Question: You guys should do a pronunciation guide for god names!
Okay, after lots of work and teasers, we're finally done with the first draft of our god pronunciation guide! It includes IPA and phonetic pronunciation guidelines as well as recordings of someone (it's me) saying the names in a hopefully close approximation of correctness.
Lots of disclaimers for this one, because it's a very different kind of project than we usually do! First of all, this is the most non-judgmental pronunciation guide imaginable, so I want to remind everyone not to worry about it. The point of playing Scion is to have an awesome time and do badass heroic deeds, not to be absolutely correct about your ancient Sanskrit pronunciations and alveolar articulation. If you don't care about pronouncing god-names exactly the way a dead civilization might have, there's nothing wrong with that; keep doing what you're doing and having fun! If you do want to pronounce things close to authentically, or you're just curious about what they would have sounded like, check them out and don't feel pressured. We promise, we routinely pronounce things wrong because we automatically say what we're used to saying - you can hear us being wrong all over the vlog, in fact - so if we aren't worrying about the elided vowels in Gaelic, you probably don't have to, either.
Also, please keep in mind that we're not native speakers of any of these languages, and that even among natives there are many different pronunciations of some of these names. A Hindu god's name might be pronounced very different in Tamil than it is in Punjab, with both being valid pronunciations, and we obviously couldn't include every regional or dialectal variation here. Our goal was to give you the closest thing we could to what it might have sounded like when the ancient people who worshiped these gods talked about them, so there aren't many modern variations or foreign corruptions included.
But now that all that's out of the way, we hope you guys enjoy it. And if it's not up your alley, we're still working on other stuff that hopefully is!
you have Diana listed as Ares roman name. thought you'd want to know.
ReplyDeleteOops, thank you! Fixed!
Deletewelcome, and now I just noticed that you listed in-lay as the pronunciation of Goibniu.
DeleteAnd that's fixed, too. Sheesh.
DeleteI'm going to assume that Oshun and Olokun are not pronounced the same way? Other than that, great work guys! This'll be super helpful!
ReplyDeleteHeh, they're not, thank you. Fixed!
DeleteGlad you like it!
You know the funny thing about this is of all the gods listed here the greeks are both the most familiar to me, and apparently the ones I mispronounce the most. Seriously I never even heard of the Orisha until recently and I got more of their names right than the greeks!
ReplyDeleteI know, right?
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ReplyDeleteVery nice of you to mention that, Anne was very worried she'd get it wrong and you'd know :)
DeleteI expected to find out I'd been mispronouncing Greek God names, since that seems to be the trend (and I wasn't disappointed on that count; seriously, I'm surprised I haven't been smitten with a thunderbolt yet), but holy hell, I never expected to find out I'd been mispronouncing ISIS and BRIGID of all people.
ReplyDeleteAlso, kudos on the Deva names! You did a excellent job on them :)
*cheering*
DeleteFor the Anunna, all of your names are Akkadian/Sumerian but all the recordings are Sumerian/Akkadian. It's confusing because I expect to hear the first name I read, instead of vice versa.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's swapped in a few other cases, too (some of the Pesedjet, I think, who are called by their Greek names more often than their Egyptian). I wanted to put the name that players are most familiar with first, but since Sumerian predates Akkadian, most of the recordings are switched.
DeleteSorry for the confusion. The recordings are all language-labeled to try to help.
Yeah, there are a few other cases but it is a big majority of the Anunna.
DeleteSince the Sumerian predates the Akkadian, do you think you could change the names to the Sumerian/Akkadian order? That's probably easier than changing all the recording positions.
Hmm, I definitely can, but is that going to make it hard for people to look a god up? If I swap everything, those looking for Isis are going to have to know she's under "Aset" instead, which may be confusing in the other direction.
DeleteThere are so many gods (great work by the way) that I think most people are going to just search for the name of the god they want. And that will take them right to where they want to go.
DeleteOr they can catch the name Isis underneath Aset.
Because right now it's like Isis(Top)/Aset(Bottom), then ALL the Aset stuff (Recording, IPA, and Phonetic) is on top, and ALL the Isis stuff is on bottom.
John is notorious for half-assing pronunciations, and Anne always swoops in to correct him. When I wrote in with the suggestion, I never dreamed it would become such an involved project! I just expected IPA notation on god pages, honestly. I shouldn't be surprised anymore when Anne goes above and beyond, but I always am.
ReplyDeleteYou and I can enjoy the IPA together. John said no one would use it, but I was like, no, I'm 100% sure Amy had IPA in school, it's cool.
DeleteI for one am glad you made recordings, no matter how many times i've had IPA explained to me, I still don't get it.
DeleteThen again, I mispronounce English words, even after it's been explained i'm saying it wrong and English is my first language!
I love this, it's so cool.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I say the names of the Dodekatheon in their original Ancient Greek/Classical Latin pronunciations, I feel like I'm Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed.
Also, I think another huge thing this has done (especially for me) is given us the traditional Avestan names of some of the Yazata. Henceforth I'm only using those. (Not to knock the Farsi or the Sanskrit, but it seems only fair we should have them all lined up.)
I'm also really tempted to just start using the real pronunciations for each of the Gods - even the Dodekatheon! ESPECIALLY the Dodekatheon, I guess! They DO have Intellect! For all I know, Zeus may very well take a great deal of offense at being called 'Zoos' in his presence instead of 'Zay-oos.' Does Intellect not include 'Grammar Nazi'?
Awesome, I'm so glad you like it!
DeleteI'm a big fan of the Avestan names, too, although I think the original writers used Farsi ones for some figures to avoid confusion and be more recognizable. Lots of folks have heard the word Ahriman, but they probably aren't as clear on who Angra Mainyu is. :)
Hmm, you know, I could see Intellect swinging either way. On the one hand, butchering a language is probably going to offend the intellectually inclined, but on the other hand, those who know that language changes over time may be okay with mispronunciations that have become new "forms" instead of mere mistakes. I'd play it by ear.
Poor Demeter. The only Olympian left out of things (I am aware of the reasons for her exclusion). I'll assume the modernized pronunciation of dih-MEE-tur is not the way the Greeks did it? If so, did you look into their pronunciation of her name?
ReplyDeleteYeah, for the moment I was only including folks with pages on teh site, so she was skipped. You're right, though - our modern English pronunciation isn't the ancient Greek. It's closer to "deh-MAY-tehr".
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