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its actually sang when iss
and tear ey nid
and lemon roos
and the zeeen tetch

obviously...

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.

As a Canadian, I've got one foot firmly planted in both the British Empire and North America. As such, I think I can comment without ruffling any feathers. Since neither the british nor north american style of speaking are anywhere near English in it's burgeoning stages, I don't think either of us have a claim to the 'true' language. Besides, at the end of the day we're all just speaking the mutant lovechild of latin and western germanic languages, no?

Having said that, I'll chime in on a couple of these....

Someone (I didn't catch who) said on page 1 that C'tan was Suh-tan or the like. I would argue this is incorrect, as I think they were trying for something lovecraftian here; IE a c'thulu-esque pronunciation. Therefore, I posit it should be pronounced "kuh-tan".

anticitizen013 wrote:"My Libian is casting his physic power Smit"

Cursed Libians! They think their so tough with their force weapons and their power armours and their psychic guys named Schmidt....

generalgrog wrote:I know someone who pronounces it "Loss"Cannon

I bet he loses games if his men wield too many loss cannons... same thing with those damn 'miss'ile launchers. I know people who will not refer to them as missile launchers at the table, as they claim it's bad luck because they have to say the word miss!

generalgrog wrote:I've always pronounced it... San gwine us

Did someone get you with a pointy stick? Because you're missing an I I refer to him as Sang-win-ee-us. I do so for two reasons:
A) His name, like himself, must be full of win.
B) His name is itself a reference to a real word.

solkan wrote:"T-glotteral stop-zeentch"

You, sir, are my hero of the day. I'm going to say this phrase whenever I need to express the name of the Lord of Change.

neith wrote:I know it's not a great source, but Dawn of War 2 pronounces it as 'Tir-an-id', not 'Ty-ran-id'.)

Actually, I think you'd be surprised about the reliability of the information they give. I've spoken at length with a few of the Relic guys, they being locals and all, and they worked extremely closely with GW on anything that involved the IP; they had to run virtually every scrap of fluff by them before it was written in.

To add to my last post i would think that other languages have alternate pronunciations. That to me seems where the origions of languages have come from.

Although a Brit myself and with a heavy tendency towards announcing that Americans "dun talk proper like" the linguist/English teacher must way in on this debate with the truth.

American English and British English are both highly derived versions of a far older language (itself a combination of german and latin which has to be the most akward combination for grammatical purposes possible. Even German and Chinese would make more sense) and it's impossible to demonstrate that one is "correct."

However you could weigh up the value based on various metrics.

Firstly in terms of speech American english is probably closer to its original pronounciation than British english. The reason for this is that in the U.K. (a fairly small island) there are many, many more accents than there are in the entire United States of America. This is because historically nobody moved in the U.K. People were born, grew up and died in the same city, often within a few streets of their parents. This meant that a variety of very thick and very localised accents formed. The difference between a west leeds and an east leeds accent is massive for example. They barely sound alike and yet this is within a smallish city by American standards.

However in america mass migration was the norm until basically the start of the 20th century. Expansion into the west as well as periodic expansion prior to this, mass immigration, big migrations caused by the gold rush, cotton rush, land rush and every other rush you can think of means Americans moved about. They didn't have the time to settle down in one place and form the really chewy and distinctive accents you get in the U.K. American accents are a relatively recent invention and differ from a "standardised" American acent far less than British ones do. Interestingly in places that are very remote and saw very little migration (think hillbillies and some isolated islands) the accents are so distinctive as to practically constitute a pidgin language.

American english has therefore developed less than British english and is closer to the older form they brought with them to america than present British english is.

(Actually some people have theorised that the residents of the appalachians being so isolated and so remote comprise probably the closest to a 16th century english dialect that is still spoken. There is some evidence for this based on assumptions about how words must have rhymed in elizabethan english for shakespeare's poetry to make sense. It is a sad thought to think that hamlet originally sounded like a hillbilly.)

In terms of spelling however American english has developed further. This is due to a concerted effort by Americans (particularly once it became a distinct country of its own) to do so. England has never had an organisation devoted to spelling reform or in charge of language like they do in France and so spelling was largely organic. Dictionaries fixed spelling to some extent but drift in meanings and common spellings still occured. Crucially the spellings that were fixed were arbitrary, no straight phonetic system for english has ever been devised. Many American intellectuals (and a few nutters) decided in the wake of the revolution to produce a new set of dictionaries with spellings that actually made sense. Some of this stuck and some didn't hence the difference in spellings.

