jann, janni, djinn, djinni, aaaigh!

[Theo R Cwithin]

Avoid the problem and rename them:

djinni --> cloud-bottomed floatie-man
afreeti --> fire-bottomed floatie-man
janni --> billowy-trousered floatie-man

 

[Huw]

Use what you want. Many languages influenced by Arabic have jinn as the singular. Turkish has cin, plural cinler. Albanian has xhind, plural xhindet, Malay has jin, plural jinjin. All just take the word and adapt it to the local linguistic conditions. English seems to be the weird one in trying to keep the original grammar - but English does that for so many words. I believe classical Arabic has junun as the plural anyway.

 

[GAAAHHH]

I'm a big fan of the Al-Qadim setting, but this was one of the things that drove me crazy.

 

[Nifft]

Avoid the problem and rename them:

djinni --> cloud-bottomed floatie-man
afreeti --> fire-bottomed floatie-man
janni --> billowy-trousered floatie-man

Cloud-bottomed girls, they make the rockin' world go round.

"afreeti = ate tacos?", -- N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

*flicks Bic for cloud-bottomed girls*

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

janni --> billowy-trousered floatie-man

All fear...Lord of the Janni!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKlPKsJ2Vj0"]Ham Ha'Ar![/ame]

 

[Stormonu]

Remember, the addition of "I" is for me alone. Except for the marid, of course. I wonder why they aren't the maridi of the marid?

BTW, just to keep those two malefic fiends straight, I purposely have always called daemons as DAY-mons, versus demons as DEE-mons.

 

[Orius]

English seems to be the weird one in trying to keep the original grammar - but English does that for so many words. I believe classical Arabic has junun as the plural anyway.

English is a very promiscuous language to begin with and doesn't seem to bother much with Anglicising words these days it seems. So that's one reason why we've got this. Second, D&D genies aren't mythological Arabic genies. So they're all called genies, since that's the generic English transliteration, while we get jinni and djanni as variants (which probably are probably just the same Arabic word anyway) so we can have all those nifty elemental variants.

All fear...Lord of the Janni!

Dannyalcatraz strikes again. Now I'm going to have to put a genie based on MC Hammer in my game.

BTW, just to keep those two malefic fiends straight, I purposely have always called daemons as DAY-mons, versus demons as DEE-mons.

I just pronounce daemon as yugoloth.

 

[pawsplay]

What bothered me was trying to figure out how to pronounce djinni and genie so they don't sound like the same word.

 

[Teemu]

I think they're 'djinns' and 'efreets' in 4e. Singulars 'djinn' and 'efreet'.