Pronunciation

[Sir_Godspeed]

So, to take the pronounciation issue away from Anglophone biases (English vowels are notoriously unpredictable), how would Gloranthans pronounce the "i" in Pavis?

Pa-VIS?

Pa-VIIS?

Pa-VYS?

Pa-VIYS?

(I'm mostly joking, just imagining if the main audience of RQ/HQ came from a language where the letter "i" was extremely ambiguous in any context - which, theoretically, at least, in-universe Gloranthans might be).

[Bill the barbarian]

27 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

(I'm mostly joking, just imagining if the main audience of RQ/HQ came from a language where the letter "i" was extremely ambiguous in any context - which, theoretically, at least, in-universe Gloranthans might be).

Precisely the point I was making in my last point,  Sir_Godspeed. And the reason of my praise. Not only was he thinking good gaming logic and you as well for that matter, just imo and possibly his and yours as well, but with a Glorantha Sensibility and having fun all at the same time. YAHTZEE 

We Terrans with our blue marble logic might look at a pronunciation query and try to solve the problem from a rational, logical, point of view. "On page 2,754 of the the Guide to Glorantha, Hell, the Red Moon and parts of Brithini lands lost to mortal eyes volume 35 (or the G2G, H, tRM, & poBlltmeawamoL-S v. 35, for short) it says spelled Pavis and pronounced...

BAMBI... WITH AN X..? "

Eh?

I say a gloranthan, with obvious exceptions, would match our two previous posters et al who have no problem accepting many correct answers! Which village is he from. what generation... How...? Yeah I know it would complicate thinks so, just go with as much complexity as you wish . We used to take notes, "game friday used a cockey accent for bloke from Alone..." or whatever on 3x5 cards. Than transcribe the cards to our campaign logs. Or for true simplicity our pronunciation-phobic protagonists might just take their linguistic debates outside or to a bar where a good old fashioned donnybrook could be used unequivocally decide the issue.

But here on the Green Marble I guess it is damn good idea to explore the question as to how to pronouce something and thankfully there will be many very good answers to this question here on Terra Firma (or not so firma here in BRP Central) as well as Glorantha Impossiblis.

Cheers

[g33k]

So how do you pronounce "wyter", "tarshite", and "sartarite"?

Quote

Food

- The Brown Dragon

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

- The Brown Dragon

Quote

 

...urp!

 

also the brown dragon!

[Fort]

How about Genertela?

[soltakss]

16 hours ago, Fort said:

How about Genertela?

We pronounce it as: Hard-G, as in Got, ener as in energy, tela as in teller. GEN-er-TEla. 

We specifically don't pronounce it with a soft G, as that sounds too much like genitalia. 

Edited May 29, 2019 by soltakss

[Cloud64]

I couldn’t ever use a hard G for Genertela, even if it does invite a few fnarr fnarrs. My pronunciation has changed, it used to be ge-NERT-ela

[Mankcam]

I was happy when I finally found out that Genertela used a 'hard G' sound, it put to rest the endless cheeky jokes about playing a setting where the characters are from the 'Land of Genitalia', heh heh

 

(PS: I initially didnt scroll up when wrote this - I see now that it wasn't just my group that had the schoolboy humour!)

Edited May 29, 2019 by Mankcam

[Kloster]

6 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

I was happy when I finally found out that Genertela used a 'hard G' sound, it put to rest the endless cheeky jokes about playing a setting where the characters are from the 'Land of Genitalia', heh heh

 

(PS: I initially didnt scroll up when wrote this - I see now that it wasn't just my group that had the schoolboy humour!)

I don't have the problem in french: the word genitalia does not exist and the equivalent is not close phonetically. The result was a mix of hard G for those who had a german or english linguistic package and soft G for those who had only latin (french, italian or spanish) background. I was at that time playing in or close to Geneva and the mix of origin was interesting.

[Cloud64]

16 minutes ago, Kloster said:

The result was a mix of hard G for those who had a… english linguistic package

This puzzles me. ‘Gen’ is almost always soft in English: general, gene, genesis, androgen, hydrogen, gender, genitive, gentlemen. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of an example of the G being hard at the start of a word when followed by EN. Want a hard G, follow it with an A. 

I shall, if course think if a hard G example as soon as I post this.

Edited May 29, 2019 by Cloud64

[trystero]

18 hours ago, Fort said:

How about Genertela?

Hard "g", "ener" as in "energy", "tela" like "tailor" without the final "r". Gehn-uhr-TAY-luh.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

We pronounce it as: Hard-G, as in Got, ener as in energy, tela as in teller. GEN-er-TEla. 

Same for me.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I prefer a hard G, partly because of my mother tongue biases of course (we don't really have the "soft-G"/"dzh" sound over here), but also because I feel like a hard-G "Genert" sounds more... Earthy... primordial...? Gat, Gata, Genert, Geo (it's pronounced with a hard G over here), Geb (Egyptian), Gaia... etc.

[g33k]

OK, here's one of the very oldest in the RQ line, from the most-ancient days...

How do you pronounce "Glornatha" ???

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

OK, here's one of the very oldest in the RQ line, from the most-ancient days...

How do you pronounce "Glornatha" ???

Just like "Glorontha":

Glor NTH A

As for "Chosium", that's obviously spelled with a glottal stop after the "k" sound of the Ch.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

9 minutes ago, Joerg said:

1 hour ago, g33k said:

How do you pronounce "Glornatha" ???

 

that is easy...

Glornatha:  Glor (like glory) na (like the negative nah) tha (like the word that)

oops that was a typo... my bad... 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Kloster]

11 hours ago, Cloud64 said:

This puzzles me. ‘Gen’ is almost always soft in English: general, gene, genesis, androgen, hydrogen, gender, genitive, gentlemen. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of an example of the G being hard at the start of a word when followed by EN. Want a hard G, follow it with an A. 

I shall, if course think if a hard G example as soon as I post this.

I know, but this was a fact. Perhaps due to the fact that most of the english speakers spoke also german (we were in Switzerland).

[Bill the barbarian]

54 minutes ago, Kloster said:

G, follow it with an A. 

Gads....

Closest I could come in a quick think is gelding or gold. Both hard... or Ged for thise who love the Earthsea Trilogy.

[Sir_Godspeed]

glor-ANTH-uh

with the "ANTH" being similar to"ant".

[davecake]

On 10/27/2015 at 4:40 AM, Zit said:

So Hshunchen will not only have different pronunciations all over Glorantha, but probably even different  names

They are known as fiwan in Pamaltela.

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 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. 

[Joerg]

39 minutes ago, davecake said:

They are known as fiwan in Pamaltela.

The Malkioni knew the western Genertelan Hsunchen as Hykimi, and the Bright Empire appears to have used that as the collective term, too. The term Hsunchen appears to be native to the Shan Shan region of eastern Genertela, and possibly replaced the familiar "Hykimi" in the West during their craze for everything Kralorelan.

 

39 minutes ago, 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 wonder whether there are dialects for the various sub-groups of beast shapes e.g. among the Rathori or the Pujaleg, or whether the antlered Hsunchen (Pralori, Damali, Uncolings, Alecci) have related languages. The two groups of porcupine Hsunchen (Fronela and Teshnos) are distinct groups with different languages.

 

 

39 minutes ago, 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. 

Even individuals will change their pronunciations over time. Language is highly adaptative, and people unconsciously mirror the pronunciation of their regular contacts.

What counteracts such drift is poetry relying on rhymes and rhythm to provide the mnemonics that preserve the tradition. If a linguistic shift collides with such strong mnemonics, the mnemonics may carry the day.

[Sir_Godspeed]

14 hours ago, Joerg said:

I wonder whether there are dialects for the various sub-groups of beast shapes e.g. among the Rathori or the Pujaleg, or whether the antlered Hsunchen (Pralori, Damali, Uncolings, Alecci) have related languages. The two groups of porcupine Hsunchen (Fronela and Teshnos) are distinct groups with different languages.

Seems pretty plausible that the Hsunchen "language family" (if such a thing exists) branches along the same places as the totems branch out.

14 hours ago, Joerg said:

Even individuals will change their pronunciations over time. Language is highly adaptative, and people unconsciously mirror the pronunciation of their regular contacts.

What counteracts such drift is poetry relying on rhymes and rhythm to provide the mnemonics that preserve the tradition. If a linguistic shift collides with such strong mnemonics, the mnemonics may carry the day.

In Glorantha we get an additional element: hero- and spirit-quests. Ancestral visions, possession, etc. Might explain some "unrealistic" linguistic conservatism.

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

In Glorantha we get an additional element: hero- and spirit-quests. Ancestral visions, possession, etc. Might explain some "unrealistic" linguistic conservatism.

I understand in France and here at home in Quebec they make that a part of the government bureaucracy and institutionalize it.

;•)

Edited June 9, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[davecake]

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Seems pretty plausible that the Hsunchen "language family" (if such a thing exists) branches along the same places as the totems branch out.

