Tintin DVDs - pronunciations of names

This is sort of a stupid question, but how do you pronounce Skut?

I've always thought that you pronounced it like it looks, but in the DVDs Tintin says it "Scoot".

Everyone also pronounces the name of Calculus' friend as "Hercule" instead of "Hercules".
Which ways are correct?

Thanks,
Gabe

I think it really comes down to a matter of taste...?
If you want Skut to sound like cut (or Cutt(s)), go ahead! Whatever is good for you, no-one could prove you wrong!

I think I've always read it the "scoot" way myself, but I couldn't say for certain.

Hercules could be sounded like the Greek legend, but the Hercule pronounciation is definitely more continental - just think of Hercule Poirot the detective (and Belgian to boot!) - so that was probably what they were aiming for with Professor Tarragon.

I started a thread a while back on the pronunciation of "Carreidas", as I'd been having trouble with it since I was a kid.

Well, we all had our opinions and suchlike; so at the end of the discussion I came to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter.

Skut, Scoot, Scat, they're all the same Estonian pilot befriended by Tintin and Haddock!

When they fish Skut out of the water (after Tintin has shot down his Mosquito) and Haddock asks him his name, Haddock at first takes his reply - "Skut." - to be a surly insult, ie: "Scoot" meaning "Go away." This pun (which I presume was adapted from a similar wordplay in the French original by the English translators, Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner) doesn't make as much sense if the name is pronounced the way it looks (ie: to rhyme with put).

But I admit I missed this clue to "correct" pronunciation as a child, and always read it as Skut (to rhyme with put) in my head.

Is he called Skut in the French-language original? If so, I wonder how it's pronounced on the French soundtrack of the DVDs. I'm only asking out of interest, mind. I'm not suggesting we should all resort to French pronounciations for all the characters. English-speaking people who pronounce Tintin in the French way - "Tantan" - always sound more than a bit pretentious to me. (Sorry if I've inadvertantly offended anyone who does this!)

Balthazar
doesn't make as much sense if the name is pronounced the way it looks (ie: to rhyme with put).
Hmmm... but I do rhyme Skut, put and scoot, so it does look like it sounds to me; I don't rhyme put and cut though... Maybe it's an accent thing?

I never say Tantan though... ;-)

Sorry - the word "put" was a bizarrly mis-chosen example of the pronunciation I meant. I was actually thinking of putt as in a golfing putt on a putting green (which does rhyme with cut) and mis-spelling it as "put", without even thinking of the far more obvious real word put. The wiring of my brain always seems to struggle in early January!

So to clarify: when I was a child, I assumed Skut rhymed with cut and putt and hut etc (but not put), but I now think the English translators intended it to be pronounced scoot, which in a "standard Southern English" accent rhymes with flute.

But you're right, jock, that in some accents, such as many Scottish ones I'd guess, scoot would rhyme with put. And, to confuse things further, in some Northern English accents, cut would rhyme (more or less) with put.

Anyway, sorry for causing confusion. I guess I shouldn't have been so hard on posers who say "Tantan" when I couldn't even manage the basics of English!

Balthazar
I guess I shouldn't have been so hard on posers who say "Tantan"

That'd have to be poseurs, surely...? ;-)

("Pretentious? Moi?")

Skut is actually called "Szut" in the original--rhymes wth "Zut!," a French exclamation. Szut alors!

Skut (pronounced close to "scoot")is an actual last name that I've heard here in certain parts of Connecticut. It's Polish in origin though, and they pronounce it exactly like it was in the English versions of the DVDs. Also, there is no N sound whatsoever in the original pronunciation of "Tintin." It sounds more like "tv tv" to a Cherokee ear anyway--the "v" represents a schwa sound. Means the same thing too, a ringing sound.

In American Standard English (the type used by newscasters and announcers,) Skut and put sound nothing alike whatsoever. There are other homophones, such as to, two and too, but nothing along those lines.