Kaldor wrote:dufus0001 wrote:English Assassin wrote:
Neither. It's "Baa-l", a long "a" sound, the way an RP English accent would pronounce "bath".
you are contradicting yourself friend. a long or hard (giggidy) 'A' sound makes the sound "aye" whereas a short or soft 'A' sound makes an "aah" sound. bath has a short 'A' sound
No, the short sound of A is what you'd hear in cat or hat. Baal should be pronounced like the sound in bar, car or master.
I have to disagree with the "bar/car/master" translation.
http://cheetah.eb.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?baal0001.wav=baal - Mirriam Webster
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Baal - Free Online Dictionary
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/baal - Dictionary.com, however, lists the first translation as Australian slang 'Bahl' (meaning 'no') with the historical/biblical/daemonic version 'BAY-uhl'.
http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=baal - lists both, but BAY-uhl first.
http://betterdaysarecoming.com/bible/pronunciation.html#b - Lists the biblical pronunciation is BAY-uhl (However the Hebrew pronunciation is "Ba'-al" with a glottal stop in the middle (imagine you're from Saff Lahndan and you're saying 'water'))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giiUTNUL1-U - Obviously someone felt the need to REALLY rub it in. The comments are the best part of this.
In the poem The Destruction of Sennacherib (1815) by Lord Byron, he rhymes it with "wail"
"And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"
Plus we all remember the infamous quote upon discovering
Duriel in Diablo II: "LOOKING FOR BAAL?" *SWIPE-SWIPE SWIPE-SWIPE OM NOM NOM!*
I squished his maggots for a good 2 minutes before wandering over to rescue Tyrael
DoW