Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Help, Iarbas!

There's a character in Marlow's Dido, Queen of Carthage who's name is written Iarbas.

I'm hoping for help with pronunciation.

Wikipedia suggests from other sources "Hiarbas" as another spelling. So how would you say that?

Hee-arbas

High-arbas

Har-bas

or

Yarbas?

(Before I looked up on the wikipedia thing, I was even considering the i for j substitution and wondering about Jarbas, which sounds too unfortunately like a certain Star Wars character.)

5 comments:

  1. My instinct would be to go with YAR-bas, though I don't have anything scholarly to base that on. I think you're on the right track with the i-j substitution, with the understanding that most languages don't pronounce the j as hard as we do; it's more likely to sound like a y.

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  2. My first instinct would be "ee-ar-bas," and on looking up the playtext, I'm sticking with it because it does seem to be functioning as a trisyllable. ("Fear not, Iarbas; Dido may be thine" etc.)

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  3. Definitely "ee-ar-bas." A solid trisyllable. It's pronounced that way in Latin, too.

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  4. Dido's being produced in Staunton later in the spring. We're going down to see it in April. It'll be interesting to hear what the actors do with Iarbas. Too late for your course, though

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  5. Thanks, all! I appreciate the help.

    Jim, that is SO cool!

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