A question regarding weird characters

Thanks for the contributions everyone, you've given me plenty of food for thought. I hadn't considered that people might be confused as to how to pronounce the name itself, since a lot of the time I don't actually pronounce a name in my head when I'm reading; unless i'm familiar with the name beforehand it's just a bunch of letters which I assign to a character in my head without considering how it's pronounced.

I think I started doing this in my teens, after I read the fourth Harry Potter book, and Hermoine explains how to pronounce her name to that Bulgarian kid. Up until that point I thought it was 'her-moyn'. Ho-hum. ;D
 
Lawl I used to think Antigone was pronounced "Anti-gone" as in "the opposite of gone," as in "something that's still here" I guess. I also used to pronounce "biopic" as "By-OP-ic" like "antibiotics" or something.
 
I would go with the spelling, but drop the diacritics. English doesn't use them except when quoting from a foreign language. Part of the absorption process into English is the anglicisation of words, a common example being the various spellings of the Koran (Quran etc.). None of them use accents. Same goes for names; it is Mohammed not Mu'ham-ed or whatever. English speakers expect to see something that looks firmly transformed, which means no squiggles.

As a side note, in English language cultures we are expected to just remember the pronunciation of a word without little hints, unlike other European languages. Children are expected to learn and remember how to pronounce through and though themselves.

Unless the intent is to create some kind of exotic effect, in which case go for it. Personally I find them pretentious.
 
you can put the ' to mark syllables in otherwise difficult words, like alien names. Otherwise I only accent words and names that have them in normal English, usually names. That's more common though in Ireland due to still common Gaelic names even among people that don't speak Irish.

Frank Herbert uses Arabic / Toureg style names in Dune (Spice is sort of symbolic of Oil and Fremen are kind of inspired by Touregs). I may have spelled that wrong :)
 
No problem with weird names, but the use of "Fantasy Umlauts" (and macrons and other such modifiers) does set off an alarm bell. Having said that, if your story is set in a world where such modifiers are routine then it's probably ok.
 
I'd probably pronounce it more how you said it, foreign-sounding to me, with the accent. Without, it'd probably be 'cure-ah' to me.
 
One of my favourite characters from a childhood book was called Chalotte, I must have read that book 4-5 times and not once did I realise that there was no R. Proper spooked me years later and realising I'd been mispronouncing in my head the characters name for all that.

Point being, reader will read it how they like anyway- only important bit is does it put the reader off for being far too silly.
 
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