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[redcrayon]

True enough; I think I was more writing down my own personal annoyances from mispronunciations, for which I can forgive ones like Tie-dus and Zi-dayne, or even Zi-dahn as it's supposedly "officially" pronounced in Dissidia, thanks to American VAs.

I don't know how people get Laura from Lara, either, but I've heard it done.

The "Leh-ra" thing is again down to the way Americans pronounce words like "apple" and "man", with that almost "epple" or "men" sound instead, and so some people then see the name Lara and attribute the sound sound to it - it coming out like "Leh-ra" instead of actually "Lar-uh".

/ramble

Heh, 'epple' sounds almost South African to me!

 

[BennyBlanco]

"Rayminn"

 

[HiredN00bs]

I pronounce it [ˈsuə] [mɑ:ri:əʊ] [ˈbrʌs]... Most people pronounce it [ˈsuə] [mɑ:ri:əʊ] [ˈbɹoʊs].

I always get a question or two about this.

It's a shame we got to the second page before someone started using phonetic notation. You have people here from all over the world with all sorts of dialects and accents, just within English. Please, GAF.

 

[Risk Breaker]

"Seg-Uh"

FFS some games even scream the name correctly at you on boot up. It's "Say-guh" you blockheads.

The fuck? Get your shit right! None of that Say-guh nonsense!!

 

[Timeaisis]

"Chocobo" is a tough one. I first started saying it as choc-o-boo (choc as in chocolate), but was later told its "choke-o-bo" (as in bow and arrow). I go back in forth in my pronunciation. My wife gets confused when playing ARR.

 

[Sakura]

The Tidus thing is obnoxious because it's extremely similar to an actual Western name (Titus), and actually a non-word in Japanese; you can't form "Tidus" using Japanese characters without alterations to begin with. As such, it naturally seems as if you wouldn't use Japanese-style rules for pronouncing it.

That said, the game has voice acting, so it's not exactly hard to find out the "proper" way to pronounce the names, wrong-sounding as they may be. (As opposed to say, Quistis. Key-stiss? Kwi-stiss? Kwys-tiss?)

Well, his name isn't really Tidus in the Japanese version anyway. It's ティーダ, which has no 's' in it, so it would be more like Tida.

I don't get it. He actually say his name like the name "Matt" though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN00Vyg7yAI

You must pronounce Matt differently than I then.

 

[soul creator]

First time I heard SUPER NES or S-NES

I had never heard that before I always used super nintendo or SNES

I'm the opposite...I never heard "SNES" or "NES" as one word until recently. I always just said the letters or Super NES like you said, lol.

 

[YoshiStrife]

You must pronounce Matt differently than I then.

All I will say is that I pronounce them with the same phonetics.

Use the playback button in this to hear how it is said:

https://translate.google.co.uk/?hl=en&tab=wT#en/it/Mario

Also select other languages to hear how it's said, too.

That's really how it's supposed to be said, and not in this "Marr-ee-oh" way that many North Americans say it.

 

[Sakura]

I'm the opposite...I never heard "SNES" or "NES" as one word until recently. I always just said the letters or Super NES like you said, lol.

First time I heard SNES pronounced as one word was probably on the Giant Bombcast. I, and every one I knew at the time, would say it S.N.E.S.

 

[redcrayon]

The Tidus thing is obnoxious because it's extremely similar to an actual Western name (Titus), and actually a non-word in Japanese; you can't form "Tidus" using Japanese characters without alterations to begin with. As such, it naturally seems as if you wouldn't use Japanese-style rules for pronouncing it.

That said, the game has voice acting, so it's not exactly hard to find out the "proper" way to pronounce the names, wrong-sounding as they may be. (As opposed to say, Quistis. Key-stiss? Kwi-stiss? Kwys-tiss?)

To be honest, I think most of this is that people will just call characters whatever they think sounds more natural to them, as some combinations of syllables roll off the tongue easier or sound sillier in some languages more than others. To be fair, I generally skip cut scenes where possible, and, at least for FFIX, went out of my way to give the characters names I thought more, er, fitting. I know not of this 'Quistis' you mention, I only know... 'Timmy.'

At least with a character like Auron you have half a chance of getting it right- 'it looks a bit like 'aura', let's go with that!'

 

[JinjoUnchained]

"Chocobo" is a tough one. I first started saying it as choc-o-boo (choc as in chocolate), but was later told its "choke-o-bo" (as in bow and arrow). I go back in forth in my pronunciation. My wife gets confused when playing ARR.

Isn't "Chocobo" pronounced as "choke-oboe"? Correct me if wrong, that's how I always heard it.

 

[YoshiStrife]

Isn't "Chocobo" pronounced as "choke-oboe"? Correct me if wrong, that's how I always heard it.

