Movie star Rock Quarry still makes me smile, as well as the “Bug Music” — “I said ya ya ya, She said ya ya ya, We said ya ya ya, AAAHHHH”
Yeah, it’s a voiceless “t”. I usually don’t voice the “t” in the word “it”, in something like: What is it?
I dated a Brit named Martin for a while – when I asked him why he didn’t pronounce the “r” in his name, he asked me why I didn’t pronounce the “t.”
I didn’t have a good answer for that.
Apparently in Chinese it was called 摩登原始人 (something like “Modern Primitive People”) and all the names were transliterated into Chinese characters that sounded like the English names (Fred became “fu lai de” Wilma became “wei er ma”) .
For anyone who’s wondering, “Yabba Dabba Do” was 呀吧哒吧嘟. I can just picture millions of Chinese kids scouring their Xinhua Chubanshe English-Chinese Dictionary for the meaning of that one…
If you want to listen to the Quebec French version of the intro : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N27kiAp8NsA
So which “t” don’t you pronounce? Do you say “Wickster” or “Twickser”?
I’ve never seen a cartoon show pictures of the voice actors like that. Were those actors particularly famous, or is that just the way it’s done in some areas?
I’ll have to dig deep in my memory, after all it was translated over 40 years ago. As I recall, Berval and Michaud were fairly popular, Miller was better known for stage work, Proulx I don’t recall at all. I think it was because they were among the first to do a local adaptation of a famous TV show.
In Italy the cartoon is called “Gli Antenati” (“The Ancestors”). Most of the principal characters’ names in English have been maintained, though the Italian pronunciation is of course somewhat different.
