Pronunciation Consternation

[Hatchethead]

The players at my FLGS are divided on how to properly pronounce certain names from the world o' Malifaux. WEIGH IN!

1. Sonnia Criid. Some pronounce this Son-eye-ah. Others insist on Son-ya. Then there's the last name. Creed or Crid?

2. Kirai. Her last name is no problem, and despite the proper pronunciation being listed in Book 2, most still resort to Ki-rye, as opposed to Ki-rah-ee. Is this common in your neck of the woods?

There are others, but those are the big two. What's your take?

[HoarcatsPride]

I say Son-ya Crid, and in book 2 it has below Kirai's name to pronounce it, Ki-rah-ee. I personally pronounce it, Ki-rea

[edonil]

Son-ya Creed for me, and I actually have been pronouncing Kirai as Ker-aye. Man have I been butchering that name...

[Chucklemonkey]

Thats nothing until you hear the butchering of

Reconnoitre.

[Yazza]

lots of my players say zoradia instead of zoraida

[LonelyPath]

I pronounce Sonnia's name as Son-ya Crid.

Kirai is simple enough since it's Kee-reh-ee (in Japanese "i" is pronounced "ee" and "a" is "ah". Also, "U" is "oo", "o" is "oh" (but pronounced slightly shorter and more like the "o" in "cot" in most cases) and "e" is "eh").

[Hatchethead]

Thats nothing until you hear the butchering of

Reconnoitre.

No joke. One of my regular opponents ... not even close.

When in doubt, people: RECON! Simple, fast, honestly sounds more butch than the proper pronunciation, anyhow ...

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=reconnoiter&submit=Submit

Re-con-i-ter is a common one, as well. Not sure if it's a North Americanized version or just plain wrong, but I stick to re-con-oy-ter or (99% of the time) just plain recon.

Zoraida gets mangled pretty regular around here too, yeah.

[ispep]

I've given up hope of anyone ever pronouncing anything right. As a game store employee, I have heard more ways to mispronounce words than I ever thought possible. It's just mind boggling. 10 people can pronounce the same thing 14 different ways. I don't get it.

[Hatchethead]

Kirai is one thing; I mean, the pronunciation is listed right there in the book.

That said, I'd be interested to hear how Eric/Nathan originally intended Sonnia Criid to be pronounced. Just out of curiosity, really.

Edited July 16, 2011 by Hatchethead

[Doctor Amos]

Sewn-ya Creed.

[Sholto]

There was a guy on a podcast I heard referring to Pere Ravage as Perry Ravage

[Serigala]

English is Tough Stuff!

http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

[Da Git]

the interesting thing about kirai is, is that the pronunciation in the book is not how a japanese person would pronounce it (as far as i have learnt). Kirai (meaning hateful) is pronounced ki (as in a very short key) lie (as in opposite to truth). some other translations are:

ankoku = darkness

gaki = hungry ghost (ghoul)

onryo = detachment

shikome = female demon

seishin = spirit/heart/mind

I ca't find out what datsue-ba or ikiryo (sounds a lot like I kill you!! {i always think achmed the dead terrorist!!})

Cheers

[Hatchethead]

the interesting thing about kirai is, is that the pronunciation in the book is not how a japanese person would pronounce it (as far as i have learnt). Kirai (meaning hateful) is pronounced ki (as in a very short key) lie (as in opposite to truth).

Oh really? I'd prefer a two syllable pronunciation (as would most people, I think). More often than not, I call her Ki-rah and drop the "ee".

[Hatchethead]

There was a guy on a podcast I heard referring to Pere Ravage as Perry Ravage

:frusty: :bigthumb:

[LonelyPath]

the interesting thing about kirai is, is that the pronunciation in the book is not how a japanese person would pronounce it (as far as i have learnt). Kirai (meaning hateful) is pronounced ki (as in a very short key) lie (as in opposite to truth). some other translations are:

ankoku = darkness

gaki = hungry ghost (ghoul)

onryo = detachment

shikome = female demon

seishin = spirit/heart/mind

I ca't find out what datsue-ba or ikiryo (sounds a lot like I kill you!! {i always think achmed the dead terrorist!!})

Cheers

I'm gonna be thinking of Ahmed now when ever I see Ikiryo now, hahahaha.

