Thursday, July 28, 2011

Enough with the Mermaid Already!

I have a bone to pick with Disney.  As anyone who knows me at all will know, I am a huge fan of all things Disney, so you wouldn't think I would be angry at them.  However, there is one movie that bothers me, and I'm sure many of you know which one it is (and for those of you who don't, read the title of my post again :)).  You guessed it: The Little Mermaid.  For most of my life, I have had to endure people's speculations about whether I was named after Ariel in The Little Mermaid.  I would like to make it perfectly clear that I was not named after her, and my parents even tried changing the spelling of my name so it wouldn't be confused with hers.  I can attest that it didn't work.  >:P

But there's something very specific about The Little Mermaid that bothers me.  You know how Sebastian pronounces Ariel's name as Arielle, the way I pronounce my name?  Well, let's look back at everyone's favorite scene from The Little Mermaid: the "Kiss the Girl" scene.  If you will recall, when Prince Eric is trying to guess Ariel's name, he goes through a list of possible names, some common and some completely outlandish.  Finally, Sebastian whispers, "Arielle, her name is Arielle."  And Eric's response is, "Ariel?"  Now wait just a dag-blasted minute!  How on earth did Eric get "Ariel" out of "Arielle"?  It seems to me that Disney is implying that Ariel and Arielle are two different pronunciations of the same name.  Not cool!  Don't think I hadn't noticed the discrepancy in that scene before today, but I was listening to that song at work today, and it irritated me all over again.  :)  Ah well.  I guess I'll just have to live with it.  :)

3 comments:

  1. Well - I did a little digging around and I did find several sites say that the British pronunciation of "Ariel" is "Arielle" (as you worded it). And since the Little Mermaid takes place in Denmark (so technically they shouldn't be speaking English) it would make since to have both pronunciations for "Ariel" be correct there.

    It's a bit far-fetched, but hey it would explain it.

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  2. Huh. Fair enough. It works for me. But I'm still mad. ;)

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  3. Anything to try and make it a little less annoying, right? =)

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