How do you pronounce them?

[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

[HJ]

I would guess that German pronounciation of the Greek words tend to be more similar to the authentic Greek one, as English as a language tends to warp a lot of the words due to the differences in the way the words are written and pronounced.
In any case, Greek seem very European to me. Not western or northern European, but eastern European for sure (nothing like England, that's certain, but Europe doesn't stop there either). I guess that is not what you had in mind when you were thinking about the "Europeans" in general.

In any case, I'm not trying to offend, I was just wondering what brought you to that conclusion. As an insider, it's interesting when you hear such comments about something what you take for granted.