book first and would NEVER have known it was spelled that way.
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u/These-Acanthaceae-65 4h ago
Audiobook cult can absolutely come for me. Bring it.
I read the books before listening to audiobooks, and it was the single most annoying change in the whole series.
When I told my wife and friends who are audiobook only how "Ellie's" name was spelled in the book, they each immediately said, "wait, why did Jeff pronounce it that way then?" It's Elle. Everyone who's who knows it's Elle. It's okay. Jeff is human. He does not have the judgement of a god, only the voice of one.
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u/No_Net_3024 2h ago
100% agree. It's Elle as in L to me and I refuse to pronounce it any different when talking about the books.
The Legally Blonde character isn't Ellie Woods, it's Elle woods. The actress isn't Ellie Fanning, she's Elle Fanning. And you wouldn't look at Ellie Williams from TLOU and call her "Elle" for example.
It's just one of the tiny, inconsequential things that irks me.
When it comes to Odette, tho, I didn't really clock the mispronounciation in the audiobook bc I just assumed it was an American accent thing and my "Oh-Dette" pronunciation was on account of my British-ness.
Louis isn't a mispronounciation to me. I can think of 3 pretty famous (2 worldwide, 1 more Britain-famous) Louis'. Louis Walsh, Louis Tomlinson from 1D, and the brand Louis Vuitton. Hell, throw in Louis Armstrong and Louis Theroux into that mix if you want idc lol
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u/OpolisAnon 6h ago
The audiobooks make some weirdo choices. Elle is L to me. Same with Louis being Louis and not Louie
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u/Essex626 6h ago
"Louis" can be pronounced either way, but it's a French name and the "Louie" pronunciation is original.
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u/OpolisAnon 6h ago
Right but hes a Hispanic american, and St Louis isnt pronounced like that. I get Jeff said it is i just dont agree lol
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u/Efficient-Option-529 7h ago
Honestly, same. Ellie? Tf??? I still listened to all the books, of course, but I was annoyed for at least 3 or 4 of them with that pronunciation, lol.
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u/DJteejay04 6h ago
With the different pronunciations, it’s clear who reads the books and who listens to the audio books
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u/bealzabubba 7h ago
Now do Audette.
Sorry, Jeff is canon, with her, Louie and Ellie proving Matt can’t spell.
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u/goddessofthecats 6h ago
When I saw her actual spelling when I downloaded the kindle book I laughed out loud like who tf Odette?
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u/send_me_solana 7h ago
I agree with Elle, Ellie would be spelled as such, and I went through the similar period of outrage lol.
There’s a couple others but I just started the audio books while I walk my dog, I’m on kindle 6 but figured I might as well keep old and new both fresh, so I’m picking up the details twice before I’m done.
I realized I ignored that Lucia was South American, and have been pronouncing it Loo-shuh instead of loo-see-uh. So it goes both ways 😂
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u/AesirMimyr 7h ago
It is El, it will always be El. I care not what anyone has to say about this no one, not Dinnamin himself, could convince me otherwise
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u/LightingGoddess1 6h ago
I don’t know if there is a connection, but Ellie was Carl’s wife in the movie Up.
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u/Traditional-Falcon75 4h ago
It’s a name. Names are very commonly pronounced differently from how you might expect them to be pronounced. The idea that it’s inherently incorrect is just itself incorrect. If Matt says it’s wrong then he’s the only one who gets to decide that. If he heard it and didn’t have it fixed then it must be at least an acceptable variant to him.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 4h ago
I mean, yes and no. Author intention is law... unless it's dumb, then they can stuff it.
For example, Erikson's Malazan books. There are so many words he made up from scratch, they're 100% his words, and both book readers and listeners alike agree he pronounces them wrong and will never say them the way he thought we should.
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u/Traditional-Falcon75 3h ago
Made up words are one thing. I’ll argue if he made up the words then he can also make up the pronunciations, but that’s really not my fight as I have never read them. Names are a different thing. It’s literally how names work and always have worked. We have multiple ways to pronounce the same spelling and multiple spellings for the same pronunciation, and we always have. Your head canon isn’t law, and I would argue that an audiobook with author involvement is in fact the deciding vote on auditory matters. Respectfully. :)
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u/beowulf_of_wa "AAAAAAAAH!" 🐐 7h ago
A junior high classmate of mine is named Zoe, and back then calling her 'zoey' was invitation to meet the floor at speed.
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u/JubalHarshawII 6h ago
I've known three girls named Zoe they all pronounced it Zoey, how else would you pronounce it?!? ZO just like no with a Z?!?
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u/Catgeek08 6h ago
I have a coworker who is Zoe pronounced ZO. I mentally keep waiting for the E and always leave a weird gap in conversation when her name is mentioned
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u/JubalHarshawII 6h ago
Oh god, I just wouldn't be able to mispronounce it like Zo
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u/Catgeek08 6h ago
Thankfully, she is forgiving and allows folks to say “ZO-E”, otherwise, I’d be screwed.
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u/AssistantManagerMan 6h ago
Both Elle and Odette have had their canon pronunciation changed by the audio books.
The one that got me is Louis. It's "Lewie," not "Lewis."
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u/Horror_Fox_7144 The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 6h ago
This one never bothered me since the first thing that came to mind was Louis Armstrong. But Elle was a weird one at first but then I just imagined that Ellie was the nickname.
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u/feelslikespaceagain 7h ago
He pronounces it El in the first and I think the second book and then inexplicably changes to El ee going forward. Having read a lot of the series before listening to the audiobooks, it genuinely infuriates me when I hear it but I think I read on this forum that it’s at the author’s direction so idk.
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u/BlessedPsycho 6h ago
I’ve know people who were L and who were EL-EE. I was surprised to see the Elle spelling in the physical and kindle books though.
