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Spelling pronunciation "pronounciation" ftw ...

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:
I have been hearing more and more 40k factions and units have there names butchered, and I'm not really sure why, as so many of the names in the Grim Dark follow certain well known historical literary traditions.

Take Adeptus Custodes for example, a pair of words clearly modeled after ancient Rome, which itself mirrors ancient Greece in many ways. How Custodes came to be pronounced CUS-TOADS is lost on me. Think of a few ancient writers: Euripides, pronounced UR-IP-I-DEES, or Sophocles, pronounced SOF-I-CLEES. Given this, Custodes is pronounced CUS-TOE-DEES.

Bonus round: Roboute Guilliman. Both the OUTE and the UILLI are french base constructions. So you would actually pronounce his name RO-BOO GEE-IMON.

Let me just say up front that I fully expect no one to say BobbyG's name correct as it does sound pretty pretentious. But I think we can all rally around the correct custodes can't we?!

Apologies up front for those of you who hate grammar Nazis. I'll be honest with you I hate them too lol! But this has been going on widespread for so long, I figured I'd put up a short post that no one will read anyway lol!

I appreciate this and wage this war regularly.

You have my (power)sword...

Honest to goodness smile on my face, take an exalt and hopefully someone gets me a (force)axe.

"The Woes of Saint Latinus Macellus" - 071.M42

Variations in the dialect of Administratum clerks across Segmentum Solar lead to a vast lose of records pertaining to both the Emperor's 10,000 and Astartes of the Black Legion. Strife engulfs the Administratum as Inquisitors of the Ordo Grammaticus attempt to impose a universal method of pronunciation across all variations of Imperial Gothic, which comes to a head with the assassination of Lord Inquisitor Petr Almo on Kustoads III. What follows is a costly civil war that engulfs numerous sectors.

 peteralmo wrote:

Bonus round: Roboute Guilliman. Both the OUTE and the UILLI are french base constructions. So you would actually pronounce his name RO-BOO GEE-IMON.

Small correction, in French if a consonant is followed by a vowel then you pronounce it. If the word ends on a consonant then you don't pronounce it. So for Roboute, in French you would say RO-BOOT.
Personally though I just apply Latin pronunciation as best I can.
RO-BOOT-EY GU-LI-MAN

"Custode" is clearly latin though so I have less trouble.

And as far as a certain pronunciations sounding bad goes, the more you say a word a certain way the more it becomes "normal" and any other pronunciation becomes weird. For example when I was younger I pronounced Ramen as RAY-MEN. When I was corrected, I thought RAW-MEN sounded strange. Then after forcing myself to say it correctly, RAY-MEN sounds stupid and I can't go back.

So "it sounds better" is a terrible argument for determining pronunciation

I will also take this moment to shed some light on the English situation for pronunciation:
- English was originally a germanic language following the strict pronunciation of german letters (as well as german grammar).
- Once the French Normans took over England they imposed French on the populace (grammar, pronunciation and all)
- It took a while for French to mingle it's way to the populace and by that time it had merged with Old English to create a hybrid
- This hybrid officially followed french pronunciation but many german words kept their original pronunciation.
- New words tend to follow old official french pronunciation because that is the official english pronunciation

This results in words like GIF being... controversial:
according to modern english (which is modified french) a G followed by a I is soft (pronounced as a J). So GIF should be pronounced JIF
But, people tend to use germanic pronunciation where a G is always hard, such as in "gift". You'll notice that "gift" is an old norse word and does not follow the french soft G rule at all.
Linguists resolve this by saying "whatever floats your boat m8" or something.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I pronounce them as it is written, but at the same time, how it is pronounced in spanish is not the same as english.

Indeed. Always funny to see these threads were english people are arguing about latin words. There's no way how you could "mispronounce" those in german, as there's only one way.

Btw., it's not "UR-IP-I-DEES" but "Oi-ree-pee-dehs"

Fun fact: In german translations Roboutes name is sometimes written as "Guillaume", which would have a totally different pronounciation.

