Julie
Julie asked:

I am listening to the audio version of this (and really enjoying it.) they pronounce the title word as "bay-bel" where I would have said "ba-bel" Is "bay-bel" the standard pronunciation? Have I gotten this wrong all these years? Or is it British? Or particular to this book?

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Adrianne So, this is an example of the same spelling but it has two different pronunciations to mean different thingsl. Pronouncing bah-bel is how you would say it when the word is describing a kind of speech “a confusion of sound” is how it’s put in the dictionary. However, the pronunciation bay-bel is based on the story from the bible about the Tower of Babel and “where God confounded a presumptuous attempt to build a tower into heaven by confusing the language of its builders into many mutually incomprehensible languages”. I went to catholic schools growing up so it’s how I know.
cyclonecasey This bothered me so much. I understand that it's the british way of saying it, but I'm unconvinced that the Author was aware of this white writing this book, I just can't wrap my mind around the concept of nicknaming them "babblers" if that's NOT how Babel is meant to be pronounced in this book. It is alternative history after all, there was literally a warning at the start that accuracy was sometimes altered of ignored for the sake of the narrative.
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by R.F. Kuang (Goodreads Author)
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