IPA in encyclopædiae

Hello, Loremeisters.

This idea is inspired by this post. It would be so great and awesome and nice and wonderful if we could have the IPA for NPCs, races and other game terms the encyclopædiae if when they are finally added to the game! Does anyone other than me really want this? Of course, the possible addition of an Eorzean encyclopædia in itself is already great news!

...Maybe we can even have the different pronounciations in the respective Ul'dahn, Gridanian, Limsan, Ala Mhigan and/or Ishgardian dialects?! Am I asking for too much now? :D

I would love this. If for no other reason than less embarrassing moments on TS as I horribly mispronounce things I've only read.

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Originally Posted by Gwaeron

...Maybe we can even have the different pronounciations in the respective Ul'dahn, Gridanian, Limsan, Ala Mhigan and/or Ishgardian dialects?! Am I asking for too much now? :D

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That might be asking for a bit much, but what they could do more easily is give us the rules for phonetic changes for those regions XD (Still maybe asking a bit much... XD)

Since I wrote that post about IPA you know I'm in support :P

I think most of this could be taken care of just here on the forums by editing it into the naming convention threads. Those are primarily geared towards names of people, but in most cases it's not too hard to infer the race of origin for place names as well and apply the same rules. When unsure, it seems pretty safe to fall back on the "standard" 5 vowels and use consonants as pronounced in Japanese, leaving the hardest task being determining which syllables are the stressed ones.

Then you get names like Rouaille from the latest patches where no matter how much you think you understand the rules, you do a double take when actually voice-acted by the NPCs, lol.

Love the idea about dialects, though I'd have to agree with Risvertasashi that general rules for changes would be easier and more concise to implement than a whole separate list of each word.

An afterthought: Ferne did appear one time to say that due to low literacy rates, when it comes to the written word the wealthy pretty much make up their own grammatical rules for sentence structure and there is no standard. I suppose it's entirely possible there's little standardization in oral pronunciation as well, though it would need to be close enough that people could at least still understand each other.

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Originally Posted by Myranda

I think most of this could be taken care of just here on the forums by editing it into the naming convention threads. Those are primarily geared towards names of people, but in most cases it's not too hard to infer the race of origin for place names as well and apply the same rules. When unsure, it seems pretty safe to fall back on the "standard" 5 vowels and use consonants as pronounced in Japanese, leaving the hardest task being determining which syllables are the stressed ones.

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Do we actually know they're all stress-timed? Lalafell names, for example, I've kind of assumed would be aligned not only with JP phonemes but timing/tone as well.

Hyur names and others which derive from/mimic romance languages, on the other hand...

I 100% agree that for Lalafell/Hyur etc you can assume the general rhythms of Japanese/romance/whatever language. My comment was referring to those cases where you can't necessarily tell what the culture of origin is. For example I was always confused about Moraby Bay's stress until it appeared in voice acting: it's certainly not Lalafelian, and I don't know what else I'd attach it to for language.

That said, even when the base language is known, heteronyms can exist in any language to my knowledge, even Japanese. Like the basic sound could be the same but pitch could rise or lower to make a different meaning. An example here that I used to waffle on (and still do sometimes because I forget) is if it's TAtaru [stress on 1st, or alternatively sort of no stress at all] or taTAru [stress on 2nd] for our ever popular Scion. Which thinking about it is somewhat odd as I don't feel the same ambiguity on any other Lalafell names (like Lalafell itself, or Sasagan, or Nanamo), so maybe it's just an artifact of my native English mindset and some particular about the consonant T, I don't know...

Admittedly, I'm not a linguist nor have I ever had classes in it, so if I'm misusing words like "stress" that have more specific definitions than I'm aware, I apologize for any confusion caused there. While I may lack the formal training, I do still like knowing how to pronounce things the right way :)

Yes I think it's safe to admit that you could base yourself on the japanese way of speaking for Lalafels and domans, french for elezen, english for hyurs and red roes, ( german for the seawolf roe ? ) as for miqo'te it's hard to say, even more considering that the space between the tribe letter and the name sometimes is a vowel ( like Y'shtola is pronounced Ya Shtola )

I'm fairly certain it's TA-taru because Nanamo's name is pronouced NA-namo when voice acted.