Proper Pronunciation of all D&D words!

[kolikeos]

i and my fellow players say coup de grace like this: cut-de-grass (as in 'mowing the lawn') or cup-de-grab (no idea... 'grab anything you can from the body'?) (depending on the weapon used) both are probably incorrect.

 

[Turjan]

Some of these are real words:

Bulette: BYOO-lay

If you want, though if you do this I want you to write me up a fictional guide to Suloise orthography and point out why the "ette" phoneme sounds like that.

It's not like it even sounds any better or anything. Apparently WotC thinks random silent letters make you sound cultured.

This has actually also a real word equivalent:

Bulette: German; from French boulette de viande - "small ball of beef".

 

[glass]

Whenever somebody pulls the "That's not how bulette would be pronounced in French!" crap with me, I alway respond "It's not French, it's Suloise."

An Suloise is written in latin letters? That's one hell of a coincidence!


glass.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

My group pronounces "coup de grace" as
"koop duh gracie" (the last word is higher pitched.)
I'm happy with it!

I thought mine was the only group that did this. For maximum effect, you need to try to do it in the most Mid/Southwestern accent possible; like what French people think Americans sound like--Americans who insist they speak "American."

Good stuff.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Note that Stargate SG-1 is a show that does a good job of making the apostrophes pronounceable (and consistently pronounced)...

... unless you're General Hammond

"... but what about the Goold?"

There's at least two more vowel sounds you're skipping, there, General!

-Hyp.

 

[shadow]

You ought to write your pronunciation guide using the IPA (International Phonetics Alphabet) for us linguists out there.

 

[glass]

You ought to write your pronunciation guide using the IPA (International Phonetics Alphabet) for us linguists out there.

See, if you hadn't explained in brackets what IPA meant, I could have made a joke about writing anything in India Pale Ale. Spoilsport!


glass.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

To be fair, Taraxia, I was just posting how I personally pronounce them; not as an end all, be all "this is how it is" guideline.

Honestly, as a typical American, I pronounce things how I think they should be pronounced until I am told otherwise; then promptly ignore the person who told me and continue to pronounce them how I originally did.

I did realize that some of them (Falchion, Bardiche, Tarrasque, Dweomer, etc) were real words, this is just the way that I pronounce them. Just seems more natural. Maybe it's my accent, who knows.

*shrug*

-TRRW

 

[Contrarian]

It's a minor thing, but I absolutely hate apostrophes dropped into a word to make it look "fantastic" without actually giving them some meaningful way to change the pronunciation of the word.

TSR's Star Frontiers game used to stick apostrophes and hyphens into Vrusk words like K'tsa-Kar all the time. Since the Vrusk are essentially insectoid, I decided the apostrophe was a clicking noise, and the hyphen was a buzzing noise. I thought it would add versimilitude, but it mostly made me sound like a lunatic when roleplaying Vrusk NPCs -- "Welcome to Kih-TICK-tsa-BUZZ-Kar, humans!"

Oh well, at least I tried.