Wunderkind

Okay, so I had a different post all set to go until Top Management pointed out to me today’s Word of the Day. So my regularly scheduled harangue shall simply have to wait until tomorrow. I’m sure you’re all on pins and needles. Well, if I had my way, you would be.

Not really. I just like to try out tough talk now and then to see if it fits. Not yet, apparently. But I’ll keep plugging.

Anyhoo, here’s today’s Word o’ the Day:

wunderkind \VOON-duhr-kint\, noun;
plural wunderkinder \-kin-duhr\:
1. A child prodigy.
2. One who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age.

Now, being the wondering sort, you’re probably wondering just why Top Management pointed this word out to me. Surely it can’t be because, unlike, say, "godwottery," "meme," or "quiddity," the word is generally unfamiliar to me and mine Left of the Dial readers.

Not a’tall. It’s that Top Management and I went to see our yearly film last month; this year ‘twas The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And outstanding (if not perfect) it indeed was. And amused were we to hear the voice of our much-liked Alanis Morissette singing over the credits at the end.

Until she got to the chorus.

Top Management turned to me and said, "She didn’t just sing—"

"No," I agreed. "She didn’t. She can’t have. We must have heard wrong. Must’ve been some other word."

So there we sat, waiting for the line to come ‘round again. And indeed it did. And indeed there it was again.

She sang the word "wunderkind." Only she pronounced it as though it were an English word and not the German word it is. In other words, she sang "won-der-kind," with the last syllable rhyming with "mind" or "find," rather than "skinned" or "chagrinned."

Now, I can understand pronouncing the first letter as a "w" rather than the more accurate "v"—sometimes you gotta bend a bit not to sound like a right prat, as my British brethren might (or might not) say. Saturday Night Live once did a great skit with Jimmy Smits over people so massively going overboard to correctly pronounce some common Spanish words, and who hasn’t rolled their eyes at a coworker saying "croissant" as though she’s from Provence? (Although perhaps that’s a bad example since maybe it’s pronounced entirely differently in Provençal.) But still—mangling that last syllable the way Alanis does is simply beyond the pale.

Ne’ertheless, I held out some dim hope that we might be mishearing it somehow, that it was some other word we were mistaking for "wunderkind."

Until the credits scrolled further. And we saw that it was the name of the damn song.

Okay. Pretty unambiguous there. So I call up my Canadian friend Tim, just to, you know, be all fair-like and make sure that this wasn’t some unique way of pronouncing the word north of the border, maybe a remnant from World War II or something, a slightly less-stupid version of our Freedom Fries.

Nope. Tim just laughed.

Then a certain, and certainly marvelous, sister-in-law suggested that Alanis was trying to play off the notion of being "kind," as in generous and warm.

It was a nice try on T-Baby's part, and appropriately generous and warm to boot. But no going. Alanis just got it wrong. Hideously, embarrassingly wrong. Look, she so grossly misunderstood the meaning of the word "ironic," should it really be any big surprise that she doesn’t know how "wunderkind" is pronounced?

How does that happen? I mean, it’s not uncommon for people, especially bright folks like Alanis who are likely to be largely autodidactic, to have read words and not actually know how they’re pronounced.

When I was but a lad I assumed that "origin" was pronounced basically the same way as "original" and why not? And I once mispronounced the word "indefatigable" to a vice-president, again, assuming it sounded basically like "fatigue." When Top Management was but a lass, she thought "monotonous" was pronounced with its emphasis on the third syllable (which, actually, works better—it does make the entire word sound more monotonous—but they didn’t bother to consult me before setting the pronunciation in stone). Max recently pronounced "addendum" with the accent on the word "add," and understandably so. Friend Karen once suddenly hesitated in the middle of saying something to utter the next word hesitantly: "in-satie-able?" Like many voracious readers, she’d only read the word, in this case "insatiable," but never actually heard it said aloud. Interestingly, this is one of those rare cases where your average young American male in the 1970s and 1980s may have had a leg up on The Superior Gender when it came to slightly esoteric knowledge.

