I’ve been taking the Q train a lot lately, courtesy my new job, and as expert as I am at blocking out the ambient sounds of the New York subway system — the strictly-from-hunger doowop singers; the 22-year-old teenagers selling candy bars for their “team” — it’s hard to ignore the automated voices on the new subway cars.

As much as I like hearing any kind of announcement about service and even which stops are next, the friendly, inhuman male and female recordings that fill the airspace on the Q are starting to get on my nerves. I keep expecting them to start bickering with each other, like the man and woman you hear disagreeing with each other in the airport in Airplane!

The stop just before mine is DeKalb Avenue, which everyone in Brooklyn pronounces Dee-Kalb, with the stress on the first syllable and “al” pronounced to rhyme with pal. Not robo Bob and Betty. They keep saying “The next stop is De-Kalb Avenue,” with emphasis on the second syllable and a short a as in awl. Kind of fussy, and not at all Brooklyn sounding.

The city may have done a study and discovered that the original Dutch family after whom the street (and hence the stop) is named may have pronounced it that way. But we’re not in Amsterdam and Brooklyn has a legacy of pronouncing things their way. My neighbor Joe Bellati, who was born here about eighty years ago and seems to remember everyone who has lived in Ft. Greene since then, was telling me about a long-gone doctor once. “His name was Gorse,” he said and then spelled it: “G-O-S-S.”

Tell the subway robots that.