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[Valdezi]

In a conversation with my esteemed colleagues Altarr Orkot and Sanya of I-RED while on a Syndicate roam, the topic of pronunciation came up.

While on Vent, reporting the names of ships, places and stations you end up hearing a myriad of different pronunciations and I was wondering what people thought about some.

The way I see it, the pronunciations fit into two categories, things from Earth whose pronunciations are verifiable (Zealot, Abaddon, Lachesis, etc) and made up words (Ishukone, Intaki, Gallente)

The first ones annoy me when people get them wrong (I'm an English pedant, comes with my job), the second I'm just curious about.

This, for example is how I'd pronounce the following words:

Ishukone - Ish-u-kon-e. (Yeah I'd pronounce the 'e' on the end. Makes it sound more Japanesey Caldari. However many of the players who fly with I-RED (US based for the most part) pronounce it Ish-u-kone to rhyme with stone. This seems stupid to me, but it's a made up word, so whatever)

Intaki - In-taak-i. (Long A sound. Seems obvious)

Gallente - Gall-ent-ay (Pronounce the e, like a french word. When people say the word like Gall-ent, or even Gall-ent-i,  it hurts me)

With all the Gallente systems I try to pronounce them as if they were French words, so using French inflections. However, my second language is German, so I'm probably doing it wrong.

What do others think? Do people see some of these pronunciations differently?

[Bong-cha Jones]

Ishukone : Ish-ew-ko-ne
Intaki : In-tah-kee
Gallente : Guh-len-tay

American Midwest here, so make of it what you will.

[Seriphyn]

Gallente is pronounced in a few trailers, I think that's mostly okay...

Just want to know how to pronunce "Oicx" :S

[Saxon Hawke]

Intaki : In-tah-kee

American Midwest here, so make of it what you will.

I'm from the same region and pronounce it the same way.

[Kybernetes Moros]

To use the first few examples:
Ishukone: ish-u-kone-e (the 'e' being pronounced as in the German word 'Sonne', for example, a sort of 'uh'  sound)
Gallente: guh-len-tay
Intaki: inn-tak-ee (short 'a', unlike the long 'a' other people seem to use... but I'm from a region of the UK that usually clips its vowels short anyway)
Oicx: wahss

More generally, I tend towards some kind of French-meets-German scheme for Gallente systems, pronounce every letter in Caldari systems (Uedama is U-ey-deh-ma, for example), something vaguely Scandinavian for Minmatar stuff and a bastardised version of Germanic Latin for Amarr systems.

I think. I've never paid much attention to it until now. >_>

[Seriphyn]

Well, I think Gallente systems aren't pronounced so much in a "French fashion", but simply a West European, Romantic way...English and French are apart of the same 'language' group.

Also want to crush 'lolfrench' stuff... >_>

[Borza]

Gallente - Gall-ent-ay (Pronounce the e, like a french word. When people say the word like Gall-ent, or even Gall-ent-i,  it hurts me)

If you think it should have some french pronunciation shouldn't that apply to all of it? So more like "gal-awnt" or "gaul-awnt"?

[Matariki Rain]

Well, I think Gallente systems aren't pronounced so much in a "French fashion", but simply a West European, Romantic way...English and French are apart of the same 'language' group.

English is a Germanic language, despite getting an infusion of vocabulary from Norman French.

I agree that I tend to think of Gallentean as a Romance language, but I throw a modicum of Italian in there to make things like the three-syllable pronunciation of 'Gallente' stick. I'd expect a French pronunciation to be two syllables, and although I've heard recordings of a couple of people saying "Gah-LENT" those are rare exceptions.

I note that -- despite its support in the race write-ups -- the term Gallentean is only rarely used. I tend to use it for the language, but in most circumstances when I want an adjective I use "Gallente". (This is not at all like the rancour over "Caldarian".)

I'd pronounce Oicx as "Oicks". If I ever maneuvre a fleet I'm tempted to adopt a convention of pronouncing every vowel as an open vowel: Teonusude as Teh-on-oo-soo-deh, for instance. And whoever put Anher and Arnher so close together, both with gates off Evati, was playing a cruel joke.

[Benjamin Shepherd]

As someone who speaks English, Spanish, and German fluently, I know your pain Mam.

You would think that Gallente would be pronounced correctly, what with the obvious French influence. But nooooooooooooooooooooo

[Morwen Lagann]

And whoever put Anher and Arnher so close together, both with gates off Evati, was playing a cruel joke.

Especially because one of them is lowsec, and the other is highsec. AND YOU CAN NEVER TELL WHICH ONE.

[Seriphyn]

Ah yes, Matariki, thanks for correcting me.

I think overall with the "Gallente = French" thing is that the old stuff refers to French from the 71st century. Current French demographics include Eastern Europeans, Sub-Saharan Africans and Arabians. Though, I think when CCP originally made the Gallente, they were probably like "Yeah, the white French"...horrible foresight, and initial cultural/racial ignorance from CCP who are Icelandic (couldn't make the Caldari East Asian looking because they couldn't nail the design)

[Borza]

Ah yes, Matariki, thanks for correcting me.

I think overall with the "Gallente = French" thing is that the old stuff refers to French from the 71st century. Current French demographics include Eastern Europeans, Sub-Saharan Africans and Arabians. Though, I think when CCP originally made the Gallente, they were probably like "Yeah, the white French"...horrible foresight, and initial cultural/racial ignorance from CCP who are Icelandic (couldn't make the Caldari East Asian looking because they couldn't nail the design)

I guess the Académie française became super-powerful and had a long, long reign

[Vincent Pryce]

Ishukone - Ish-u-kon-e. (Yeah I'd pronounce the 'e' on the end. Makes it sound more Japanesey Caldari. However many of the players who fly with I-RED (US based for the most part) pronounce it Ish-u-kone to rhyme with stone. This seems stupid to me, but it's a made up word, so whatever)

The Caldari Language I tend to selfishly go pronouncing as Finnish most of the time since CCP has said it's a mix of Finnish and Japanese and the pronunciation ain't actually all that different when I read Japanese written in romaji. Like with Ishukone I do pronounce the 'e' at the end.

I-shu-ko-ne - but note that in Finnish pronunciation you also say letters drastically different than in English.

I dunno if CCP made it intentional or was it just accident that Ishukone has the Finnish word 'machine' in it since they do make heavy machinery amongst other things. Ishu-Machine Corporation  

Intrestingly as Seriphyn mentions the design... Deteis have  very Finnish look about them, to a degree so do some of the Civire, but Deteis more so.

[Esna Pitoojee]

And whoever put Anher and Arnher so close together, both with gates off Evati, was playing a cruel joke.

Especially because one of them is lowsec, and the other is highsec. AND YOU CAN NEVER TELL WHICH ONE.

We've had people jump into Minmatar highsec because of this.



Anyhow... you can get some pretty wide variations in pronunciations. For instance, I'm in the "In-tah-kee" crowd, but would pronounce Teonusude "Tee-ohn-oh-sood". Similarly, almost everyone I know pronounces Amamake as "Ah-mah-mah-kee", but there's someone in the Amarr Militia who pronounces it as "Ay-may-may-keh". This led to a long silence, followed by a couple of confused calls of "What?" the first few times he did it.

[John Revenent]

Ish-uk-kone is how I pronounce it, but I tend to miss pronounce things on a regular basis.

I did check up on it and its similar to what the SCOPE Trailer pronounces it when the Wandering Saint hits the station.