But Alanis is surrounded by people supposed to be looking out for her best interests. So how’d this go by? Did none of them know either? I find that hard to believe. Or maybe it was a bit too late before someone realized—too much time and money had already gone into it? Does she simply have YesMen around her? Were they too embarrassed or timid to correct her?

Or did someone tell her and she decided she didn’t care? That seems both most likely and least likely to me. And yet I can’t really think of anything more (or less) plausible. I cannot believe she would have done it that way from the beginning had she known how it was pronounced, and yet I cannot believe the song would have made it all the way to the mastering stage without someone saying something.

And please don't misunderstand: I really dig Alanis. No snarkiness intended—I dig her music and I dig what I know of her as a person. But this whole thing is just...well, it's just plain weird.

Comments

[T-Baby]

Scott-

I stand by my defense of Alanis and her pronunciation of wunderkind. To me, Alanis is clearly playing around with this word -- both its sound and its meaning. Whatever happened to poetic license anyway?

If you read the lyrics you can see that the speaker in this song is Lucy. When she says "I am a wunderkind," "wunder" is pronounced as a cross between "wonder" and "wander," and both of those words fit nicely with the song's imagery. "Kind" is indeed pronounced like "generous and warm", but also like "type" or "species". As in, "What kind of person are you?"

Think about it. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is a story about all kinds of creatures and people. Lucy is an inquisitive, dreamy type -- She is a wonder(ing) kind. She is also embarking on an imaginative journey -- She is a wander(ing) kind.

The hidden context that we listeners percieve is that Lucy is also very much a wunderkind in the traditional sense. But do you thinks she knows that? She is the speaker in this song. Why would she sing a song about what a great prodigy she is?

On top of all that, pronouncing it "vunder-keend" would just plain sound bad in this song. It would stick out like a sore thumb.

Here are the lyrics:

Oh, perilous place walk backwards toward you
Blink disbelieving eyes chilled to the bone
Most visibly brave no apprehended bloom
First to take this foot to virgin snow

I am magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
And I live the envelope pushed far enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne
Destined to serve, destined to roam

Oh, ominous place spellbound and un-child-proofed
My least favorite shelter bear alone
Compatriots in face they’d cringe if I told you
Our best back pocket secret our bond full blown

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
And I am pioneer naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne
Destined to seek, destined to know

Most beautiful place reborn and blown off roof
My view about face whether great will be done

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
I am a groundbreaker naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

And I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind

I am a Joan of Arc and smart enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne
Destined to reign, destined to roam
Destined to reign, destined to roam

[Scott]

T-Baby—

You, my friend, are every artist’s dream: an intelligent, literate and passionate admirer seemingly willing to forgive any transgression, filing it under the all-encompassing notion of "artistic/poetic license." Would that I had fans like you. Even Top Management doesn’t let me get away with bupkis.

Okay, I originally wrote a very long, comprehensive and frankly astonishing response here but Top Management informed me I was just being a jerk—I think the actual term she used was "meanie." Given that I originally attacked your taste in guys she may have a point. On the other hand, we are talking about my brother, so I probably did too. Anyhoo, I shall cut to the chase:

In the end, I remain ever impressed by your dedicated, detailed and well-argued support of Alanis. But all snark and attempts at good humor aside, I quote you:

To me, Alanis is clearly playing around with this word

To me, she’s clearly not. She’s just mispronouncing a foreign word. There’s a long history of rockers making grammatical mistakes, from Paul McCartney to Axl Rose. Just think of this as being Alanis’s entrée into that rarified world. (Or, I guess, given her previous misadventures with "Ironic," her way of making sure she’s still one of them Top Dawgs.)

I really dig Alanis. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a mispronounced word is just a mispronounced word. No matter how much you like the mispronouncer.

That’s my strategery and I’m stickin’ with it.