Pronunciations

[Nathal]

GMs are likely using many cultural influences when they run an established campaign setting, or while creating their own. I wished I could get a handle on all of those foreign languages, so that I could pronounce everything as realistically as possible, albeit I never ran games set on our historical Earth.

How many players care whether the GM is a linguist? How many GMs have been corrected by a player in matters of pronunciation?

It's sort of a funny topic. I recall dozens of arguments over the pronunciation of "drow", and it makes me almost shy of creating areas in my game world...I mean, gosh, do I need to learn the proper pronunciations of all of the languages used to inspire places names and character names? That was in fact why I liked teresa norman's "world of baby names" book...it had all of the phonetic pronunciation guides.

I mean really, does a player have a right to skewer me for saying sgian dubh as ‘siggian dub-huh’, rather than ‘skee-an doo’ (gaelic for highland throwing dirk)?

 

[Jdvn1]

The GM doesn't have to be a linguist, but I prefer he pronounce things correctly. At the very least, so I know what he's saying.

 

[Crothian]

doesn't matter, but I'm biased

 

[Celebrim]

Well, it would be ideal for the DM to be omniscient, but since that isn't possible some consecessions to reality will have to be made.

I'm rather surprised that the topic comes up. I would presume that in your average fantasy setting gaelic doesn't exist and therefore sgian dubh is pronounced pretty much exactly as the DM pronounces it.

I generally make up any 'color' words I want, and since they are my words, no one is more an authority on how they are pronounced than me.

 

[jeffh]

Don't be so cute with the options you give. I can't really choose any of them because the details are all wrong, and you spend so many words trying to be funny that it's not completely clear what some of them actually mean.

 

[Darkness]

Accuracy is preferable but generally not required.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

The GM doesn't have to be a linguist, but I prefer he pronounce things correctly. At the very least, so I know what he's saying.

I'm in the same boat with joy division here.

 

[Jdvn1]

I'm in the same boat with joy division here.

That's catching on much more than I thought...

 

[arscott]

I mean really, does a player have a right to skewer me for saying sgian dubh as ‘siggian dub-huh’, rather than ‘skee-an doo’ (gaelic for highland throwing dirk)?

If you were to one to introduce gaelic into the campaign, then it's reasonable that you make an effort to pronounce it properly. Otherwise, you should have just called it a throwing dirk.

Most languages have fairly uniform phonetics. While words are rarely pronounced how they would be if they were english words, It's usually fairly easy to pick up the pronunciation well enough that you don't sound like an idiot when we attempt the pronucniation.

French is a perfect example of this. Most of us have heard enough French words proncounced that we automatically pronounce the eaux as oh. When we see a word that looks french, we automatically simplify the apparent tripthongs into simple vowel sounds, and drop the end consonants. Ocassionally, we over-apply the rule (the c in coup de grace is an s sound), but even when we do, it sounds like it's right, even if it isn't. But if you don't actually know what a glottal stop is, then you have no business inserting apostrophes into the proper nouns in your flavor text.

 

[megamania]

So long as the PCs know what and who you refer to, then try but don't allow it to drag the game to a standstill. I have a speech challenge and thus rarely say even common words correctly, much less dragon and elven names.