In terms of who speaks it the most British english or some variant thereof is spoken in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Gibraltar, Singapore, Hong Kong, India partially in Canada and dozens of other countries. American english is spoken in America and Canada. Speakers of British english out number American english speakers handily and yet due to Hollywood and american tv American english has a greater cultural impact such that in countries like Australia it is gradually morphing to become closer to an American english variant than a British one.

And finally, we had it first so its ours

On the subject of pronounciation of GW terms the only one that really annoys me is people mispronouncing chimaera as chai- shai or some other variant. It is kai-meh-ra or kai-mare-ra (they sound the same to my ear). This is a real word guys, not some made up term. There is no debate here.

On all the others it doesn't really matter what you say so long as you're comfortable with it but I've never noticed a problem in any of my gaming groups (all Brit english speakers, back home we were Brits, here its Brits, Canadians and South Africans). What we say is

las - laz with a flat a

tzeentch - technically this should probably be t,glottoral sound/pause) zeench but unless you come from the north of england that really soft t at the begginning of a word is hard to do so zeench is an acceptable way of saying it.

c'tan - I always said it as cuh-tan like c'thulu

leman russ - leeman russ to rhyme with bus, isn't this a scandinavian name though?

sanguinius - perfectly phoentic - san-gwin-ee-us and based on a real word again

tyranid - ti-rah-nid. tie-rah-nid makes a lot of sense but for some reason everyone I know has always pronounced it with the ti noise.

buboes - byoo-bows (like a bow and arrow) and yet it is byoo-bon-ic too.

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:
Firstly in terms of speech American english is probably closer to its original pronounciation than British english. The reason for this is that in the U.K. (a fairly small island) there are many, many more accents than there are in the entire United States of America. This is because historically nobody moved in the U.K. People were born, grew up and died in the same city, often within a few streets of their parents. This meant that a variety of very thick and very localised accents formed. The difference between a west leeds and an east leeds accent is massive for example. They barely sound alike and yet this is within a smallish city by American standards.

However in america mass migration was the norm until basically the start of the 20th century. Expansion into the west as well as periodic expansion prior to this, mass immigration, big migrations caused by the gold rush, cotton rush, land rush and every other rush you can think of means Americans moved about. They didn't have the time to settle down in one place and form the really chewy and distinctive accents you get in the U.K. American accents are a relatively recent invention and differ from a "standardised" American acent far less than British ones do. Interestingly in places that are very remote and saw very little migration (think hillbillies and some isolated islands) the accents are so distinctive as to practically constitute a pidgin language.

I have to disagree with you a bit on this one as someone who has lived in different areas of the U.S. In Maine, where I originally grew up, there are a number of distinct accents, from the French tinged ones in Northern Maine, by Quebec, to the "down Easter" accent that Hollywood routinely butchers. In my own area, by the New Brunswick border, I picked up an accent that makes people where I'm living now ask me if I'm Canadian.
My wife's family is from East Texas, and there are several different accents in that area from the classic Southern Drawl to Cajun.
In Pennsylvania where I lived for a few years, German accents are quite strong, as well as Italian, etc. There is a ton of different accents and slang in the Eastern U.S. alone, in my experience.
It's when you get out west that the accents don't sound as strong from one area to another, no doubt because of the different rushes you mentioned.
In the areas I mentioned, though, people pretty much stayed put for generations once they planted down. I know my family and a lot of others didn't move past New England once they planted down there in the 1600's.

There are plenty of accents they just aren't anywhere near as dense as they are in Europe. In the space you'd cross in America that might account for three or four accents you'd get three or four European languages with several accents within them.

I didn't mean to suggest that there isn't any variation in the American accent.

And as you say you get a much greater density of accents on the east coast since people have been settled there for longer.

Interestingly, Aluminum was originally called Aluminum. It was spelled "Aluminium" later on to make it fit in better with the other elements.


Also:

Orkeosaurus wrote:Interestingly, Aluminum was originally called Aluminum. It was spelled "Aluminium" later on to make it fit in better with the other elements.


Also:

Yes and it was discovered by an American, so he got to name it.

He named it Aluminum and scientists all over the rest of the world went "er, hang on a bit don't you mean alumin-i-um? You know, like magensium, caesium, cadmium, beryllium, polonium, radium and all the other elements that end with -ium not -um?"

"no, Aluminum"

"well done for discovering it old chap but I think we'll resolutely ignore you on that one because it is inherently stupid"

Osbad wrote: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..

Actually, according to US Military protocol it IS the Queen's English, as there is a rule about respecting the Queen's English at Military Functions.


