Why do people pronounce J. K. Rowling's name incorrectly?

Garamok

Garamok

kiwifarms.net
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Aug 31, 2023
I'm listening to Stephen Fry's Harry Potter audio books and he also pronounces Rowling with "o" not "aw".
 
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I pronounced it this way for the longest time. It's just one of those stupid arbitrary rules in English, and it's probably because if you're unfamiliar with the name, you'd default to reading it as 'row', as in a 'row of skittles'. But 'row' is only one of two words I can think of where unless it's preceded by more than one letter, the 'ow' is pronounced as 'oh' and not 'aow', and have double meanings based on pronunciation, the other being bow.
 
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There are two (reasonable) options for how to pronounce -ow. As in cow or as in low. She pronounces it as in low, i.e. Rolling. Aleister Crowley also pronounced his name with -ow as in low, opposite to the way Ozzy Osbourne pronounced it:

It doesn't really have anything to do with regional accents, except there are some regional accents (Norfolk) with a third distinction where "Lo!" and low aren't pronounced the same as each other either.
 
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Lemmingwiser said:
by watching netflix

and at school. it was the #1 value added language. Dutch high schools are now offering mandarin, though.
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This, but with Friends before Netflix became a big thing. My foreign professors in college all said they watched Friends on laptops or tvs together with subtitles on.

Hmm...

Kiwifarms has a bunch of weebs. Can you guys speak passable Japanese?
 
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