That's how they say it in most FFs it seems. Though I'm sure the odd one says "choc-oboe" too, which is really how I always thought it should be before voice acting.

It's like how I used to read Yuffie's name as Yuff-ee until VA came along and pronounced it Yoo-fee.

 

[Deified Data]

"Roo"

Rye-ooo is the most common mispronunciation I hear.

 

[JinjoUnchained]

Had a friend who used to call Tourian in Metroid "the terrain."

Hah, I did that too. My mind inverted the "i" and the "a" and I read it wrong for many years. To this day, I still prefer to call it "terrain" out of nostalgia, even though I know it's wrong.

Similarly, I always pronounced Zebes as "zeebz". Personally, I don't care if Other M states that its "zeh-buss"; that game has no authority on anything Metroid-related.

 

[Risk Breaker]

Isn't "Chocobo" pronounced as "choke-oboe"? Correct me if wrong, that's how I always heard it.

Eh... isn't it simply choc-oh-bo(ring) ?

 

[malingenie]

In this thread, I am overjoyed I've never had to say these things aloud and show my ignorance.

 

[shinra-bansho]

World of Warcraft: Catackalysm

 

[revolverjgw]

I had someone ask me about Just 'Cuz

 

[James Chilton]

Shop clerk mistook my New Zealand accent when asking for Deus Ex as Day of Sex.

Not good.

 

[redcrayon]

I know that 'rye-ooh' is wrong, but again, it's a fair guess considering that voice acting wasn't exactly a thing when street fighter II hit the arcades and all we had to go on was three letters. Actually, a lot of these characters are older ones from the 80s and 90s by the look of it, where accurate localisations (or any attempt to help overseas customers get it right!) were in short supply. I was at a seaside arcade on my holiday with my parents in 1992 when I first encountered it, and distinctly remember some kids just calling him 'roo!'.

Must sound weird to Japanese people I suppose, but if you showed your typical English speaker those three letters in order, that's probably the most logical guess based on it looking a bit like 'rye' (or the stationery shop 'rymans' if you're British).

 

[MagnaderAlpha]

I used to play Street Fighter 2 at a local water park that had an arcade and there was a kid from the neighborhood that called Guile "goo-lee" and said that he threw a "manix voom".

Of course no one knew back then what the hell Ken and Ryu were saying.

LOL, you open up that nostalgia window to my own youth, man! I knew someone who pronounced Guile as "Gully". LOL! And the whole not what Ken and Ryu were saying, All the kids I knew would say the Hadouken was "Ah-doo-ken" and "Shoryuken" was "Sho(prolonged)-doo-ken". And the Hurricane Kick, nobody knew what the hell they was saying. I think most of my friends(and I) though it was "Ah-thuck-thunk-thun-yuk-tuk".

But it IS "ZeldAh" not "duh"... Japanese people pronounce the "A" like that, so...

As someone said, Zelda, despite being used in a Japanese game, is not Japanese in origin. Though it proves my point, the Japanese pronounce it a certain way and it is different than others pronounce it. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's my point. Japanese can have some leeway, so can others.

 

[Zoe]

Well, his name isn't really Tidus in the Japanese version anyway. It's ティーダ, which has no 's' in it, so it would be more like Tida.

Which is an Okinawan word, BTW.

Eh... isn't it simply choc-oh-bo(ring) ?

In Japanese it's cho-co-bo. Been too long since I've heard English VA's to comment on how they say it.

 

[Sakura]

Eh... isn't it simply choc-oh-bo(ring) ?

All the O's in chocobo are pronounced the same.

 

[Risk Breaker]

All the O's in chocobo are pronounced the same.

Well, that's what I was trying to explain in a written way

 

[Monkeylord]

Not a mispronunciation, but anyone who types "Rouge Squadron" deserves to be punched in the neck.

 

[Anth0ny]

"Roo"

this

rai yuu too

 

[Nose Master]

Guy I work with insists on pronouncing Disgaea like Dis-gee-uh

 

[karasu]

I hate when Jin is pronounced gene. I don't care if it's correct. "Gene' is not cool.

 

[gblues]

If it is acceptable to pronounce "xenophobia" as "ZEE-no-foh-bee-uh", then it's OK to pronounce Xenogears as "ZEE-no-gears".

Some of my own foibles:

Wyvern: Why-vern vs. Wih-vern?
Dhalsim: I called him "doll-ism" for the LONGEST TIME. It's dal-SEEM.
I.D. Software, guilty as charged.

 

[Pengew]

I always hated "Merry-O"

"May-ga Man" I have heard a few times.

Also, heard "War-io" instead of "Wa-rio". Didn't care for it.

 

[Zoe]

Dhalsim: I called him "doll-ism" for the LONGEST TIME. It's dal-SEEM.

I didn't realize this until that live action spoof (college humor?) a few years ago.

