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How Do You Pronounce That Atlantic Writer's Name?

By Kate TaylorPosted Thursday, March 28, 2002, at 4:27 PM ET

The Atlantic Monthly will publish its longest article ever this summer, a three-part, 60,000-word piece about the cleanup of the World Trade Center site by William Langewiesche, who's written for the magazine for 10 years. What Explainer wants to know is, how do you pronounce "Langewiesche"?

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"The problem is I don't know how to pronounce my name!" Langewiesche says. "I've been dragging this name around like a tail my whole life."

Langewiesche calls the American pronunciation—"lang-wishy"—ugly. Sometimes, he says, he gives its pronunciation a little French twist. Other times, when appropriate, he follows the all-American tradition of just shortening his name—to Lang.

But most often, he uses the German pronunciation (long-gah-vee-shuh), which you can hear him say by clicking here.

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Kate Taylor is the arts reporter at the New York Sun and the editor of an anthology of essays about anorexia, Going Hungry, which will be published next spring.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

Some Fraysters, and a Slate writer, decided that a discussion of who reads Atlantic Monthly was even more interesting: see here and here.

Reader Comments From The Fray:

It seems that that an appropriate pronunciation for Langewiesche should be "Languish". Alternatively he could do what the English gentry do with their unwieldy names, which is to simply ignore most of the syllables. Thus Featherstonewaugh is spoken "Fanshawe" and Cholmondeley becomes "Chumley". In this way Langewiesche could adopt the pronouciation "Lanche". If he so wished.

--Penry

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

"Long-gah-vee-shuh," as Explainer has it, is almost right, and almost as teutono-mellifluous as the right German pronunciation: more like "LAHNG-uh-VEE-shuh."

--Jack

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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