Kirai is "Kee-rah-ee" though, the 2 vowels are pronounced separate, same with "aijo" (ah-ee-jo) and so on. That is how Japanese pronounce them, I used to pronounce it like you suggested but got corrected whilst in Japan when I went over to further my understanding of the language (I'm fluent in the written side of a couple of the dialects). Many Japanese, however, are very lazy when speaking and tend to merge things that should be pronounced individually and sometimes drop characters and accents from words like saying "dez" instead of "desu". Strange enough, I's and U's are the most commonly dropped parts of words, lol.

Edit - Datsue-ba: lit. "Old Woman Who Strips Cloth", it's found in Buddhist folklore and belief. She's not very nice to say the least

Ikiryo has no English equivalent, but it's a manifestation of a part of a persons soul when they harder a grudge against another and detach that art of their spirit to inflict harm on their target. Another form of Ikiryo is soul of a person that has separated from a person whilst extremely sick or injured to the point where they cannot physically interact wih the world.

Kirai Ankoku literally means Loathing (Kirai) Shadow (Ankoku) when directly translated. A suitably fitting name for her character, though in Japan it would be Ankoku Kirai which would still be read as "loathing shadow" or could also be "loathsome shadow", "shadow of hatred" and many other definitions.

Edited July 17, 2011 by LonelyPath

[Soundwave]

Sewn-ya Creed.

Agreed. (or..ACREED?!!?!?!?)

Plus, it reminds me of Sabretooth from X-men, which is always a good thing.

[Q'iq'el]

Kirai is "Kee-rah-ee" though, the 2 vowels are pronounced separate, same with "aijo" (ah-ee-jo) and so on.

The major challenge with Japanese transcription is the length of syllables - every single syllable must be pronounced for the same time. Some syllables are extended (transcribed with the bar over the vowel like ō or ā), some sounds count as syllables even though we see them as single vowel or consonant.

The Hepburn's transcription of Kirais name would be:

Kirai Ankoku

The syllables are:

Ki-ra-i An-ko-ku

Each with the same time of pronunciation.

So it's Ki (like in the name 'Kim') or Kee-rah-ee Anh-koh-koo

The question is, which will produce more consistent outcome, regardless of the dialect of English one speaks?

Obviously, people are sloppy with their pronunciations and in every-day Japanese Kirai is more likely to be used as an adjective than a noun, never mind the name (I can't imagine it used for a name in any circumstance ). Such "sloppy" pronunciation would make it sound more like Ke-rye, Ke-lie or something like that... but it isn't a systematic transcription method nor something which would be pronounced with any greater consistency by the readers.

Ikiryō divides into three syllables of equal time: I-ki-ryō, with 'I' pronounced as long as 'ki', but 'ryo' is extended so it takes a slight bit longer - 'ryoh' may even be too short, but 'ryou', prefered by Japanese, takes it into completely unpredictable areas.

Ankoku, BTW, means Darkness, rather than Shadow, and in quite a broad sense - Dark Ages (ankoku-jidai), criminal underworld (ankoku-gai, or "dark city") etc.

If you ever have a problem with Japanese pronunciation, and you lack a Japanese person around, find someone who speaks Polish. For some unfathomable reasons native Polish pronunciation is practically identical to Japanese (though has many sounds Japanese cannot pronounce, so it's a one way street). Just tell them to pronounce softer than English -> Shi as Si, Chi as Ci, Ryo as Rio etc. - with this simple guideline any Polish person can speak perfect Japanese.

In the end, the problem is with the English language and horrible lack of linguistic professionalism of ye old English. (joking) All modern European languages suffer from the fact that sound we articulate cannot be recorded with precision using just the Latin alphabet. Some countries made a solid approximation (Frensh, Spanish), some countries added their own diacritics (Central and Northern Europe), but all achieved something which allows for a decent degree of standardization (obviously there are dialects and such everywhere). Not so much with English.

