How do you pronounce them?

[johan osterman]

We pronounce the names as swedish as possible.

Kristoffer, who is the principal originator of the nations their flavour and their names, had words or names from different cultures in mind when he made most of the nations, but that doesn't mean that he or anybody else around here bothers to pronounce them in the 'correct way' suggested by the language that the name originated from, this is partly due to that we chatter quite a bit about dominions and after a while the names etc tends to get swedified. Since Vanheim and Jotunheim are the two nation whose names are Scandinavian in origin these are probably the only ones that we pronounce somewhat similarily to their etymological roots. C'tis and a few others do not really have any etymological roots so I guess our colliqual swedish pronounciation is the 'correct' one for those. But Illwinter and its associates are not particularily good at linguistics, or particularily interested.

If you still think that the 'correct' pronounciation is important you might try to reconstruct it from the cultures that the nations are derived from or inspired by, in all likelyhood your guess at the 'correct' greek pronounciation of Pangaea is as good or better than ours, if you are chinese I wouldn't dream of trying to teach you how to pronounce Tien Chi in a believable way, and so on.

[Nerfix]

I pronounce them in a blunt Finnish manner, or even worse, use nicknames like "tikseli".

For example, i never bother to say "Arcoscephale".

[ November 28, 2003, 11:36: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Doesn't anybody else speak any French here? Look at all the people who are massacring Marignon.

I mean, how do you pronounce Champagne.

I'm French, and would pronounce it Mar-ee-NYON
(with a nasal ON in the end, but there's no English word that has this sound AFAIK)

Antway - the Marignon nation looks rather Spanish to me (with the Spanish Inquisition and all). Hey, in DomI Marignon was located in Catalogne when using the "Europa" map, IIRC.

[Kristoffer O]

The inquisition of Marignon is a conglomerate of the original inquisition od Provence and the spanish one. Friars had a great role in the hunt for the cathars in langue d'oc, but the witch hunters and inquisitors of Marignon are perhaps later and more spanish.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by PhilD:
I'm French, and would pronounce it Mar-ee-NYON
(with a nasal ON in the end, but there's no English word that has this sound AFAIK)

Antway - the Marignon nation looks rather Spanish to me (with the Spanish Inquisition and all). Hey, in DomI Marignon was located in Catalogne when using the "Europa" map, IIRC.

I pronounce it Mar-ee-nyon to as I don't knwo any spanish and it looks a french name to me.

Its funny the whole pronunciation thing - I went the Greece ~5 years ago after a life time of reading creek history myths and legends and discovered I was completely wrong in my idea of how the words were said. What I was pronouncing as a soft "c" was acutally a hard "K". It reinforced the point to me the Greek culture has alwyas been more middle eastern than european and its made quite a difference to my feel for greek culture. Likewise I used to pronouce Sidhe "sid-hay" and changing to saying it "shee" has altered my feel for the race.

cheers

Keir

[HJ]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
It reinforced the point to me the Greek culture has alwyas been more middle eastern than european and its made quite a difference to my feel for greek culture.

A strange statement. Why would something like writing Greek words in anglicized way mean that? In fact, it's not as much anglicized as adopted from Latin, and classic Latin pronounciation of "c" was also "k". Hence, the letter "kappa" became "c" in many words taken from Greek. But other "European" Languages also have the sound "k" present in many of their word pronounciations, so why would this be a determining feature?

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by HJ:
so why would this be a determining feature?

Not a determing feature just one of the things that hit me very early - the language was pronounced nothing like I could imagine looking at the words. I speak English, German and a bit of French and nothing in this has prepared me for the way Greeks spoke Greek. Simple things like Mykanae instead of Mycanae, Aleskander rather than Alexander. Perhpas to you this is normal but to me it was new.

Obviously food, customs, architecture, clothing, landscape, all played a role in adjusting my picture of greece. I'm aware this does not tell me what ancient greece was like but it helps.

Flying by day from Singapore to London and tracing Alexanders route through the desert to India and the locations of the ancient civilisations of the euprharates/tigris rivers and Anatolia was likewise a revelation. Living in NZ these things are very far away and a book cannot convey it all.

So I'm not seeking to define Greek culture by the hard "K" it was just one of the things that hit me.

Cheers

Keir