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The Defenestrator wrote:
Someone (I didn't catch who) said on page 1 that C'tan was Suh-tan or the like. I would argue this is incorrect, as I think they were trying for something lovecraftian here; IE a c'thulu-esque pronunciation. Therefore, I posit it should be pronounced "kuh-tan".

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:c'tan - I always said it as cuh-tan like c'thulu

The only problem with stating this is you're comparing to something that even the author himself stated has no truly correct pronunciation or spelling(and in fact Lovecraft used several different pronunciations at various times, including a few variations with the "suh" start). The "commonly accepted" pronunciation of kə-THOO-loo actually wasn't agreed upon as the common way to say it(and thus the accepted pronunciation for the Call of Cthulhu RPG) until long after Lovecraft was dead. Anyone saying "This is the 'CORRECT' way to pronounce C'thulhu!' is talking out of their ass, trying to sound like they know more than they actually do and doesn't know their Lovecraft(as in the author, not the writings)as well as they think, as Lovecraft himself said otherwise.

So in all actuality, stating C'tan should be read as Lovecraftian/C'thulhu-esque leaves us in the exact same position we started in.

Also, to the OP, Katakana should never be taken as how to pronounce something in the original tongue, as I doubt anyone in an English speaking country says they're going to a depaato(Department Store) to buy a seetaa(sweater).

I seem to have not put my point across correctly. I don't mean we should call things exactly as katakana says, just that we can use it to point us it in the direction of the correct pronunciation of a word. For example, if a katakana thing said lazukanon not lassukanon it would imply that the correct pronunciation of lascannon is Laz not Lass. Thus, we have used it to suggest the correct pronunciation. Some of you seem to think that I mean if the katakana says lazukanon we should say lazukanon. Sorry if I made myself unclear in the first post.

bravelybravesirrobin wrote:Yes and it was discovered by an American, so he got to name it.

He named it Aluminum and scientists all over the rest of the world went "er, hang on a bit don't you mean alumin-i-um? You know, like magensium, caesium, cadmium, beryllium, polonium, radium and all the other elements that end with -ium not -um?"

"no, Aluminum"

"well done for discovering it old chap but I think we'll resolutely ignore you on that one because it is inherently stupid"

Brilliant I have saved that in a .doc
Just as well that I'd just swallowed my coffee, otherwise it would now be all over my computer.

Having once been a fluent Welsh speaker, I don't understand how people stuggle with glotteral sounds like T'zeench.

I wonder why there is even a debate about pronunciation. I think that the Japanese translations for the phonetics are completely wrong.

At least if you don't want to tell me that to know how to say English words is as the Japanese does. With all respect but they have problems with some words.

Rocket Punch (as in the Mazinger series) is always sayed as ROCKETTO PANCHI. Funny but not right from my point of view.

By the way the word CHIMERA is an old one and I usually pronounce it as we do here in Italy so CH-I-ME-RA and to C-AI-ME-RA as I've noted some posts up, I feel it completely wrong. As also for the Tyranids. Why say TAI ? It's wrong.

But anyway, anyone should say the thing as they want, in the end that could be a slang in a world of the Imperium eheh

Shinigami wrote:I seem to have not put my point across correctly. I don't mean we should call things exactly as katakana says, just that we can use it to point us it in the direction of the correct pronunciation of a word. For example, if a katakana thing said lazukanon not lassukanon it would imply that the correct pronunciation of lascannon is Laz not Lass. Thus, we have used it to suggest the correct pronunciation. Some of you seem to think that I mean if the katakana says lazukanon we should say lazukanon. Sorry if I made myself unclear in the first post.

I knew what you were saying. My point is, you can't do even that. My examples are meant to show that because of the inflexibility of vowel sounds in Japanese, they're not good comparisons. Your Lazu/Lassu doesn't address the common problem because it's not about z and s, it's about English Hard/Capital A (as in case for LAYZ) versus a softer a sound (as in cat for las), something that simply doesn't exist in Japan because the vowel sound for A always sounds the same, regardless of word. The same is in my example above: in depaato, the e sound is soft like Depp, as opposed to its Enlish translation of department store, where the e is hard like deep. The Japanese would pronounce the Katakana for Chimera as Key-meh-la, where as those who study mythology generally pronounce it Kai-mer-a.

My examples were also points that the Japanese don't always take what we say the word is, they take what they want it to sound like in Katakana.

As Reiko-Sensei says: Katakana is the Japanese attempt at sounding out foreign words using a more restrictive vowel system.

