Hey you. Yes, you. You’re the one that likes those dark, moody, incredibly violent Norwegian police procedurals.

So you’ve probably been reading Jo Nesbø with his favorite policeman, Harry Hole. And you’ve probably been pronouncing his name as if it were “Joe Nesbow”. Utterly, horribly wrong. The “J” in Norwegian is pronounced like the “J” in German, that is, like a “Y” in English. So it’s not “Joe”, it’s “Yo” as in the Jersey “Yo, Vinnie!”.

And while you might think that that thingummy that looks like an “o” with a slash is pronounced like “oh”, it’s not. It’s actually pronounced like the diphthong “ir” in English, which makes Nesbø not “Nesbow”, but “Nesbir” (kinda like “beer”). So now you can correctly call him Yo Nesbeer to the delight and astonishment of your friends who are likely not to understand you at all.

And while we’re about it, Harry’s last name is not pronounced like “whole”. The final “e” is pronounced like “uh”, so it’s actually more like “Ho – luh”. The audio-book reader of his first novel gets this right.

So now that you’ve been sufficiently chastised, you’ll get it right from now on, right. Yeah, I thought so. Next time we’ll talk about that painter Van Gogh, but then probably no one can correctly pronounce his name who isn’t Belgian.