How is Baba Yaga pronounced?

[Al'Kelhar]

Just the way it is spelt of course!

Su-san!

No, Su-san isn't an old hag. But she is scary.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzAECnpDR4c]Monsters vs Aliens funny - Whats your name...? - YouTube[/ame]

 

[LostSoul]

I dated a lovely girl from the Ukraine once and had asked her about this very thing.

After listening to be me mangle it (I was pronouncing it as 'Bar-Bar Yar-Gar'), her eyes lit up:

'Ah! You mean BuhBah YugGah!'

I'll take this over a pronunciation guide any day.

I had the same experience, except the girl was from Volgograd. Buh-bah yug-gah is how she said it, too.

 

[Shiv]

Just curious - I was looking for a powerful, high level fey type and there was Baba Yaga in DDI adventure tools. I remember her hut from 1E days back before electricity...

I was wondering how do you pronounce the name?

I had always said Bah Buh * Yay Guh

Is that correct? Close? way off the mark?

Thanks

The hut's been updated to 4E by yours trully.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Baba Yaga?s Dancing Hut)

If your group is higher level, you could just adjust the skill DCs up and use different monsters.

 

[jasper]

I just hate these threads. Just chose one that your group finds acceptable. Come we talking about goddess in dead language trying to be pronouce in the current verison of the dead language. Then transporting the name across the pond to usa. And we have trouble understanding each other if we go more than 2 states over.
If I the player it call it. " I backstab the wizard and run away!'
If I am the dm, I just giggle.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

And here's how you pronounce her husband's name, Baba O'Riley:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUBTX9kKEo]Baba O'Riley - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Desdichado]

Just curious - I was looking for a powerful, high level fey type and there was Baba Yaga in DDI adventure tools. I remember her hut from 1E days back before electricity...

I was wondering how do you pronounce the name?

I had always said Bah Buh * Yay Guh

Is that correct? Close? way off the mark?

Thanks

It would make more sense, as well as take less time, for you to have looked up an authoritative source for this (like heck, even a dictionary or basic encyclopedia) rather than ask a bunch of opinionated but otherwise questionally expert folks at ENWorld.

In any case, Baba Yaga is a transliteration of the Russian name Баба-Яга--which would be pronounced BAH-bah (or BAH-buh) YAH-gah.

Yay Guh? Nuh-uh.

 

[Fifth Element]

I just hate these threads. Just chose one that your group finds acceptable. Come we talking about goddess in dead language trying to be pronouce in the current verison of the dead language.

Which dead languages now?

 

[Morrus]

I just hate these threads.

My advice would be to avoid them, then.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

My advice would be to avoid them, then.

Brings back good memories of the "Wandering Hut of Baba Yaga" adventure from Dragon, though.

The use of a tesseract as a dungeon design blew my mind then, and still does now.

 

[El Mahdi]

I dated a lovely girl from the Ukraine once and had asked her about this very thing.

After listening to be me mangle it (I was pronouncing it as 'Bar-Bar Yar-Gar'), her eyes lit up:

'Ah! You mean BuhBah YugGah!'

I'll take this over a pronunciation guide any day.

Yeah, Ksenia Solo (who plays Kenzi on Lost Girl) pronounces it like that also. She's originally Latvian, though raised in Canada, but she does speak Russian on the show occasionally (I don't know if her family was predominantly Russian speaking or Latvian speaking...).

Here's how she pronounced it during an episode of Lost Girl:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1A4Rj4xcig]Lost Girl - Mirror, Mirror - Clip - YouTube[/ame]