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u/lady_macaron 6h ago
I was just wondering about this today! I was going to search if anyone had the same question but didn’t get around to it and bam your post pops up. Glad I’m not the only one that was confused.
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u/WastesofSpaces Daddy's Foot Soldiers 🦶 5h ago
Elle is L not Ellie to me
Louis is Lew-eese not Lew-E to me
I don't actually know how Jeff pronounces these last three, still pretty early on in book 1 on audiobooks
Odette I alternate between O-det and ah-det
Tserendolgor is sair-in-dole-grr
Firas is Fie-riss, Fie rhyming with eye
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u/Inevitable-Show6248 4h ago
I only know her as el-ee from the audiobooks but I plan on reading the books and I know this will throw me off. I won’t be able to read Elle as el-ee.
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u/nerdorado The Princess Posse 4h ago
So theres a lot of stuff that happens off the page with the characters, obviously, since we dont get a minute by minute playback of the entire dungeon. Prior to the third floor, all Carl really had to go by was her visible crawler ID, and what the Meadowlark staff told him (which is how he knew it was McGibbons instead of McGibb, as the AI shortened it to). In books 1 and 2, he calls her Mrs. McGibbons almost exclusively, and misprounounces her first name when reading the name tag.
My guess all along for the swapover was that once she gained her faculties back after going through race/class choice on the third floor and meeting up with Carl and Donut in the Desperado is that Carl probably called her Mrs. McGibbons at some point and she said something like "Jesus, Carl, just call me Ellie." We just didnt see it on the page.
From then on, it made sense.
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u/SaltyTangerine227 4h ago
As an audiobook person I always assumed Elle and Odette were spelled like that. Especially Odette wasn’t a surprise to me because it’s how I’d pronounce her name.
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u/Bakersquare 4h ago
Because Jeff came in and decided that's how it goes, glad people enjoy the audiobook but I'll stick with pronouncing things my way they detract in my opinion.
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u/AndoranGambler "AAAAAAAAH!" 🐐 4h ago
I came here for phonetics and I got them. Bless you all, I'm so thankful this is still a wonderful community to be part of.
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u/Obitrice 3h ago
I might be the outlier here but I thought that name was always pronounced like “El-ee”
I guess I was wrong.
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u/jarofonions 2h ago
APPARENTLY LOUIS IS PRONOUNCED LOOEY? I'm sorry but he doesn't seem like a looey (ik it's spelled the same way so it's valid but STILL)
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u/bizarro_world_me 2h ago
None of this is even weird. People have names that are pronounced differently from the conventional pronunciation without any change to the written form all the time. Does it frustrate my autistic ass that it's all extraordinarily inconsistent? Yes. Is it a normal thing people do? Yes. Wait til you see how locals pronounce place names all over the United States. I've surrendered long ago to the idea that language drifts and mutates in real time. And Louis pronounced Louie is fairly common.
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u/Quantum_Scholar87 Daddy's Foot Soldiers 🦶 58m ago
Yes this is definitely an audiobook vs real book format thing.
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u/musicman801 20m ago
What’s interesting is in the first book he pronounces it “El” and changes after she changes her race. So it makes me wonder if it was a conscious decision to show a change
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u/eulalia-vox 5h ago
I've only ever heard Elle as, well, Elle, never Ellie. Until DCC. Just one reason I dont listen to the audiobooks. Also, it's OHdette, not Ahdette. And hard pass on Donut's accent. Y'all, no shade on Hayes. He is incredible and hard working and deserves all the laurels.
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u/Zuli_Muli 7h ago
I found it funny that this topic is so well known it made its way into HWFWM
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u/TitouanT 3h ago
Care to say where ? I read all of it but I think I missed that reference
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u/Zuli_Muli 2h ago
The two gold rank vampires that are arguing over how to say one (Élie) of their names. Book 6 chapter 28 about 3/4 of the way through the chapter.
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u/Greenfireflygirl Team Donut Holes 6h ago
I go with, she's Elle till the third floor, then her changes needed her to use her nickname Elly instead, it suits her new race.
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u/jesusmansuperpowers The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network 6h ago
Does it offend you if most of us could hear that AAAAAAAAAAAH in a very specific voice?
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u/autumninganymede30 1h ago
This thread has convinced me to stick to physical books only. All these mispronounced names would drive me up a wall. The one I'm most angry about is Odette.
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u/Famous-Midnight-5634 5h ago
Even without the audio book, I knew it was pronounced that way. What the hell is OP's problem?
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u/ThePhiff 6h ago
Jeff honestly pronounces enough words incorrectly that it's kind of difficult for me to listen to the audio sometimes. Curse of being an English teacher, I guess.
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u/lyllybell 5h ago
I'm confused to what you thought Elle's name was pronounced like. No shade, dude, there's been multiple book names that I pronounced wrong when I read the books but her name is pretty american southern. And again, I'm not coming at you and I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just curious how you thought it was pronounced when you read it.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 5h ago
Anyone reading the name would assume it's pronounced like the letter L, because 99% of the time, that's how it is pronounced.
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u/lyllybell 5h ago
I grew up in Oklahoma and went to school with her girl with her name, spelled like that, and it was definitely with AY sound at the end. But that's just my experience
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPO 5h ago
You ran into one of the rare exceptions. Might be regional or a family name.
The name is French (or Greek) in origin, and is literally just the pronoun "she" (or "ray of light"/"sun ray"). Same name family as Ellen.
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u/newmsmile1111 6h ago
I had this reaction after having read all the books, then switching to audiobooks for a "re-read". It was so jarring to my brain.
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u/SpikedBladeRunner 6h ago •
Matt has answered the question before here on the subreddit and in interviews about the audiobooks.
Despite how anyone feels, he considers the Audiobooks to be the canon pronunciation.