Words are hard!

[steeldragons]

Ooooo, there's a good one...

"penanggalen"...is that "pen-ANG-galen"..."pen-ANG-jel-in"..."pen-ANJ-ahl-in"..."PEN-ang-gall-in"...or "PEN-anj-guh-lin"?

Don't think there's a right answer for that, but if anyone has an official reference please let me know...I've never known/understood what to call that...

--SD

 

[Thotas]

At least one person I used to play with pronounced it "Vinegar Lady".

 

[nightwind1]

The last seems pretty reasonable

But it specifically notes in the books that it's pronounced with a hard "G".

 

[AeroDm]

I always read and pronounced justiciar as "JUST-ih-car" until I learned it's "ju-STIH-she-er". Who knew! (Probably lots of people.)

Well crap. At what point is it acceptable to just decide I'm going to continue pronouncing something wrong.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yes, I learned that from Stephen Fry awhile ago. Not directly, of course, but via Youtube.

Ah, QI, source of so much recalibration of things we had once learnt!

 

[prosfilaes]

I actually like that it is called Sigil instead of Sijil. It adds to the "WTF" weirdness of the city and is a reminder that you are not on the Prime Material world.

Plus I think it's dumb when people try to relate the city to the word sigil (sijil) just because it is spelled the same.

It's generally considered a good thing that pronunciation is predictable from spelling. Even you act as if sijil gives some indication towards the pronunciation of sigil. Personally, I'm rather tried of people who have no idea of linguistics trying to create a fantasy or science fiction feeling by throwing around random letters.

 

[Fifth Element]

Personally, I'm rather tried of people who have no idea of linguistics trying to create a fantasy or science fiction feeling by throwing around random letters.

Don't forget the random apostrophes!

 

[Plane Sailing]

It's generally considered a good thing that pronunciation is predictable from spelling.

I don't think english got the memo!

Now cyrillic languages - absolutely right. Give me a page of serbian and I can read it perfectly (without any comprehension) because it was developed so that pronunciation was predictable from spelling.

 

[UselessTriviaMan]

The only one I'm still not sure about is lich. is it "lik" or is it "litsj"?

If I hear someone pronounce "lich" as "lick" (rhymes with "brick"), I need only point out the laughable ridiculousness that would result from reading this title aloud:

Wrath of the Lich King.

That is all.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't think english got the memo!

Now cyrillic languages - absolutely right. Give me a page of serbian and I can read it perfectly (without any comprehension) because it was developed so that pronunciation was predictable from spelling.

Absolutely - when I was learning Spanish it was the same way. And I suspect many languages are like that. But English has a serious legacy issue here. Many words are spelled the way they are because of how someone decided they "should" be spelled centuries ago. But even if said spelling was accurate back then, pronunciation has changed and we've failed to update the spelling. I believe "knight" made some sense phonetically, when that spelling was settled upon. No longer.