As a cunning linguist I have to weigh in with a few observations.

(I have studied English, French, German, Japanese and Latin to a fairly high level. I have some competency in Italian and Spanish too, partly thanks to their being Romance languages. Also I have a science based education, which traditionally uses a lot of Latin and Greek.)

Aluminium is the correct name of Aluminium because the International Foundation of giving names to chemicals decided a long time ago that all metallic elements should end in "ium". Obviously this was after the traditional metals like iron, lead and silver had got their names. If you look up a periodic table you'll find that nearly all the metallic elements end in "ium" especially the most modern ones like Plutonium and Americium.

The sign ' is used in English to represent a missing letter in a contracted word or phrase. We can't tell how C'tan should be pronounced. It could be a contraction of Cetan (Seetan) or Catan (Catan.) I personally prefer the C'thulhu pronunciation (Cuthulhu.)

The Ts syllable is used in English (lets) and in Japanese (Tsuma.) The name Tzeentch is a minor variation and doesn't present any difficulties.

Many 40K names are cribbed from Latin or ancient Greek and can be read easily if you have some knowledge of those languages.

International Foundation of giving names to chemicals

I SO want that to be the foundation's real name!

Platuan4th wrote:

Shinigami wrote:I seem to have not put my point across correctly. I don't mean we should call things exactly as katakana says, just that we can use it to point us it in the direction of the correct pronunciation of a word. For example, if a katakana thing said lazukanon not lassukanon it would imply that the correct pronunciation of lascannon is Laz not Lass. Thus, we have used it to suggest the correct pronunciation. Some of you seem to think that I mean if the katakana says lazukanon we should say lazukanon. Sorry if I made myself unclear in the first post.

I knew what you were saying. My point is, you can't do even that. My examples are meant to show that because of the inflexibility of vowel sounds in Japanese, they're not good comparisons. Your Lazu/Lassu doesn't address the common problem because it's not about z and s, it's about English Hard/Capital A (as in case for LAYZ) versus a softer a sound (as in cat for las), something that simply doesn't exist in Japan because the vowel sound for A always sounds the same, regardless of word. The same is in my example above: in depaato, the e sound is soft like Depp, as opposed to its Enlish translation of department store, where the e is hard like deep. The Japanese would pronounce the Katakana for Chimera as Key-meh-la, where as those who study mythology generally pronounce it Kai-mer-a.

My examples were also points that the Japanese don't always take what we say the word is, they take what they want it to sound like in Katakana.

As Reiko-Sensei says: Katakana is the Japanese attempt at sounding out foreign words using a more restrictive vowel system.

Jus to add to the confusion in Britain and some parts of the states department is pronounced with the soft e of depp rather than a long e of cheese.

See also delicious vs dee-licious, delight vs dee-light and destroy vs dee-stroy

Although I agree that using katakana would be an imperfect system that fact that plump for lazu rather than leizu suggests that it is laz rather than layz. If you were inclined you could use katakana as a "clue." The problem is GW doesn't particularly care about their Japanese translations all that much.

Kilkrazy wrote:Aluminium is the correct name of Aluminium because the International Foundation of giving names to chemicals decided a long time ago that all metallic elements should end in "ium".

Actually, they've declared both Aluminum and Aluminium to be acceptable names for the element.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Aluminium is the correct name of Aluminium because the International Foundation of giving names to chemicals decided a long time ago that all metallic elements should end in "ium".

Actually, they've declared both Aluminum and Aluminium to be acceptable names for the element.

Of course they have, because 300 million Americans can't be wrong.

It remains the case that all modern metals are called something ending in "ium", and it is the rule for naming metallic elements.

Haha, Americans don't play be the rules. We make our own rules. And then, we don't even play by those!

We play by our own rules, only when that rule is "there are no rules", like Fight Club.

Kilkrazy wrote:As a cunning linguist

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Kilkrazy wrote:because 300 million Americans are always wrong.

Fixed with love.

Kilkrazy wrote:Of course they have, because 300 million Americans can't be wrong.

Have you ever really heard american? If we don't have a word for something we just make it up, I'ts impossible to be wrong.. Do you know what a hizzle is?

The problem is the group of kids at my LGS that pronounces Khorne either 'Chrome' or 'Crone'. The only reason I don't call them out on it is the idea of shiney, shiney beserkers made of chrome, or really angry old women.

Bah, Shawn from Bluetablepainting calls the owner of the skull throne KA-HORN and he knows what he's talking about, just youtube him dancing, noone who dances like that can be wrong!