"...the ancient empire of the tieflings..." and Sword & Sorcery gaming

[Charwoman Gene]

As someone who pronounces "drow" incorrectly...

Fixed that for you.

 

[Wolfspider]

Hear, hear!

All this talk of tieflings seems to presage another pronunciation war. As someone who pronounces "drow" to rhyme with "toe" and "paladin" "pal-ah-din", I can easily see myself coming to blows with players who say "tie-fling".

Wait a minute! There is an alternate pronunciation of paladin?!?

 

[Hairfoot]

Fixed that for you.

Show me the etymology or there is no "incorrect"!

There is an alternate pronunciation of paladin?

Pa-laddin, some say.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

Listen closely I'll only say this once.



Drow rhymes with Cow!

 

[Hairfoot]

Drow rhymes with Cow!

Prove it. Show me the etymology. Show me the quote from the originator of the term defiining pronunciation.

Show me that "castle" is "cassle" and not "carssle". Better yet show me where the H went in "herb".

 

[TarionzCousin]

Teufeling sounds better in English!

But the German pronunciation would be "toy-ful-ling." Whereas "tee-fling" at least doesn't make people think of toys.

The word tiefling doesn't annoy me half as much as "aasimar". At least tiefling rolls off the tongue reasonably well. To me, aasimar looks goofy, sounds worse and opens the entire race to no end of jokes at their expense. And, no, I don't think referring to them as the "Awesome-er" is going to help. I actually liked the idea of using the word Eladrin for the former Aasimar, but it doesn't look like that will be the case.

I think "Ay-simm-arr" sounds better than "Ass-simm-marr."

But back to the OP.

If the mechanics of the Tiefling race work with that flavor, I can just reimage and rename them and use them as Nephilium, Serpent Men, Valusians, Atlanteans, etc. The same way I can rebrand Warforged and use them as androids for dying earth/sword & planet genre flavor. Shoot, I could repaint Drow as unseelie elves.

Why can't you do this anyway? I say go for it.

N.B. "Goatsblood" sounds rather tiefling/demonbred to me. Hmmm....?

 

[Lurks-no-More]

All this talk of tieflings seems to presage another pronunciation war. As someone who pronounces "drow" to rhyme with "toe" and "paladin" "pal-ah-din", I can easily see myself coming to blows with players who say "tie-fling".

That's a flaw of English language, not of the game. Switch to Finnish, people!

 

[WhatGravitas]

Prove it. Show me the etymology. Show me the quote from the originator of the term defiining pronunciation.

Show me that "castle" is "cassle" and not "carssle". Better yet show me where the H went in "herb".

For a start, look here and scroll down a bit (i.e. way down. Or hit Ctrl+F and seach for "pronounciation").

Cheers, LT.

 

[CleverNickName]

Prove it. Show me the etymology. Show me the quote from the originator of the term defiining pronunciation.

Show me that "castle" is "cassle" and not "carssle". Better yet show me where the H went in "herb".

In the incredibly-awful PC game Menzoberranzan, the recorded voice tracks for the word "drow" all rhyme with "now" and "how." I admit that a computer game isn't the end-all, say-all authority on language and pronunciation, and it isn't the 'quote from the originator of the term defining pronunciation' that you requested...but the game *is* a licensed FR product. (shrug) So it is safe to say that, in the Realms at least, the word "drow" rhymes with "cow."

Look up "castle" in a dictionary; it has two pronunciations...I say pick your favorite and run with it. And I didn't know this until I took my own advice and looked it up, but according to Webster's the "H" in "herb" is still pronounced in most of Brittain.

EDIT: Lord Tirian, you are my new hero. Thanks for the link!

 

[Klaus]

Tiefling, due to local lack of familiarity with the English sound "th", if often confused with Thief-ling.

And I'll note that the suffix -ling is very annoying to me, because there's no parallel in Portuguese, so it's hard to explain to non-English speakers. I wouldn't shed a single tear if all -lings were replaced with something else.

Some alternatives (based on "devil son"):
Icelandic: djöfullsonur
Swedish: djävulson
Welsh: andrasab
Turkish: şeytan oğul
Hungarian: ördög fiú
German: Teufelsohn
Polish: diabełsyn
Dutch: duivel zoon
Serbian: vragsin