An end to the pronunciation debates?

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**Polonius**

I was in Theta Chi (pronounced Kye) fraternity, so I naturally pronounced it Kye-mare -a

**generalgrog**

Jimi Nemesis wrote:Is it Las? or Layz?

I know someone who pronounces it "Loss"Cannon

GG

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cruentus wrote:Alrighty then, how does Her Majesty pronounce Sanguinius?

Is it

Sang ween us

or

Sang win ee us

or something else?

I've always pronounced it... San gwine us

GG

**daedalus**

Osbad wrote:Americans can't speak proper... it's a fact And ipso facto you can't be a "native English speaker" if you aren't from England...!

Whatever other languages you colonials drawl it ain't the Queen's English, and' that's the durn truth! It's probably "Colonial" or "American" or "Pidgin" or some other bastardisation...

So, I have it on good authority that the Her Majesty pronounces:

Tyranid as "Tih (to rhyme with "bit")-rah-nid"
Lascannon as "Lazz-cannon"
Chimera as "Kye-meer-ah"
C'tan as "Suh-tan"
Tzeench as "T'seen-ch"
Leeman Russ as "Leeman Russ" (to rhyme with "London Bus")
Valkyrie as "Val-ker-ee"...

It is of course a beheading offence to contradict Her Majesty...

And for a serious moment here. I'm not just flame-baiting Americans here. I am actually serious in that the only people I have heard "mispronounce" (as in pronounce differently to the above) or expressing difficulty in pronouncing such words are Americans. All the Brits I speak to about 40k just don't seem to have any problem. Its simply not an issue - we just pronounce the word as its spelled! It really is no big deal over here!

Ok, now pronounce Aluminum.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Flashman wrote:
Osbad wrote:To be honest, the only people I hear having problems pronouncing these words are our colonial brethren. Us native English-speakers seem to have little problem...

Ooh, controversional

As a UK resident, my friend pronounces Tyranids "Ti-ranids" and as I stated above, I go for the "Tie-ranids" option. One of us "natives" must be wrong... although I don't really care either way myself.

The root word is Tyrant. The extension is Tyranny. I pronounce (correctly mark you) as in Tyranny.

The others I pronounce 'Why am I posting this when it's Friday night. Not having money for the pub sucks'

Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the metal mentioned above, exactly as it is spelt..

AL-U-MIN-IUM.

You Yanks miss the second I.

**ph34r**

The root word is Tyrant. The extension is Tyranny. I pronounce (correctly mark you) as in Tyranny.

GW says it is tear-a-nid, that's all you need.

In American English it is Aluminum. Saying Aluminium would be incorrect.

EDIT: to be simpler

**Neith**

A few of these mentioned are funny, but I've always stuck with how I pronounce them:
Sanguinius: Sang-win-ee-us (same as Kilkrazy)
Leman Russ: Lee-man Russ (rhyming with bus)
Las: I've always said 'Laz' for some reason, and I don't know why.
Tzeentch: Zennch. I've always thought the T should be treated as a silent one.
Chimera: Kai-meh-ra
Tyranid: Tir-an-id (I know it's not a great source, but Dawn of War 2 pronounces it as 'Tir-an-id', not 'Ty-ran-id'.)
Valkyrie: Val-k-ree (it should be Val-keh-ree, but my northern UK accent cuts it to Val-k-ree

)

This topic reminds me of a game I play where no-one knows how to pronounce the skills

**Big'Uns**

Not much controversy here to me.. Different countries, different pronounciation..

But a question to the Brits.. How the heck do you say Buboes and what medical malady are they?

Buh-boes
Boo-boes
Boo-Boos

I'm going with the third one.

After all it was writ by a brit and I can so see it.

**daedalus**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Flashman wrote:
Osbad wrote:To be honest, the only people I hear having problems pronouncing these words are our colonial brethren. Us native English-speakers seem to have little problem...

Ooh, controversional

As a UK resident, my friend pronounces Tyranids "Ti-ranids" and as I stated above, I go for the "Tie-ranids" option. One of us "natives" must be wrong... although I don't really care either way myself.

The root word is Tyrant. The extension is Tyranny. I pronounce (correctly mark you) as in Tyranny.

The others I pronounce 'Why am I posting this when it's Friday night. Not having money for the pub sucks'

Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the metal mentioned above, exactly as it is spelt..

AL-U-MIN-IUM.

