A last tale of the unexpected: it’s Roo-all!
WITH tongue-twisters such as hornswoggler, snozzcumber and whangdoodle, he gave millions of children a pronunciation problem.
But it appears Roald Dahl left the two most difficult words on the front of his works – his name.
More than half a century after his first book was published, it has emerged that all along we have been saying it wrongly.
Often pronounced ‘Roh-ald’, the correct way to say it is in fact ‘Roo-all’ – with a silent ‘d’. The mistake has been pointed out by a Roald Dahl fan website. The name – which is Norwegian in origin – is pronounced clearly by Dahl in 1961 when he hosted an episode of the TV science fiction show Way Out. But it seems most of his readers have stuck to the anglicised version and this is now overtaking the correct form. In an audio version of his name on the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, his name is also said incorrectly.
After living in Wales, Canada and East Africa, he must have become accustomed to hearing his name said in many different ways.
His daughter Lucy and second wife Felicity have both been interviewed by English-speaking journalists using the more common pronunciation but have never pointed out the error.
The fan website says even Felicity, to whom he was married for seven years, said it wrongly.
His granddaughter – model turned writer Sophie Dahl – admitted she too had struggled with the name. She said: ‘I called him Mold, because when I was a toddler they tried to teach me the Norwegian pronunciation of his name, but my baby tongue couldn’t get to grips with it.
‘Instead Mold he was, ever after. Sometimes Moldy.’
During a career as an author spanning decades, Dahl penned 43 pieces of writing as well as screenplays for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, starring Sean Connery. More works were also published after his death aged 74 in 1990.
He always wrote in pencil on yellow paper and all of his children’s stories were created in a hut at the bottom of his garden.
Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he was named after the explorer Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole.