Pronunciations

[Nathal]

If I ever become President and need an intelligence officer to tell me what I want to hear and ignore the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, you would be at the top of the candidate list.

Cool, I'll vote for you! Sounds like an easy job.

 

[Nathal]

Well, now you know how it's pronounced. You have the choice of going on willfully ignorant or pronounce it correctly.

Ya caught me!

Your questionnaire is quite biased, skipping from knowing all languages from all history and fantasy, to 'gets the point across' to 'gets the point across'.

If I were doing serious research I'd put more thought into the questions, but I was posting for fun. Would you like to come up with a "real" poll? Be my guest.

 

[drakhe]

Not a must, but adds so much flavor and depth...

I don't think it's a must, but it adds so much flavor and depth to the roleplaying experience.
Unless playing in a present day earth setting, who's to say how you pronounce anything.
You can bring it all back to the old Drow thing (please don't derail this thread in a discussion of Drow pronounciation again, thanx), some say Droow (like know), some say Draaw (like how) some just say dark elf. What goes in your group is good. Just try to be consistent, you don't want to make your players paranoid

So how about me:

I use dialects/voices all the time. I speak English/Dutch/French/German and can do a number of dialects in most of these to a very decent level. (I actualy wished I could speak more languages to add even more flavor and personality to my PC/NPC!)

My Moonshae Bard speaks with an Irish accent

My Uthgard barbarian speaks with a low voice and uses a very stunted, limited vocabulary because he knows very little common. When conversing with members of my clan I speak normal as that would represent Uthgard dialect.

I've been playing an arab based character in Birthright (originating from Binsada) and for him I use a slightly higher pitched voice with the faux arab accent you hear in movies all the time (a bit corny, but again it adds personality and flavor)

As a DM I use voices/accents/dialects all the time, its just that much more difficult as you have to keep track of who speaks how. Had one or two occasions where NPC's were switching voices a couple of times... I try to avoid having to play more than one NPC at a time

Drakhe

thinking about this: I actualy have 2 characters that I play with an Irish accent:
- Moonshae Bard
- Deadlands : Dude from the Old country traveling to the WIld West to seek his Grandfather
- 7th Sea : Old Inishmore Fisher
I mention these because the nicest/greatest compliment I received was how different I played these characters and specificaly how different they sounded!

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

At the risk of sounding naive, are you really writing such a book? If no, that's a funny joke, but if so...it might actually be interesting...

Yeah, I'm way behind schedule, but it is coming. I don't want to scoop the publisher on the announcement of its publication, but the book is, slowly but surely, being written. The original discussion thread on the book can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106432&page=1&pp=40

 

[Hypersmurf]

thinking about this: I actualy have 2 characters that I play with an Irish accent:
- Moonshae Bard
- Deadlands : Dude from the Old country traveling to the WIld West to seek his Grandfather
- 7th Sea : Old Inishmore Fisher

I think you need to do some more 'thinking about this'

-Hyp.

 

[Zappo]

Meh. Don't have this problem. Luckily, Italian is possibly the language with the most consistant pronounciation rules in the world; there is only one way to pronounce anything and that way is always univocal given the spelling, even for invented words. You can get the accent wrong, but that's as far as a mistake can reasonably go unless you're very, very drunk. So I don't have this problem - as long as Italian words are involved.

However, not everything gets translated and some things (such as many monster names) simply can't. My FR DM gets quite mad when I pronounce "drow" like "cow".

 

[Saeviomagy]

Meh. Don't have this problem. Luckily, Italian is possibly the language with the most consistant pronounciation rules in the world; there is only one way to pronounce anything and that way is always univocal given the spelling, even for invented words. You can get the accent wrong, but that's as far as a mistake can reasonably go unless you're very, very drunk. So I don't have this problem - as long as Italian words are involved.

Cinema.

 

[shadow]

As a linguist myself (I'm a graduate student in linguistics) I'm all for correct pronunciation (if there is such a thing, but that's a different topic...) Anyway, I'm pretty much a geek when it comes to linguistics issues in the game!

 

[Shemeska]

I try my best, and usually myself or one of my players will provide the real answer if anyone at the table has a question about how to say a word. Outside of english I speak semi-halting russian and very halting spanish (with a russian accent), I've got one fluent latin speaker and a fluent german speaker at the table to help out with anything.

 

[Nathal]

As a linguist myself (I'm a graduate student in linguistics) I'm all for correct pronunciation (if there is such a thing, but that's a different topic...) Anyway, I'm pretty much a geek when it comes to linguistics issues in the game!

I can understand why language would be a prominent feature of your games! Personally, I love it when multiple languages are brought into play. I think its an interesting technique to bring different languages in to simulate fantasy cultures. The problem for me is that I really suck at it. I haven't had a foreign language course in 19 years and I can't even roll my Rs. Pity me.

Sometimes, though, I must admit, I get annoyed when I've got a player who knows one accent (usually a terrible attempt at Irish) and tries to use it for EVERY damn character.