You Yanks miss the second I.

OH! It's spelled differently. I apologiZe.

**Neith**

Big'Uns wrote:Not much controversy here to me.. Different countries, different pronounciation..

But a question to the Brits.. How the heck do you say Buboes and what medical malady are they?

Buh-boes
Boo-boes
Boo-Boos

I'm going with the third one.

After all it was writ by a brit and I can so see it.

As far as I know, we say 'Byoo-boes' (yoo as in 'you'). Assuming you mean the huge lumps caused by plague, of course (as in byoo-bonic plague

)

**Big'Uns**

Huh, It's (boo-bon-ic) in american.

I thought buboes may have been the root for the term boo-boo (baby-talk for an injury)

**Grim.Badger**

daedalus wrote:OH! It's spelled differently. I apologiZe.

So you should, we invented this language* so we get to say how to spell and pronounce words

*by bashing a load of other languages together, then randomly adding new words when what we were using just wasn't specific enough. The use of Z is archaic English iirc, so technically you Yanks have that one right

btw I say Chime-era, I've known that I am wrong since I was a kid but just can't shift the habit

**kronk**

I just recall the Subway Sandwhich shop in London:

"I'll have some jalapanos (ha-la-pee-nyos) on my sub."

"Sir, that's pronounced Ja-La-Pan-Ose."

Honesty. It's a Spanish word. Why must it be bastardize?

**Neith**

Big'Uns wrote:Huh, It's (boo-bon-ic) in american.

I thought buboes may have been the root for the term boo-boo (baby-talk for an injury)

It may just be a case of me being a total idiot and mispronouncing it, but I'm sure I've heard it said as 'byoo-boes' before

**Kilkrazy**

kronk wrote:I just recall the Subway Sandwhich shop in London:

"I'll have some jalapanos (ha-la-pee-nyos) on my sub."

"Sir, that's pronounced Ja-La-Pan-Ose."

Honesty. It's a Spanish word. Why must it be bastardize?

In the old days people who got jobs in fast food shops weren't exactly high achievers academically.

Nowadays they are often graduates or doctors from Polnad, Romania and so on.

Either way you can't rely on them as a pronunciation guide.

**Big'Uns**

kronk wrote:I just recall the Subway Sandwhich shop in London:

"I'll have some jalapanos (ha-la-pee-nyos) on my sub."

"Sir, that's pronounced Ja-La-Pan-Ose."

Honesty. It's a Spanish word. Why must it be bastardize?

Because british english is supierior and they would not want to sound foolish pronouncing a j as an h and an nyay..forget about rolling an r...

**insaniak**

To backtrack to the original premise of the thread a moment...

Shinigami wrote:So, my thinking is thus; as the Japanese alphabets leave no variation of pronunciation, we can assume that the Katakana is as close to the correct pronunciation as the japanese syllables allow, so we can use this to decide between two ways of pronouncing the words.

The problem with that theory is that it assumes that whoever did the translation actually checked with the studio, rather than just going with their own interpretations. And that the studio cared enough about the pronunciation in a completely different language to check them.

**solkan**

The other problem with going by the Japanese version is that Japanese doesn't handle all of the vowels as English does. The best example is that 'bus' gets written 'basu', and 'ticket' getting written as 'chiketto'.

I don't even want to think about how many characters it would take to express 'T-glotteral stop-zeentch' as opposed to just writing 'zeenchi'. (Assuming that one or the other is correct...)

**Relapse**

Samhain I've heard pronounced a few different ways with the most common sounding like
sow-en, with sow being pronounced as in pig.

**ph34r**

It's Saim-Hann. I pronounce this sam/same-han/hon
I can't think of any reason that it would be pronounced sow-en.

**Khornholio**

Not debating about any pronunciations, especially with the OP using Japanese as a reference point (in both cases there should be an "O" at the end of Tyranid). As KilKrazy pointed out, Japanese pronunciation of foreign words is generally way off, and in many cases so is the meaning.

However, I have a gem from eons past. Many moons ago, I heard an enthusiastic gamer say in a GW "Wow! Cool! Look at these Chows Warriors." He also said "Realm of Chows" and "Thugs of Chows."

**insaniak**

Relapse wrote:Samhain I've heard pronounced a few different ways with the most common sounding like
sow-en, with sow being pronounced as in pig.

Should actually be 'sah-win' ... but is nothing to do with the Eldar craftworld which, as ph34r pointed out, is Saim Hann, not Samhain.