I'll inform all my classics and English professors from across six years of higher education and two separate literature degrees that they're all mistaken, thank you.

Dandelion wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:

Bonus round: Roboute Guilliman. Both the OUTE and the UILLI are french base constructions. So you would actually pronounce his name RO-BOO GEE-IMON.

Small correction, in French if a consonant is followed by a vowel then you pronounce it. If the word ends on a consonant then you don't pronounce it. So for Roboute, in French you would say RO-BOOT.
Personally though I just apply Latin pronunciation as best I can.
RO-BOOT-EY GU-LI-MAN

"Custode" is clearly latin though so I have less trouble.

And as far as a certain pronunciations sounding bad goes, the more you say a word a certain way the more it becomes "normal" and any other pronunciation becomes weird. For example when I was younger I pronounced Ramen as RAY-MEN. When I was corrected, I thought RAW-MEN sounded strange. Then after forcing myself to say it correctly, RAY-MEN sounds stupid and I can't go back.

So "it sounds better" is a terrible argument for determining pronunciation

I will also take this moment to shed some light on the English situation for pronunciation:
- English was originally a germanic language following the strict pronunciation of german letters (as well as german grammar).
- Once the French Normans took over England they imposed French on the populace (grammar, pronunciation and all)
- It took a while for French to mingle it's way to the populace and by that time it had merged with Old English to create a hybrid
- This hybrid officially followed french pronunciation but many german words kept their original pronunciation.
- New words tend to follow old official french pronunciation because that is the official english pronunciation

This results in words like GIF being... controversial:
according to modern english (which is modified french) a G followed by a I is soft (pronounced as a J). So GIF should be pronounced JIF
But, people tend to use germanic pronunciation where a G is always hard, such as in "gift". You'll notice that "gift" is an old norse word and does not follow the french soft G rule at all.
Linguists resolve this by saying "whatever floats your boat m8" or something.

Also because the G in gif stands for GRAPHIC, which is hard.

I think it’s fair to pronounce words differently, especially when they’re in a made up space language.

However, given that so many people read codices, Black Library books, and so on, it baffles me that so many words are misspelled.

Slaneesh. Bezerkers. Rouge. Khrone. Logar. Etc.

Hey, we’re all different; some better at spelling while others better at painting. Not the most important thing, but it’s noticeable.

Jbz` wrote:
The common pronunciation of Tyranids annoys me. It's just so wimpy sounding, and doesn't fit with the other similar words at all
Tyran=TIE-RAN
Tyrant= TIE RANT
Why is that pattern not followed when people say the race name?....

For English speakers it's because of the way phonemes involving the letter "y" are always odd, especially when they form the begining of a word with more than three syllables.

Try it for yourself. As soon as any word with y in it hits three syllables the phoneme receives softer emphasis, as English as a language generally puts the emphasis on the last or second to last syllable.

Interestingly, this pattern is also why text to speech for Asian languages is so far ahead of English, because those languages (generally) follow thier own rules when it comes to phonetics and word structure, while English is this horribly mutated amalgamation of 10 different languages

The shortcut for the Custodes is to hop from High Gothic to Low Gothic and stick with "Custodian Guard", given that "Custodian" is a word in English.

Or go for "The Ten Thousand" if that's still too complicated.

(This is also one of the advantages of going with mocking nicknames for Guilliman rather than his proper name. It's difficult to mispronounce "rowboat girlyman" or "robot gorillaman".)

 peteralmo wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
American? Grammar? Oh the irony,

I know! It's hard to believe some of us are actually highly educated! But you know, given our track record of Military, Cultural, and Technological achievements I think we'll take a big fat thank you from the world and move on...

Hahaha please tell me this is just being funny.

Anyway; does butchering 40k words bug me a bit? Sure, but GW material flip flops on some of it, and playing games against soup and a pile of design choices with the game bother me far more than Cuss Toads. If this was the biggest issue I had with the game I’d either be an extremely happy 40k fan or I’d join a book club.

