How should word "C'tis" be pronounced?

[ano]

English is not my native language and I just don't know how "C'tis" should be pronounced correctly. There're several versions in our community and I would like to know which one is right.
Thanks in advance :).

[Fantomen]

Imagine you´re a lizard, ssh´tissss...

The tone of voice should be shivering somewhere between seductive and repulsive.

[Caerun]

/smartass nitpicker mode on
It's spelled "C'tis." Pronounciation is a whole other subject. :)
/smartass nitpicker mode off

Seriously though, I'd always imagined the C at the start to be pronounced as a K. What with Celts and so on. Dunno why the connection's like that in my head but there it is. So it'd go something like "k'tees" by my reckoning.

Then again, I'm not a native anglophone either, so what do I know?

[Illuminated One]

I'd say Tsss'tisss

[llamabeast]

I'd definitely imagine it to be a hard C myself.

So, "ker-TISS", I guess.

[lch]

I'd say Tsss'tisss
+1

Lambent, sizzling, hissing, like a Cobra.

[ano]

Ooops!
I'm really surprised there's no consensus. I also always thought it is something like "Tsss'tisss" but man people say "K'tis". I wonder if anyone knows for sure :).
p.s. Caerun Thanks for correction!:)

[WraithLord]

I'd say Tsss'tisss
+1

Lambent, sizzling, hissing, like a Cobra.

+2 :)

[llamabeast]

:) I don't understand, "C" is never pronounced as "Tsss"!

[Edi]

:) I don't understand, "C" is never pronounced as "Tsss"!

Depends on your native language. In Slavic languages c is very often ts, whether a the beginning of a word of in the middle. In place names like Planica, for example, that's pronounced Planitsa, with a slight hiss to the s. And in English it can be k like in Celts and Celtic, but also s like in celebrate and celebrant (of the faith who appears in province x with a bunch of militia).

For me, I tend to read C at the beginning of a word as k because that's the way things work in Finnish. C'tis would be something like Kh'tiss and if you don't like the glottal stop, just go with Khetiss with the e nearly silent. Though the other way of saying it, Tsh'tiss or Tshi'tiss (again with the first i (or e if you prefer) nearly silent) also works.

Depend on the fact that since Dominions has different nations who presumably also have different languages of their own, you would probably find both variations represented... ;)

[alhorro]

I always thought it's Turkic (and Caucasian) къ/q̇.

[Endoperez]

Si-tisss? Tsi-tsiss sounds much better though.

[Edi]

Yep, Si-tiss would also be a viable one.

[Swan]

in my opinion is ssi'tizz or k'tays

[Frozen Lama]

i've always thought it was ssi-tiss too

[chrispedersen]

KuhTis (with almost no uh) for me...

[JimMorrison]

Don't we have any Egyptians who can tell us the intricacies of their native language? :p Not sure if it matters how you pronounce it in Poland, or Turkey, or Kentucky. :o

I am partial now to Tss'tisss though, reminds me of purrurr. :happy:

[Redeyes]

:) I don't understand, "C" is never pronounced as "Tsss"!

When anglicizating Chinese you do, which I imagine is the reason I too say "ts'tis"

[Foodstamp]

I always imagined it Seeeeee'Tisssss.

[ano]

Unexpectedly many different opinions.
I just wonder how the devs used to pronounce it when they thought of the nation. Any chances to know which one is correct? :)

[Gokufan1988]

I say See-tis. I'm pretty sure thats not correct but I like the way it sounds.

[Foodstamp]

I say See-tis. I'm pretty sure thats not correct but I like the way it sounds.

That's why I say it that way too. If I had to guess it probably really sounds the way Edi says.

[chrispedersen]

I'm just curious why the pronunciation would be any different than standard english?

We anglicize the spelling to best match how the english spelling would match the sounds of the native speaker. One might argue whether it was Beijing or Peking but it wouldn't be New York.

[Lingchih]

See'tis, undoubtably.

[lch]

I'm just curious why the pronunciation would be any different than standard english?
http://members.tripod.com/~SwedishAlphabet/alpha.swf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-4VdZIN8ag

[Burnsaber]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.

Tirnoog?

Tirnaug?

[Edi]

I say See-tis. I'm pretty sure thats not correct but I like the way it sounds.
I actually have no idea what IW considers the correct pronunciation. I'm guessing just as much as anyone else.

[lch]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.
I pronounce it Tirnanoog. An irish person may know exactly. Or Wikipedia. :)
The only one that I'm unsure about if I pronounce it correctly is R'lyeh.

[K]

Rightly or wrongly, all my friends pronounce it "sss-tiss".