That leads to the point where no matter how you transcribe a Japanese or Chinese word, someone somewhere will pronounce it wrong (reading it in English).

Hepburn's transcription of Japanese barely works if someone actually learns it, but it tries to be phonetical. Chinese on the other hand gave up all the hope for phonetical transcription and their system is more or less arbitrary, incredibly hard to teach anyone (not just native English speaker) how to even read it, never mind mastering the tonality.

Edited July 18, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[LonelyPath]

Someone that speaks Finnish is also a bonus as the spoken language syntax is almost identical to Japanese. The language is similar to Polish, but there are more Finnish speaker about (though less Finnish than there are Pols, lol).

The Ki as in Kim comes from lazy pronunciation, it would be Ki like Key in proper Japanese, but a short hard k"e"y sound. A Ki as in Kim is a good example, though it is pretty hard to explain hard vowels in Japanese in English text

Japanese words also have different meanings dependent on the characters used and the other words around them. Ankoku on it's own can mean Dark/Darkness/Shadow/Dread/etc. But with Kirai it's far most likely to become shadow (or possible "dreadful" according to someone I was talking to from Japan last night) as it has about 10 or 15 different spellings and without those we can only make educated guesses. However, I am leaning toward shadow as it makes more sense when the partner word is loathing/loathsome.

Ikiryō is a problem word as there are 2 very strong arguments on how it is written in English. Some say it's ryo, others ryou. Both are correct in English, but in Japanese Ryou has a very different sound (ree-ow).

If you really want a problem language, try Welsh, you cannot speak it properly unless you can pronounce prefect Klingon (like Gagh is not pronounced Gack or Gahg/Garg) hahaha.

Language structure is fun though, particularly those form the far east where I word completely changes with something as small as a single line in some situations and then you can write the same word identically, but it still means something else when placed with dependent symbiotic characters

[Q'iq'el]

Someone that speaks Finnish is also a bonus as the spoken laIkiryō is a problem word as there are 2 very strong arguments on how it is written in English. Some say it's ryo, others ryou. Both are correct in English, but in Japanese Ryou has a very different sound (ree-ow).

Nah, that's just different transcription of the same sound. There's difference between short ryo and long ryō, but ryou is just an unofficial way to type ryō, back from the pre-unicode days. Another unofficial transcription would be ryoh and some Japanese prefer that.

Either way, transcription is just that - arbitrary method of recording the foreign sounds in the writing system which has never been created for that. It will never be perfect or accurate and the purpose of the spelling guides in the Raising Powers is to provide a guideline for English speakers.

[Hatchethead]

Should be noted, it was never the intention of the thread to mock or make-to-feel-bad those of us (and I say us, 'cause I'm guilty) with pronunciation "issues".

I'm secretly hoping someone with insider knowledge (and a few minutes to spare, perhaps temporarily dodging GenCon related duties) will ride through the thread on a silver horse, spouting unassailable truth, preventing future phonetic butchery.

:flute:

[Q'iq'el]

I'm secretly hoping someone with insider knowledge (and a few minutes to spare, perhaps temporarily dodging GenCon related duties) will ride through the thread on a silver horse, spouting unassailable truth, preventing future phonetic butchery.

Already did that.

[Hatchethead]

Already did that.

More insider. Like ... the guy who first wrote "Criid". I wonder what it sounds like in his head?

Edited July 19, 2011 by Hatchethead

[Q'iq'el]

More insider. Like ... the guy who first wrote "Criid". I wonder what it sounds like in his head?

Ah, ok. Can't speak outside of the Japanese stuff.

[Hatchethead]

Ah' date=' ok. Can't speak outside of the Japanese stuff. [/quote']

With Zee pronouncing it Ki-rai during his interview on episode 4 of the Aethervox, I feel somewhat justified pooching it on occasion. Makes me wonder what the majority of Wyrd staffers call her around the office ...