--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, mrsmiley4 <no_reply_at_y...> wrote: > The question of pronunciation in the questions themselves is another > matter. A number of questions, particularly in literature and history, > are chock-full of foreign words that are not even close to being > phonetic (don't even get me STARTED on Pinyin :P) or else are so > complex that your average skim of questions before the round just > ain't gonna do the job if you aren't familiar with the language. Brad, you raise an excellent point which applies especially to our tournament. The questions tended to have a wider scope than people see at many tournaments, and particularly many topics came up which are less common in the canon, and thus the moderators were trying to phonetically pronounce unfamiliar words fairly often. Personally, my single worst pronounciation weakness as a moderator is historical and mythological Greek names, which were in abundance this tournament (being particular areas of expertise of our chief writer). It was bothering me for a good part of the day; it must have been worse for the people who had to listen to my stumbling. But even with a dozen or more tournaments under my belt as a moderator, I still have troubles. Unfortunately, with the number of first- and second-year players in our club, we have a lot of relatively inexperienced moderators working long days at our tournaments. We all improve with time; we just haven't as much as we perhaps need. > This, then, is an entreaty to question writers: if the word seems like > it would be hard for the average guy off the street to say, PLEASE > include a pronunciation guide for it? I know that most quizbowlers who > have been playing long enough to moderate are not the average guy off > the street, but neither are we all supermen-- most of us have a few > lingual specializations, outside of which we are often quite helpless. I agree entirely that pronounciation guides are necessary and are generally underused. Overuse could be a problem too, though- if there's a pronounciation guide in a question that just isn't needed, especially if there are several in a question, it can get in the way. This happens rarely, though, in my experience. We're happy that you had a good time, Brad, and we're glad to have the tournament feedback as well. Sincerely, -Michael Falk, TD, Iowa State Fall Tournament
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