Pronunciation

[PhilHibbs]

On 10/27/2015 at 11:04 AM, Steve said:

However, I would be very interested to know how, say, Jeff or Greg say these words. Because that would be pretty "official" in my book.

Greg and Jeff have American accents, so how they pronounce things should not be a guide to anything!  Just listen to how Jeff pronounces "Pendragon"!

There are people who insist that everyone in Westeros has a New Jersey accent.

On 10/22/2015 at 1:36 PM, Steve said:

How do you pronounce "Hsunchen"? Is the "s" silent? Or the "H"? Or am I trying to over-complicate it and both of the first two letters are pronounced?

I pronounce it "SUN-shun", with a very slight aspiration at the start.

Edited June 10, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[Shiningbrow]

On 6/9/2019 at 1:08 PM, davecake said:

the Hsunchen languages are magical - each type of Hsunchen speak the same language in even widely separated tribes, so their languages do not experience linguistic drift.

I find that hilarious!

If we presume that the real world equivalent (or at least, inspiration) is based on Chinese, then it's an in-joke! I've been living in China for about the last 10 years, and I can hear 3 different dialects within a 5 minute walk (or less). And, that's not including any of the 53 various ethnicities in the country... nor the Mandarin/Cantonese distinction.

I'd also be saying XunChen (Lucky we're not intending to use any of the tones in these languages!)... my dictionary says there's only one XunChen combination - 勋臣... meaning "official with meritorious records". Of course, there could be more that it didn't tell me...

 

For the others, I presume that we're using English* transliterations of the local languages.. hence, we're using silent 'e's and long vowels on words like Sartarite... rather than pronouncing the end as "-it-ee" or "-ity". (makes Tarshite even better 😛 )

I used to say "JEN-ert-ela", until I got the idea of the god Genert and his land... and now I'm happy with "GENert-ela_. Likewise now, 'PAMalt-ela". - stressing the names of the gods, and adding the '-ela' suffix.

However, I don't think I'll ever change from "ISS-ar-ies" with a short 'i' at the beginning.

(should be pointed out that I'm an Aussie, and used to numerous versions of English pronunciation... and vocabulary).

 

Lastly, let's just remember.... ghoti.

 

(*the language that has 9 different pronunciations for the "-ough-" combination... )

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

English phonetics are nuts, I agree.
(EDIT: Technically I guess I was referring to the orthography, not the phonetics, but you get what I mean.)

In reference to your point about "Sartarite", I see it as a kind of compound of in-universe-Theyelan, and out-of-universe English. If I were ever to tell a Norwegian friend of mine about it, I would've used "Sartaritt", which is the direct equivalent over here. In German it might be... Sartariter? (loosely based on German "Hethiter" for "Hittite", my German is rusty, premature apologies to Joerg).

Edited June 20, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

In reference to your point about "Sartarite", I see it as a kind of compound of in-universe-Theyelan, and out-of-universe English. If I were ever to tell a Norwegian friend of mine about it, I would've used "Sartaritt", which is the direct equivalent over here. In German it might be... Sartariter? (loosely based on German "Hethiter" for "Hittite", my German is rusty, premature apologies to Joerg).

Sartariten is how I form the plural, as one parallel to Isrealites ("sraeliten" in German referring to the ancient people, not usually to the modern state inhabitants, who usually are "Israelis" - at least that's my language feeling) or also Semites, Hamites, Iaphetites. The -ite ending feels a bit like it sneaked into English from Latin, and German has lots of such Latinisms, too. No idea why the Hittites get the "Hethiter" form - possibly because the "-it" is not from Latin. There is one other such ending, the German form of Samaritian is "Samariter". Possibly the -i is part of the word stem, which is not the case for the other examples.

But there are other forms I have seen, like "Sartarier" or "Sartarer". And then there is the language, which in German would be "Sartaritisch" or "Sartarisch".

There is a certain phonetic similarity between Sartar and Sparta if you drop the "-it" component, which is one reason why I insist keeping it.

On the whole, this declination and conjugation business probably is quite alien and remote for English-speakers.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Sartariten is how I form the plural, as one parallel to Isrealites ("sraeliten" in German referring to the ancient people, not usually to the modern state inhabitants, who usually are "Israelis" - at least that's my language feeling) or also Semites, Hamites, Iaphetites. The -ite ending feels a bit like it sneaked into English from Latin, and German has lots of such Latinisms, too. No idea why the Hittites get the "Hethiter" form - possibly because the "-it" is not from Latin. There is one other such ending, the German form of Samaritian is "Samariter". Possibly the -i is part of the word stem, which is not the case for the other examples.

 

Here's a real world brain twister for y'all. What is an inhabitant of Halifax called?

Haligonian?¿?

This one gets me, Must be Scottish.

[Shiningbrow]

I just figured the names were translated into English, from whichever language they came from, and thus the various books used English declensions where relevant. When translated into French, German, etc, I expected similar changes to the grammar - suffixes etc.

The other option would have been to create a large number of languages, and use whatever grammar is used for proper nouns of the various groups... Which (for some in this world) would be silly! 

Speaking of which - has anyone tried to create any Gloranthan languages? 

[GianniVacca]

On 6/9/2019 at 7:08 AM, davecake said:

I suspect some of the other magical languages of Glorantha (Spiritspeech, the elemental languages, including Darktongue) similarly don’t experience linguistic drift, so words/names will be pronounced the same everywhere. Or even if they do not, the many immortal speakers will significantly slow it. 

You can't possibly experience linguistic drift in Darktongue when the 1,000-year old Uzuz matron keeps correcting you on pain of being eaten.

[skulldixon]

Could use guidance on how to pronounce; Anmangarn, and Kellyr.

[Mirza]

2 hours ago, skulldixon said:

Could use guidance on how to pronounce; Anmangarn, and Kellyr.

Just taking a random crack at it, ANM-ahn-garn, and Kel-LEER, are how I pronounce those just reading them off. (Hard K/C sound for Kellyr, like Kite or Car.)

Not sure how accurate that'd be to Glorantha linguistics but eh, thems how I pronounce em.

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, skulldixon said:

Anmangarn, and Kellyr.

For the first, I say AHN-MAHN-GARN (all equally stressed)

For the second, I'm assuming you mean for Prince Kallyr, in which case I say Kal-LEAR.

[skulldixon]

Excellent, thank you for your help.