The idea that it might be pronounced differently never even came up and there aare like ten of us playing dominions and not all of us talk to each other.

[vfb]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.
I pronounce it Tirnanoog. An irish person may know exactly. Or Wikipedia. :)
The only one that I'm unsure about if I pronounce it correctly is R'lyeh.

I believe the correct pronunciation of R'lyeh is "oh-REE-lee". At least, that's what I keep hearing everyone around me saying. Damn cultists! Leave me alone.

[Caerun]

The only one that I'm unsure about if I pronounce it correctly is R'lyeh.

You can't, unless you are something other than human. It is a word not meant for human vocal chords.

Silly man-things. :) You will learn how it truly sounds but only when it is too late.

[Foodstamp]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.

Tirnoog?

Tirnaug?

Dominions isn't the first game I have played with that word. Another game I have played since 2001 also references it. I am pretty set in my ways on how I pronounce it as Tir-Na- Nog.

I also pronounce Cuchulainn as "Coo-cha-lane" but the correct pronunciation is "Coo-Hoo-Lan (lane?)".

What happens is I see a word, create a pronunciation for it and then I find out the real pronunciation later on, but it is too late as I am set in my ways.

For example, I used to pronounce Stipend like "Stip-end" when in reality it is "Stipe-end". Safe to say I was the source of much amusement for a know-it-all when I found out I was pronouncing it wrong.

[lch]

I believe the correct pronunciation of R'lyeh is "oh-REE-lee". At least, that's what I keep hearing everyone around me saying. Damn cultists! Leave me alone.
I think I gave thanks for this for entirely different reasons than llama did. :D

[chrispedersen]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.

Tirnoog?

Tirnaug?

Dominions isn't the first game I have played with that word. Another game I have played since 2001 also references it. I am pretty set in my ways on how I pronounce it as Tir-Na- Nog.

I also pronounce Cuchulainn as "Coo-cha-lane" but the correct pronunciation is "Coo-Hoo-Lan (lane?)".

What happens is I see a word, create a pronunciation for it and then I find out the real pronunciation later on, but it is too late as I am set in my ways.

For example, I used to pronounce Stipend like "Stip-end" when in reality it is "Stipe-end". Safe to say I was the source of much amusement for a know-it-all when I found out I was pronouncing it wrong.

The difference between those that encounter a word by reading - and other's verbal usage...

[JimMorrison]

For example, I used to pronounce Stipend like "Stip-end" when in reality it is "Stipe-end". Safe to say I was the source of much amusement for a know-it-all when I found out I was pronouncing it wrong.

You made me look this up, because I was actually curious if perhaps both pronunciations were considered valid.

I found something surprising.

Stiped comes from the Latin 'Stipendium'. Why is this so odd? Because Latin has no "ih" sound for I, yet we use it all the time in words derived from Latin - except in this case, we kept the original pronunciation.....

[Zeldor]

Foodstamp and Lingchih must be partly Slavians then :P Of course it's C, not some K. C like in hmm... well, C, but without that stupid English spelling. I cannot think of any word with hard C [but not K] in English, huh.

Anyway, how someone could say Kelts? That's huh, bizarre...

[Gokufan1988]

I pronounce Tir na n'Og as tear nah noag (no emphasis on the 'a') and R'Lyeh as ruh lie eh. I'm pretty confident about R'Lyeh but less so about tir.

Also bean sidhe I just pronounce banshee

[Lingchih]

I've been wondering about Tir na n'Og. That's one damn beast of a word.
I pronounce it Tirnanoog. An irish person may know exactly. Or Wikipedia. :)
The only one that I'm unsure about if I pronounce it correctly is R'lyeh.

I believe the correct pronunciation of R'lyeh is "oh-REE-lee". At least, that's what I keep hearing everyone around me saying. Damn cultists! Leave me alone.

I'll be summoning Azathoth later tonite. I'l ask him the correct pronunciation, hopefully before he kills me.

[MaxWilson]

I pronounce R'lyeh phonetically: r[glottal stop]l-YEH. It sounds kind of like "rull-YEH" without the "u" in the middle.

-Max

P.S. How do you pronounce "Hastur"? "Hastr"? "HASS-ter"? "Has"--[glug]

[lch]

Also bean sidhe I just pronounce banshee
Nice. I didn't notice this before. Quite probably they're really related.

[Jarkko]

In Finnish C-words are K-words for whatever reason. Cimmeria is Kimmeria, Cyprus is Kypros.

