Participants were given a list of 30 dinosaur names, selected for their complex spelling and confusing pronounciation. The challenge was to read all the names aloud as quickly as possible.
Audio of each contestant’s attempt may be found below, along with their official time. (Some recordings are easier to hear than others due to the interference of background noise.)
This challenge not only tests how easily people can pronounce these complex names, but also gives a sense of how people think they are pronounced. Dinosaur names are chimeric fabrications from many languages, including Greek, Latin, Chinese, and people’s own names, so there really is no one way to say them correctly; dinosaur books routinely give different “official” pronunciations of even the most popular names.
The contestants, from shortest to longest:
The list of dinosaur names can be found here. See if you can beat these times! If you record yourself and send me an audio file, I will post it along with the others.
The project was installed along with Artist Interviews, with which it also shared an explanatory poster.
Chris Wildrick 