Yes, if there is any cross language understanding (the Guide says 'not mutually intelligible' but also says its considered a language family, so I am assume some limited similarity) it should follow the Gloranthan taxonomy. Quite where this gets into detail is a good question - we know that the different porcupine peoples are not the same, but do the various sub-type of Rathori (the multiple children of Rathor) speak the same language? Seems likely they are maybe close dialects at least (I know, for example, of some Australian Indigenous dialects that differ only by a few words and replacing/adding some syllables systematically, making them about as easy to understand as an English speaker would find a strong foreign accent). I know a little of one such, Pitjantjatjarra, and the dialect is literally named after the one common word that is different to its neighbours ('pitja', to go). Similar with the Pujaleg - I presume their languages have enough in common for it not to be a major problem with their Empire, but there could also be some magical way to work around it as well. Does Speak to <Totem Animal>, a pretty common spell, effectively mean everyone is communicating in the Hsunchen language, at least for Hsunchen? I presume that (as it allows Oratory, etc) that it's more like speaking than non-linguistic telepathy?

But bears raise another interesting question - is there any linguistic connection to the non-hsunchen bear cults, like the Odayla cult, or the various other Pelorian bear cults? In general, is there any such connection between Hsunchen and non-hsunchen animal cults?

 

 

 

[Joerg]

8 minutes ago, davecake said:

Yes, if there is any cross language understanding (the Guide says 'not mutually intelligible' but also says its considered a language family, so I am assume some limited similarity) it should follow the Gloranthan taxonomy. Quite where this gets into detail is a good question - we know that the different porcupine peoples are not the same, but do the various sub-type of Rathori (the multiple children of Rathor) speak the same language?

I suppose that the Rathori dialects may vary as much as the Old Norse-derived languages spoken across Scandinavia (where assuming a unified way of pronouncing Old Norse or it having a consistent vocabulary over its distribution is a fairly risky bid, too).

Hsunchen cultures in contact with other Hsunchen appear to be bilingual - using a common language or at least pidgin to communicate across beast totems. That language is likely to be used for terms about technology traded from others.

I'll assume that spoken Hsunchen languages are intelligible to their beast brothers and totem animals - not necessarily spoken by them, though. (Sofali would be very strange...) Certain types of native technology probably can be communicated in those languages. (This doesn't get easier when the different populations use different technology for the same term, like e.g. Sofali boats.) Palaeolithic technology may be presented as the equivalent of parts of beast bodies - blades could be fangs, points could be spines - and material would be the closest similar natural material. Technology from the outside will be hard to communicate in the native language, and may lead to quite different neologisms between separate populations if the need to communicate them to their beast partners arises. The Hsunchen are likely to use tradetalk (or the local equivalent) terms in their normal conversations even when speaking their native languages.

Migratory Hsunchen might even have the need to speak two different trade languages when communicating with other Hsunchen from the far ends of their migration routes.

8 minutes ago, davecake said:

Similar with the Pujaleg - I presume their languages have enough in common for it not to be a major problem with their Empire, but there could also be some magical way to work around it as well. Does Speak to <Totem Animal>, a pretty common spell, effectively mean everyone is communicating in the Hsunchen language, at least for Hsunchen? I presume that (as it allows Oratory, etc) that it's more like speaking than non-linguistic telepathy?

The Pujaleg include a vast variety of totem beasts, from fruitbats via insect eaters to vampire bats (and the latter apparently are (or as of 1624 were) the backbone of their empire in Laskal.

When hsunchen lord over other humans, they don't appear to teach their beast language to their subjects, which means that the imperial language is likely to be one of the conquered peoples' language, or a lingua franca pre-existing in their community. In western Genertela, that would be Kachasti or Theyalan Tradetalk.

 

8 minutes ago, davecake said:

But bears raise another interesting question - is there any linguistic connection to the non-hsunchen bear cults, like the Odayla cult, or the various other Pelorian bear cults? In general, is there any such connection between Hsunchen and non-hsunchen animal cults?

In western Genertela, I think that there was a continuum from hsunchen languages to those of the local urban populations, unless the urbanization of the Pendali, Enerali, Enjoreli relied completely on the older Likiti culture, and urban languages were Likiti rather than Hykimi in nature. Some places like the City of Wolves retained the Hsunchen lifestyle and in all likelihood the language.

There is another possible non-Hsunchen influence here, that of the Kachasti/the God of Silver Feet.

 

It appears like most theist cultures speak languages based on elemental languages, including those groups who have strong beast totem ancestry like e.g. the Syliling bear worshipers, or the Arakang worshipers of Doblian. Possibly different elements, too.