Pronounciation of Justiciar

[mhacdebhandia]

While on the subject of pronunciation, is anyone else utterly bothered by the official pronunciation of tiefling: tee-fleen.

I know it's completely incorrect, but I always have and always will pronounce it: tye-fleen.

What in the name of Hades happened to the "ng" in your dialect?

TEEF-ling. Correct as invented, correct as extrapolated from the German.

TIFE-ling is just triflin'.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

For the real world Justicier I'll check the dictionary

The RPG term Justicar is Just-ih-car. Nice and harsh sounding. Just right considering the character is using to drive justice home.

Yeah, but what about the Justiciar - note correct spelling - under discussion?

How do you justify killing the third "I"?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm sure the Romans moaned and gnashed their teeth every time some stupid git in Britannia pronounced Caesar as "seezer", too.

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

 

[Darth Cyric]

Actually, yes it is. It's a matter of mass opinion and common usage. If it weren't, there would currently be no distinctions the English language and the German language (as an example).

Dictionaries don't dictate usage, they report common usage (and good ones also report less-common as well as former usage).

I'd suggest researching linguistics a bit if you're going to make such bold statements.

Hi. Welcome to an age with a printing press, where wholesale changes of the Germanic ---> German and English magnitude to a language just don't happen.

 

[hong]

Hi. Welcome to an age with a printing press, where wholesale changes of the Germanic ---> German and English magnitude to a language just don't happen.

Isn't the fact that this whole Ebonics shemozzle exists an indication otherwise...?

 

[breschau]

Hi. Welcome to an age with a printing press, where wholesale changes of the Germanic ---> German and English magnitude to a language just don't happen.

Welcome to the age of the internet, where "electronic mail" can be introduced into common usage, transform to "E-mail" within months, change to "e-mail" within months of that, and finally go to "email" shortly thereafter. In the days of the printing press, and the inherently slow dissemination of information that resulted, that kind of linguistic change could take decades. And then there's Google, or google.

The verb to google (also spelled to Google) refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web. For example, "Mary googled for recipes." A neologism arising from the popularity and dominance of the eponymous search engine, the American Dialect Society chose it as the "most useful word of 2002." It was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006. The first recorded usage of google used as a verb was on July 8, 1998*, by Larry Page himself, who wrote on a mailing list: "Have fun and keep googling!"

* Really 1999, but listed as 1998. He couldn't use it as a verb in a newsletter to Google people before the company was founded.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Isn't the fact that this whole Ebonics shemozzle exists an indication otherwise...?

They call it African-American Vernacular English these days.

 

[Spatula]

You just used the words "normal pronunciation" and "in-the-US" in the same sentence Think about that, for a second. You said the vowel sound is a soft "i"... you mean in the first part, like "tiff-ling" not "teef-ling"? Or did you mean the vowel sound in -ing... in which case, by your example, "ring' should have the same vowel sound as "this".

The -ing vowel, since I was discussing your representation of it. The first syllable of tiefling is either a hard 'e' or 'i', depending on if you're pronouncing it as an english or a germanic word. And "ring" and "this" do have the same vowel sound.

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!

I've lived all around the US too, and travelled through almost all of it. </anecdotal experience> There are certainly regional differences in how words are pronounced or what words are used, but to suggest that there's no noticable difference in the sound of (frex) "ran" and "rang" anywhere in the US is odd, to say the least. That might be true somewhere, but I've never heard it on the east coast, the west coast, or in the midwest. The 'g' in the 'ng' sound is not silent and nearly everyone pronounces it correctly, in my experience.

 

[Spatula]

It wasn't invented for RPGs. It was very likely supposed to be "Justiciar" but whoever first started to use it left the I out by accident. Who are we talking about, here? White Wolf? Renowned back in the day for their editorial masterwork, see page XX.

Maybe it was a typo, maybe it wasn't. RPGs invent words for stuff all the time, so I don't see how it's a stretch to think that perhaps someone took "justice" and "vicar" (or some similar word) and smooshed them together to make "justicar." And it's a good-sounding term for something related to justice. Or cars.

 

[hong]

Maybe it was a typo, maybe it wasn't. RPGs invent words for stuff all the time, so I don't see how it's a stretch to think that perhaps someone took "justice" and "vicar" (or some similar word) and smooshed them together to make "justicar." And it's a good-sounding term for something related to justice. Or cars.

... no, I think they just left out the I.