Pronounciation of Justiciar

[Naszir]

Yeah, it is probably because I'm American.

But German as a language, I think, to American ears can sound like a harsh language with very hard sounding words. Unlike French or Spanish which come off a bit more soft. Tee fling sounds soft, fluttering, not demonic or sinister. But again, that may be just because I'm American. Maybe Tee fling sounds sinister to German ears.

Though I would have thought that they would have been able to come up with a word for a demonic tainted race that sounds sinister to all.

 

[Novem5er]

@ Spatula... I'll be danged, you certainly are correct about the "i" sound in 'this', 'thing', or 'halfling' I looked it up on a dictionary and all those have the short 'i' sound in them. I'll contribute my earlier assessment of 'thin' and 'thing' sounding completely different on this southern vernacular. Which is probably also the difference in audible 'g' sounds in -ing words.

But as Naszir has also said... tee-fling sounds like tee-hee (If I understood him), so at least I'm not alone in this.

 

[Ulthwithian]

First, Novem5er, I'll point out that I have also lived in Central Florida for most of the past... hmm, 20 years? Almost literally. I also have lived in Ohio (Dayton and Columbus) for my formative years. I wanted to address something you said:

It has one for 'ring' and then an -een sound with a very very subtle g at the end that might not even be audible if speaking at normal speeds, but that makes the last 'n' pronounced with the tongue in the back of the mouth and not the front.

If I understand you correctly, that is the 'ng' phoneme. One sec to see if I can find the 'linguistic type' for it.... Word says it's unicode 014B. 'ŋ' It's an 'n' with a g hook on it. When people are discussing something as aurally similar as phonemic issues, it helps to have a common method of writing the phonemes. Linguists have a phonetic alphabet all their own so that they can talk to each other about this kind of thing.

Around here, we don't say 'half-lin-guh' (however soft that guh, might be).

As they should not. There's a difference, phonetically speaking, between 'ing' (which is how the above is pronounced) and 'iŋ'. The latter is, at least, 'more correct' from a phonetic perspective.

I'm not saying that my pronunciation is correct, as I quite realize that people speak differently across this country.

I don't recall saying that your pronunciation was incorrect. I am Cajun by extraction. While I have no discernible accent, some of my relatives do, and it drives me up a wall sometimes. No, what I was trying to do was clarify, as much for my benefit as yorus, exactly what you were trying to say so that the discussion could move forward with everyone on the same page. Unfortunately, it seems that the opposite happened. My apologies.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I'll bet you a trillion dollars it never happened.

Well, probably not the specific mistake I mentioned, no. I doubt the inhabitants of Britannia pronounced "Caesar" as "seezer", too, it's just the best-known example of English speakers doing violence to Latin pronunciation, and having the result become the normal, "correct" pronunciation. I have no doubt, however, that Britons mispronounced Latin words and appropriated them into their own vernacular. See also:

prince: from Princeps (title of Augustus, pronounced "prin-keps") to "prins"
vulnerable: from vulnurar (verb, to wound, pronounced "wool-noo-rahr") to "vuhl-nurr-uh-bul"

Yeah, you caught me, I used an imprecise example in the interest of bringing up a well-known instance of mispronunciation brought into the common use. The point still stands, though, that pronunciations change and become offical, and there were almost certainly grognards then who opposed the new pronunciation. Whether they were Roman, Norman, or Norse is immaterial to my assertion.

 

[Novem5er]

Ulthwithian, you're right about the /ng/ (and it's unicode symbol, which I can't figure out how to type with my Mac). There is a subtle difference between /n/ and /ng/. What I was getting at in my follow up is that, at least down here, the /g/ in 'ring' is very clear, but it is not so clear in halfling or tiefling, or even ringing.

I'm sorry I got jumpy, but I only used the 'leen' ending when I was trying to type my pronunciation because I was trying to emphasis the vowel sound. My entire post was about how the double vowel sound of Tiefling (tee-fleeng) makes the word sound silly.

Now, as Spatula has pointed out, there shouldn't be a double vowel sound because -ing vowel sounds really should have a short 'i' like 'this'. Unfortunately for many Americans, I believe, the -ing becomes a long e sound, like keen. According to my online dictionary 'flind' and 'fling' should have the same vowel sound. For myself and my community, they do not

But I apologize for reacting angrily, but it hurt to have people nit-pick parts of my phonetic typing when I wasn't even trying to emphasize those parts.

 

[Keenath]

Let me be more specific. YES, there is a soft difference between the "n" sounds of keen and -ing. However, if I challenge anyone to walk around a local gaming store and count the number of times you can actually hear the "g" at the end of halfling, tiefling, running, singing, or any other -ing word. If you count more than a single instance, then congratulations you live in most well-spoken town in America!

Actually, that's kind of strange... I live in Texas, around Dallas, so we get lots of east-texas drawl around here, but I've never heard anyone drop the G from Halfling or Tiefling (tee-fling).

Seriously. You'll hear about a halfling goin' runnin' and swimmin'.

 

[Spatula]

While we are on it, Tee fling. I really can't believe, despite of the way it is supposed to sound, that people just accept Tee fling. I always thought it was Tie fling. At least that sounded a bit more sinister.

Tie-fling sounds like trifling, which is hardly sinister.

 

[Naszir]

Well, Tee fling sounds like Treefling when you add an R .... oh wait, Hong is now going to respond that:

Tree-fling is AWESOME. A race that can fling trees? Sign me up!!!

 

[Keenath]

While we are on it, Tee fling. I really can't believe, despite of the way it is supposed to sound, that people just accept Tee fling. I always thought it was Tie fling. At least that sounded a bit more sinister.

Its only my opinion but, gods, really, Tee fling. The name of the race, if pronounced correctly, so does not match the look of the race. Tee fling sounds more like it should be one size smaller than a Halfling.

Your personal opinions don't have any bearing on the correct pronunciation of the species name.

Tief is german for "low" or "deep", and -ling is a diminiuative. So "tief-ling" would roughly mean "little low one" or "little deep one" (in the sense of underground, not philosophically deep), or perhaps "little corrupted one".

In any case, tief is pronounced "teef", not "tife", and I believe that pronunciation has been officially endorsed by WOTC.

Thinking it sounds silly does not enter into it.

 

[Naszir]

Yes, I know. And I did explicitly state it was only my opinion but I was surprised that so many were willing to go "OK, it is pronounced that way, even if it does sound a little off, I guess I'll stick with that."

Sure, there is an "offical" pronounciation but I certainly do not HAVE to pronounce it that way. Not sure I like tief-ling either. (Sounds like they should rename the gnome tief-ling. Rawr, I'm a monster and I have nasty sharp tief.)

Ah, guess I'm hard to please. Thinking it sounds silly certainly does enter into it, at least for me. No one has to accept what I say but its just MHO.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone who wishes to pronounce it correctly. To me Tief-ling just doesn't have enough bite to it.