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February 19, 2003
Are you like me --
Are you like me -- not cool enough to know how to pronounce the names of artists you like? Well, you might turn to Google for some help, and try to figure out how to pronounce some of them. My SOP on such queries is to type in the name of the person I'm looking for, along with the word "pronounced".
E.g., looking for "Goethe" and "pronounced" will give you the expected result, whereas "Van Gogh pronounced" will yield differing opinions.
So, today I tried out the technique on one recent favorite emcee: Xzibit. Now, in my mind's mouth, I've pronounced it "Zie-bit" all this time. But a certain blogging partner friend of mine said the other day she's pretty sure it's "Exhibit". Honestly, I totally missed the word play on this one. My brain isn't wired like that it seems. Anyway, to confirm this blogging partner friend of mine's suspicions, I tried out my old Google pronunciation guide trick on Xzibit. The results are funny...but not for the reason you would think: instead of telling you how to pronounce "Xzibit", they tell you how to pronounce every other ambiguously-pronounceable rap artist's name out there, and even some whose names you wouldn't think had debatable pronunciations (viz, "Air Force 1" is pronounced "AUR force one", apparently.)
But amongst all these pronunciation tips, I can't seem to find one (after an admittedly perfunctory search) that tells me how to pronounce "Xzibit". My only conclusion: Xzibit must be self-evidently pronounceable as "Exhibit", and I'm the only one who wasn't in on the joke.
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posted by adm at 5:33 PM | #