 

[Betta Lines]

"May-ga Man" I have heard a few times.

I bet those people call Lego 'Lay-Go' too.

 

[Natetan]

Rye-ooo is the most common mispronunciation I hear.

I say rye-you

I'm not going to sound like some uptight japanophile and pronounce it the right way in English. Of course ryu is a common name in Japanese so I would pronounce it correctly when I speak Japanese.

I initially pronounced Ys 'why-es' and now 'eaze'. They're probably both wrong though.

 

[galvatron]

I knew a guy who used to pronounce Guile as "gulley"...

Ys is an odd one

Honorable mention

 

[galvatron]

Dhalsim: I called him "doll-ism" for the LONGEST TIME. It's dal-SEEM.
.

http://youtu.be/l3ywu4VZXdo?t=10s

 

[Het_Nkik]

What are you talking about? It's totally zih-DANE (as in Great Dane). Right, guys?

...Guys?

Zi-dane rhymes with Guy pain. imo.

But let's check the Japanese spelling since they're unambiguous with most pronunciations.

Zidane is ジタン. Which is jitan. Which would sound like j/zee-tahn.

And that sounds stupid. So I'm sticking with guy pain.

 

[Yonafunu]

Deus Ex is the gift that keeps on giving. I pride myself in being one of few (probably not) who has always said it right. Having Latin class in highschool finally pays off!

 

[Paranerd]

The 'Xillia' in Tales of Xillia is apparently pronounced 'ex-zillia'. That blew my mind when I heard it at a WonderCon panel.

 

[Het_Nkik]

Deus Ex is the gift that keeps on giving. I pride myself in being one of few (probably not) who has always said it right. Having Latin class in highschool finally pays off!

I think with the phrase "deus ex machina" being fairly well-known/used, people have no excuse.

"Rayminn"

But that's how you'd pronounce a name ending in "man". Like, Goldman. It's not Gold Man.

 

[Special C]

I had a friend who was convinced that Cloud in FF7 was pronounced "Clod" and I could not persuade him otherwise.

 

[Version 3.0]

Anyone who says Merio can die in a fire.

Nintendo (of America) used to do this themselves. Merry-O. Made me crazy.

 

[Finalizer]

Probably not the strangest, but the one that's stuck in my mind is someone pronouncing Runescape as "run-escape."

 

[Warewolf]

It's not like these characters and places can correct people, I say let 'em say it however they like.

If you never heard it in game you just pronounced it however the coolest kid in the room pronounced it anyway. Strider Hai-ree-yoo is still my favourite.

Anyway doing things the right way is boring. I know SEGA is "Sei-Ga" but when I was a kid in Australia we all said "Seegah" so "Seegah" it shall remain.

If we all pronounced stuff correctly 100% of the time, we'd be walking around
saying "Animated Jiff" and "Clan-dess-tin Operations". That's no world I want to live in.

All that having been said, What do I do with "Ys"?

Iz, Eyez, Eez, Eess, Iss, Eyess, Weiss, or Wise?

 

[Version 3.0]

Also, heard "War-io" instead of "Wa-rio". Didn't care for it.

I don't understand the difference you're trying to convey here. Unless someone's pausing for effect, aren't these the same?

 

[Het_Nkik]

I don't understand the difference you're trying to convey here. Unless someone's pausing for effect, aren't these the same?

I think he's saying they're pronouncing the War part like the word war. Worio.

Jesus this thread is making me realize how awful English is.

 

[Dug]

Rye-you

I'm guilty of this.

Also are you supposed to pronounce GLaDOS? I say Gla-Dose.

 

[Yonafunu]

I think with the phrase "deus ex machina" being fairly well-known/used, people have no excuse.

Makes you wonder how people (mis)pronounce that one.

 

[Het_Nkik]

It's not like these characters and places can correct people, I say let 'em say it however they like.

If you never heard it in game you just pronounced it however the coolest kid in the room pronounced it anyway. Strider Hai-ree-yoo is still my favourite.

Anyway doing things the right way is boring. I know SEGA is "Sei-Ga" but when I was a kid in Australia we all said "Seegah" so "Seegah" it shall remain.

I don't even... I mean I guess Sega wasn't popular here until the Genesis and specifically with Sonic 1's release, and right when you start the game you get the glorious "SAYYY-GUHHH!" voice.

All that having been said, What do I do with "Ys"?

Iz, Eyez, Eez, Eess, Iss, Eyess, Weiss, or Wise?

Rhymes with fleece. So eece. Which I think is your fourth choice.

 

[Kid Ska]

It's Bob-omb, not bomb-omb.

 

[Het_Nkik]

It's Bob-omb, not bomb-omb.

Ooh, I used to say bomb-omb as a kid. But that's because I literally thought that's what it said. I had simply mis-read.