Thus it is no wonder that I, and the people I play with, have always said "C'tis" as "Ktis". Dunno if it is wrong or right, but "Stis" just sounds not right in my ears :eek:

[lch]

P.S. How do you pronounce "Hastur"? "Hastr"? "HASS-ter"? "Has"--[glug]
hahss-tour

[Gregstrom]

Stiped comes from the Latin 'Stipendium'. Why is this so odd? Because Latin has no "ih" sound for I, yet we use it all the time in words derived from Latin - except in this case, we kept the original pronunciation.....

Some of this may be related to use of church Latin, which is not pronounced in the same way as classical Latin for some reason. Church Latin, for instance, pronounces c as a 'ch' sound most of the time, where classical Latin uses a hard 'k' sound.

PS: I thought R'lyeh was generally pronounced 'AAAAARGH!gibber*splatter*crunch*gristle (pause) belch'

[Amorphous]

Also bean sidhe I just pronounce banshee
Nice. I didn't notice this before. Quite probably they're really related.
They are the same.
"Bean Sidhe" is modern Irish spelling of "banshee". You can also see it spelled "banshie", "bean si" or "ben sidhe"; people of Scottish persuasion sometimes write it as "ban-sìth", "bean-sìth" or"ban-shìth". I believe that there are slightly different spellings of it from east Munster and Isle of Man, but I do not remember those exactly and I am away from my books at the moment.

Although I have probably already added far more information than you really wanted, I can add that the terms mean "fairy woman" or "woman of the fairy mound".




As for Latin pronunciation, I have found that discussing that is a sure-fire way of getting shouted at by fanatics that all present slightly - or very - different versions of the only true pronunciation. As far as I know, though, Latin was around for quite a long time and pronunciation did differ between localities and over time. And probably between social groups, as well.

[Gregstrom]

Well, Latin spread over a pretty big area so I suppose regional accents would have been pretty common.

[JimMorrison]

There will always be dialects - I think the question is, what was considered correct in Rome in 0AD? ;)

[Foodstamp]

Yeah, I always wonder how people can argue the correct pronunciation of dead languages such as Latin or ancient Greek. I would think the truth would be none of us knows, but maybe there is some texts that are found that were used to teach people proper pronunciation during the time period? No se.

[Agema]

There are hints looking at language development. For instance, "c" seems to have developed from "k" in much earlier Latin, which makes it very likely that it was pronounced hard, and there are other hints. You might be able to tell from poetry - inaccurate prounciation can wreck meter and rhyme.

Also I think that most of the population - even Italians in classical Rome - would not generally have spoken what we know as classical Latin, which was really a very formal and proper form used in literature and by the upper classes. Most people would have spoken Vulgar Latin, which would have varied greatly across nations and peoples in the Roman empire with some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. You could compare with different uses of English worldwide, although the comparison fails at the level that English does not really have a formal standard in the way (to the best of my knowledge) that Latin did.

[Endoperez]

English does not really have a formal standard in the way (to the best of my knowledge) that Latin did.

The formal standard of English is a very vulgar Latin. :D It's used in formal documents, encyclopedias, etc. The grammar has changed, but not the vocabulatory. Here's a short passage from Wikipedia article about Scientific Method, with non-Latin words emboldened and links to etymology for Greek and Latin words.

Scientific (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/science) method (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/method) refers (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/refer) to bodies of techniques (http://www.myetymology.com/english/technology.html) for investigating (http://www.myetymology.com/english/investigate.html) phenomena (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phenomenon), acquiring (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acquire) new (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/new) knowledge, or correcting (http://www.myetymology.com/english/correct.html) and integrating (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/integrate) previous knowledge. To be termed (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/term) scientific (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/science), a method (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/method) of inquiry (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inquiry) must be based (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/base) on gathering observable (http://www.myetymology.com/english/observe.html), empirical (http://www.myetymology.com/english/empirical.html) and measurable (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/measure#Etymology) evidence (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/evidence) subject (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subject) to specific (http://www.myetymology.com/english/specific.html) principles (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/principle) of reasoning (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reason).

[Agema]

Heh, nice one. :D

I might suggest the nearest that English has had to a formal language used in courts, literature and by the upper classes was around 11-14th centuries, and that formal language was French ;)

Some Latin vocabulary was reintroduced via French, and more Latin and Greek was added because the people who used many terms of science and officialdom had extensive classical educations and made new words from them.

[Edi]

Anyone who wants a good idea about how English developed and what kind of influences it has had, read The Adventure of English. I don't remember the author's name, unfortunately and I'm not at home so I can't check, but it does a good job of showing what kind of things affect languages, how they develop and how dialects fit into the mix.

[Agema]

It was initially a TV series by Melvyn Bragg I think, for ITV in the UK. I'd assume he wrote the book too.

[Edi]

That's the one. Thanks.