The "Des" part of Custodes I pronounce the same as "Des" in Destroy and Destination.

Audustum wrote:

Also because the G in gif stands for GRAPHIC, which is hard.

Um, if you apply that logic to other acronyms you get:
- UFO as UH-FO (yes you can pronounce UFO as yufo)
- Scuba as SCUH-BAH
- Laser as LAH-SSEER (no nasal S)
etc...

I find this argument to be the weakest in favor of hard G. Just treat it as a word.
It really doesn't matter though since both are now accepted due to widespread usage of either. Again, language evolves and simply reflects what people understand.

Though it truly bothers me that "irregardless" has been accepted as being an equivalent to "regardless" due to massive erroneous usage. I will probably lose it though if "loose" becomes synonymous with "lose" because people never learned how to spell.

Dandelion wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Also because the G in gif stands for GRAPHIC, which is hard.

Um, if you apply that logic to other acronyms you get:
- UFO as UH-FO (yes you can pronounce UFO as yufo)
- Scuba as SCUH-BAH
- Laser as LAH-SSEER (no nasal S)
etc...

I find this argument to be the weakest in favor of hard G. Just treat it as a word.
It really doesn't matter though since both are now accepted due to widespread usage of either. Again, language evolves and simply reflects what people understand.

Though it truly bothers me that "irregardless" has been accepted as being an equivalent to "regardless" due to massive erroneous usage. I will probably lose it though if "loose" becomes synonymous with "lose" because people never learned how to spell.

Huh? GIF is an acronym. The only thing like it on your list is 'UFO' (though I'll note as a tangent that I've only EVER heard people pronounce it 'SCUH-BAH' on both the East and West coast).

UFO isn't usually pronounced as a word. It's spelled. People say 'U' 'F' 'O'.

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. People say the acronym like a word frequently, just like we say NASA instead of 'N' 'A' 'S' 'A', but that doesn't change the fact that it's an acronym. Since the word the 'G' stands for is 'graphic' it only makes sense to make the 'G' hard.

The Salt Mine wrote:
Considering every audio book I have listened too and the official video that was released when Roboute came out has pronounced it ROE-BOOTAE GILL-A-MAN I'm going to go with that one.

Quite right. Regardless of the linguistic roots, the correct pronunciation should always be garnered from Games Workshop themselves (store managers excepted - my local one says it wrong). To mispronounce custodes and astartes is astonishing given how often they are mentioned by GW staff. I must have heard astartes pronounced the Latin way a million times in videos, audiobooks and interviews.

To be honest, I have given up expecting gamers to get names right. I still hear people pronouncing daemon as DAYMON... *sigh*

..although your phonetic transcription is ambiguous - how are you pronouncing TAE? It's most commonly pronounced to rhyme with 'tree', but is sometimes pronounced to rhyme with 'play'.

 WindstormSCR wrote:

Jbz` wrote:
The common pronunciation of Tyranids annoys me. It's just so wimpy sounding, and doesn't fit with the other similar words at all
Tyran=TIE-RAN
Tyrant= TIE RANT
Why is that pattern not followed when people say the race name?....

For English speakers it's because of the way phonemes involving the letter "y" are always odd, especially when they form the begining of a word with more than three syllables.

Try it for yourself. As soon as any word with y in it hits three syllables the phoneme receives softer emphasis, as English as a language generally puts the emphasis on the last or second to last syllable.

It's easy to assume that tyranids comes from tyrant, indicating a soft 'y', but it could easily come from tyranny, meaning a hard 'y', so you know, take your pick (GW official pronunciation notwithstanding)!

Audustum wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Also because the G in gif stands for GRAPHIC, which is hard.

Um, if you apply that logic to other acronyms you get:
- UFO as UH-FO (yes you can pronounce UFO as yufo)
- Scuba as SCUH-BAH
- Laser as LAH-SSEER (no nasal S)
etc...