But it sounds Celtic, so some poeple insist on pronouncing it the same.

Khornholio wrote: However, I have a gem from eons past. Many moons ago, I heard an enthusiastic gamer say in a GW "Wow! Cool! Look at these Chows Warriors." He also said "Realm of Chows" and "Thugs of Chows."

That one's actually not that uncommon. And not exclusive to 40K gamers.

I did encounter a player back in 2nd edition who insisted on pronouncing 'Whirlwind' with 'wind' rhyming with 'bind'... no idea what he thought it meant.

**yani**

Hmm as I have northern roots I can't speak properly but here goess.
Chimera- Chimbo, Ki-mer-a
T'zeentch- 'zinch, used to call it Te-zin-tech
Lasgun- Lazgun, Laysgun sounds a little like some sort of cooking utensil
Tyranid- 'Niddss, Tir-a-nids
Leman Russ- Leee-man Ru-ss used to say lemon Russ but learned better

**megatrons2nd**

Osbad wrote:Americans can't speak proper... it's a fact And ipso facto you can't be a "native English speaker" if you aren't from England...!

Whatever other languages you colonials drawl it ain't the Queen's English, and' that's the durn truth! It's probably "Colonial" or "American" or "Pidgin" or some other bastardisation...

As an American I agree with you. I say we speak American English. Not trying to be rude but our forefathers did all they could to remove British rule, so maybe the lingual drift was part of our cultural split and subsequent adhoc additions from other cultures and languages was deliberate.

Question, wasn't there a low form(serfs, peasants) of English in the middle ages?

**Kid_Kyoto**

Osbad wrote:Americans can't speak proper... it's a fact

SIGH

Shows what you know.

The correct sentence would be "Americans don't talk good"

**Quintinus**

That's odd, for Leman Russ most people say "Lee-Man"

For me, I pronounce it "Leh-man Russ"

I pronounce the rest of them the "correct" way.

For me lasgun is "Laz-gun"

**Grim.Badger**

megatrons2nd wrote:As an American I agree with you. I say we speak American English. Not trying to be rude but our forefathers did all they could to remove British rule, so maybe the lingual drift was part of our cultural split and subsequent adhoc additions from other cultures and languages was deliberate.

Question, wasn't there a low form(serfs, peasants) of English in the middle ages?

Iirc a lot of the differences between English and American English are derived from the original American dictionary. The author spelt a lot of words using his own personal preferences rather than the traditional English, he is also responsible for removing U from a lot of words. American tends to be a little more phoenetic than English though, which I think is a step forward as tbh the language has become a mess over the years and no longer follows it's own rules.

SamHain is pronounced Sow-een in "Celtic", the spelling long ago drifted away from being phoenetic (probably some Victorian Romantic decided to change it).

**Relapse**

insaniak wrote:
Relapse wrote:Samhain I've heard pronounced a few different ways with the most common sounding like
sow-en, with sow being pronounced as in pig.

Should actually be 'sah-win' ... but is nothing to do with the Eldar craftworld which, as ph34r pointed out, is Saim Hann, not Samhain.

But it sounds Celtic, so some poeple insist on pronouncing it the same.

I think GW had Celtic holidays in mind when they named some of the Craftworlds. I googled Samhain and came up with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

I then did Beltane and got this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane

The articles give pronunciation and what the names mean.

**Albatross**

The correct sentence would be "Americans don't talk good"

Actually, you're both wrong - the sentence should read: 'Americans don't speak well'. Except that they do. They just speak a slightly different, but related language. And many Brits have fething terrible diction. Innit?

As an American I agree with you. I say we speak American English. Not trying to be rude but our forefathers did all they could to remove British rule, so maybe the lingual drift was part of our cultural split and subsequent adhoc additions from other cultures and languages was deliberate.

I heard that the American accent is closer to the English accent from the 1600's as it existed independent of the cultural changes taking place on the British mainland. I think that's probably bollocks though.

**IAmTheWalrus**

I was in GW a while a go and some kid came in pronouncing Sanguinius as "san-juice". I tried as hard as I could but I couldn't convince him he was wrong.

**Vindicator#9**

What do you expect people from the US to do when our own educational system sucks and we are more focused on texting on our phones and use improper english while doing this?

My point is that not everyone has the same pronunciations everywhere when it is taught different or pronounced different from area to area.