Growing up in New York City, I grew up with theater. Especially, since my father did plays from community theater to Off-Off-Broadway. Therefore, I thought I knew how to say Godot, as in Waiting for Godot, and I was wrong.
I thought it was Ga (like Ga-linda)-Dough. As did everyone I knew who ever said it around me. And we were all mispronouncing it.
Yesterday, when Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves appeared on Today to talk about their Broadway play, they revealed the correct pronunciation. It is Gd-Oh. Like, O-M-G-Oh…did you hear who is starring in Waiting for Godot?
Ted “Theodore” Logan explained, “In the play, there is so much alliteration and rhymes with Godot.” Then he added, “The play is talking a bit about Gd.”
So for the future, we know the proper way to say it, so we sound like theater aficionados.
However, if you want to say it the way you have always been saying it, that is alright. Bill S. Preston, Esquire, told Craig Melvin that the play’s author, Samuel Beckett (no relation to the guy from Quantum Leap), “preferred Gd-Oh…Beckett himself said you can pronounce it however you want.”