I find this argument to be the weakest in favor of hard G. Just treat it as a word.
It really doesn't matter though since both are now accepted due to widespread usage of either. Again, language evolves and simply reflects what people understand.

Though it truly bothers me that "irregardless" has been accepted as being an equivalent to "regardless" due to massive erroneous usage. I will probably lose it though if "loose" becomes synonymous with "lose" because people never learned how to spell.

Huh? GIF is an acronym. The only thing like it on your list is 'UFO' (though I'll note as a tangent that I've only EVER heard people pronounce it 'SCUH-BAH' on both the East and West coast).

UFO isn't usually pronounced as a word. It's spelled. People say 'U' 'F' 'O'.

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. People say the acronym like a word frequently, just like we say NASA instead of 'N' 'A' 'S' 'A', but that doesn't change the fact that it's an acronym. Since the word the 'G' stands for is 'graphic' it only makes sense to make the 'G' hard.

All of those are Acronyms

SCUBA - Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus
LASER - Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

 corpuschain wrote:

The Salt Mine wrote:
Considering every audio book I have listened too and the official video that was released when Roboute came out has pronounced it ROE-BOOTAE GILL-A-MAN I'm going to go with that one.

Quite right. Regardless of the linguistic roots, the correct pronunciation should always be garnered from Games Workshop themselves (store managers excepted - my local one says it wrong). To mispronounce custodes and astartes is astonishing given how often they are mentioned by GW staff. I must have heard astartes pronounced the Latin way a million times in videos, audiobooks and interviews.

To be honest, I have given up expecting gamers to get names right. I still hear people pronouncing daemon as DAYMON... *sigh*

..although your phonetic transcription is ambiguous - how are you pronouncing TAE? It's most commonly pronounced to rhyme with 'tree', but is sometimes pronounced to rhyme with 'play'.

 WindstormSCR wrote:

Jbz` wrote:
The common pronunciation of Tyranids annoys me. It's just so wimpy sounding, and doesn't fit with the other similar words at all
Tyran=TIE-RAN
Tyrant= TIE RANT
Why is that pattern not followed when people say the race name?....

For English speakers it's because of the way phonemes involving the letter "y" are always odd, especially when they form the begining of a word with more than three syllables.

Try it for yourself. As soon as any word with y in it hits three syllables the phoneme receives softer emphasis, as English as a language generally puts the emphasis on the last or second to last syllable.

It's easy to assume that tyranids comes from tyrant, indicating a soft 'y', but it could easily come from tyranny, meaning a hard 'y', so you know, take your pick (GW official pronunciation notwithstanding)!

Yeah, that's what i was thinking too.

Tyranid is a word derived from Tyran, the name of a system, while Tyrant is an existing word. I could easily accept the two having completely different pronunciations. That said, in Italian they have the same pronunciation Tyranid -> "Tirannidi" Tyrant -> "Tiranno".

 peteralmo wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I pronounce them as it is written, but at the same time, how it is pronounced in spanish is not the same as english.

Indeed. Always funny to see these threads were english people are arguing about latin words. There's no way how you could "mispronounce" those in german, as there's only one way.

Btw., it's not "UR-IP-I-DEES" but "Oi-ree-pee-dehs"

Fun fact: In german translations Roboutes name is sometimes written as "Guillaume", which would have a totally different pronounciation.

I'll inform all my classics and English professors from across six years of higher education and two separate literature degrees that they're all mistaken, thank you.

You might have taken my comment more seriousely than it was meant. Just like Galas said, greek and latin words are pronounced differently in different languages. In "German greek" you'd pronounce Euripides as I wrote it.
I guess only a Greek could give us the true pronounciation .

I think this might now be off topic.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 peteralmo wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I pronounce them as it is written, but at the same time, how it is pronounced in spanish is not the same as english.

Indeed. Always funny to see these threads were english people are arguing about latin words. There's no way how you could "mispronounce" those in german, as there's only one way.

