Ya learn something new everyday...

Psst, readers, let me tell you one of my quirky flaws - sometimes I mispronounce words. I know what they mean because I read about them often, but they're the types of names or words that don't come up often in conversation with me (either because I'm a poor listener or I'm socially rather awkward), so I have an idea in my head of how they should sound that really isn't how they're pronounced. My family jokes about it quite a bit.

I used to pronounce "doctrines" as "doc-treens" instead of "doc-trins."

I used to pronounce the last name in "Simon and Schuster" as "shuster" instead of "shooster."

And, just now, reading an interview at The Good, the Bad, and The Unread, I discovered my favourite romance author, whom I've been pimping out to friends and other romance readers in person as well as online, pronounces her last name an entirely different way than I do.

Random Friend: "Recommend any books?"

Me: "Yeah, how about The Secret Pearl by Mary BAH-LOW."

*headdesk*

I dunno, I remember reading Mary Balogh's website and how her last name is Welsh, and perhaps I confused that with Gaelic, which uses a lot of consonants in ways they really aren't supposed to (hate elementary school teachers? Give your kid's name Gaelic spelling), and I also thought of words like slough and through and eventually narrowed it down (in my head) to an "oh" sound, or a "oh" sound with a weird little cough at the end.

According to the author herself, it's actually pronounced "Bah-log."

Reeeeeaally glad I figured that out before the RWA National Conference.