Btw., it's not "UR-IP-I-DEES" but "Oi-ree-pee-dehs"

Fun fact: In german translations Roboutes name is sometimes written as "Guillaume", which would have a totally different pronounciation.

I'll inform all my classics and English professors from across six years of higher education and two separate literature degrees that they're all mistaken, thank you.

You might have taken my comment more seriousely than it was meant. Just like Galas said, greek and latin words are pronounced differently in different languages. In "German greek" you'd pronounce Euripides as I wrote it.
I guess only a Greek could give us the true pronounciation .

It's basically evri-pee-thees


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 corpuschain wrote:
I think this might now be off topic.

Yes, perhaps try to keep personal opinions of the other posters respective countries to a minimum?

Can we also point out that a single golden bastard is not a “Custode” the same way there is no “Astarte” and no “Xeno” please?

They're gold tarts. There. Sorted.

 Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote:
Can we also point out that a single golden bastard is not a “Custode” the same way there is no “Astarte” and no “Xeno” please?

Why can't we have xeno? It's in use at least as part of compounds like xenophase blade.

 Geifer wrote:
They're gold tarts. There. Sorted.

 Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote:
Can we also point out that a single golden bastard is not a “Custode” the same way there is no “Astarte” and no “Xeno” please?

Why can't we have xeno? It's in use at least as part of compounds like xenophase blade.

Technically it would still be xenos but considering the whole codexes/codices debacle I'm not sure if GW even cares. Also, this is a universe the name roboute guilliman exists so what do I know?

Well, how much do any of us REALLY care, is a good question.

As for the blade, it's a different thing. It's called a xenophase blade, not a xenosphase blade. It isn't that any use of xeno- must have an s, but following the "language rules" (of which I am totally not an expert so feel free to correct me) xenos is both singular and plural.

GW don't make it easy. They've developed a really weird habit of constantly misspelling Eldar by adding in a's and i's. I don't know how they haven't noticed.

I figured I'd put up a short post that no one will read anyway lol!

I appreciate this and wage this war regularly.

I removed some off-topic posts, some of which were trolling (don't feed the trolls, people). Keep it on-topic and leave the jingoism at home.

Also, remember that you can't win internet arguments by stating how intelligent/well educated you are.

You can't win internet arguments at all, throwing out how intelligent you are is about as useless a tactic as all the others lol.

Part of this is confusion about how Latin is pluralised.

The closest Latin translation of 'Custodes' would be 'Guardians'. Latin isn't always pluralised with an 's', but in this case it would be.

A lot of people see 'Adeptus Custodes', think it's got an 's' on the end so it must be a plural (The Adeptus of Guardians) and therefore 'Custode' without the 's' must be the singular. After all, that's usually how English works.

However, in Latin, the suffix usually changes a bit more between singular and plural. If we use real-world Latin, the singular of 'Custodes' is 'Custos'. 'Custode' is not a word.

Agreed, though, that we should use what GW actually use, and nowhere in any published or spoken document is a singular member of the Custodes referred to as a 'Custode'. They're always referred to as a 'Custodian'. In fact, in most GW literature, I don't think they even use 'Custodes' as the plural - instead they use it as the singular noun for the organisation, which suggests that, in 40k cod-latin, the 'es' ending means 'of', and the translation of 'Adeptus Custodes' would be 'The Priesthood OF GUARDING' rather than 'The Priesthood of the Guards'.

From their books, it seems that it should go:

1 Member of the Adeptus Custodes = A Custodian
5 Members of the Adeptus Custodes = Some Custodians
The entire organisation = The (singular) Adeptus Custodes



.

They are made up words from a made up language in a made up universe. Trying to apply real world language rules (current and recent past) to them is as silly as those that get upset over how to say them. Odds are, the rules of language may also change after 38,000 years or so as well.

Its High Gothic (and sometimes Low Gothic), if you have a High (Low) Gothic dictionary/thesaurus around I'd be very interested to see it - till then, I'll say it however it seems right to me.

Ki-mer-ahh.