The name "Sharlayan" drives me crazy.

Anyone else slip up so much and say 'Sharlaya' ? I did before EW, and most of the beginning of EW as I thought it would be.

Like IRL we say America and American people.
Japan is Japan and Japanese
Australia and Australians
Etc.

But it's Sharlayan and Sharlayan People
Not Sharlaya and Sharlayans.

Any idea why they did this? I keep messing it up so much.

I kinda had the pronunciation bashed into my head after the Astrologian questline, seeing as how they said it as often as they breathed.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

I kinda had the pronunciation bashed into my head after the Astrologian questline, seeing as how they said it as often as they breathed.

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See I dunno how I missed it, I did that questline. But "Sharlayan" Astrology is again a descriptor, like American something. If they said the PLACE was called Sharlayan (adjective) I must have misread it as a literal adjective and didn't think it was the name.

Now that we had the name, the grammar keeps making me slip.

The game uses Sharlayan many times as a proper noun rather than an adjective. You can be forgiven for not realizing this, especially if you're new and haven't done a lot of quests.

Noun: I come from Sharlayan.
Adjective: These Sharlayan books are hard to read.

It bothered me because i always thought it sounded like charlatan

Might be because Japanese wording for the people/person originating from a place is a bit different,
instead of America and American (people), they write it as アメリカ (Amerika) and アメリカ人　（Amerika-jin/hito）.
Even the Japanese (people) is called 日本人 (Nihonjin/Japan people), which is from 日本 (Nihon/Japan) and 人 (person/people), hence it's Japan People instead of Japanese in their native wording.

Which makes sense why they name it Sharlayan and Sharlayan People since they don't do -nese, -ian, -ish, or other forms in their wording, but it applied only for the JP dialogue though.
It might be a deliberate choice from Koji and their localization team for choosing Sharlayan People instead of Sharlayanese in the EN version.

Endwalker related-- I'm more triggered to as why they call the planet a star. Even the JP dub/sub refers it to 星　（star）. It's the IRL common sense wrongly applied to the fantasy setting, I know- but it triggered me nevertheless lol.

I agree, it's super weird. I feel like the adjective should be "Sharlayanian" or "Sharlayanese" or something. Or, as you suggested, have the country name be "Sharlaya" instead. They shouldn't just use "Sharlayan" as both the name of the country and the descriptor for something/someone from there.

Imagine characters in this game saying "I'm Ala Mhigo" or "I'm Gridania." You'd think they had brain damage, or else the game had the worst translation ever. But that's exactly what a character referring to themself as "Sharlayan" is doing.

Out of curiosity, do have any NPC in their dialogue refer themselves as "Sharlayan" and not "Sharlayan People"?
Maybe something like "...as a Sharlayan, I..."?

I used JP Voice and EN Sub, but I usually auto-translate the JP voice as sometimes it's has subtle difference between the JP and EN dialogue.
Now that this topic is created, I'm genuinely curious whether or not they missed a few lines like how Fyrebrand mentioned above.
This is actually interesting~

No, English speakers call the Japanese that. They call themselves Nihonjin, hailing from Nihon (Nippon).

I can agree with the nation sounding better if it were called something like Sharlay; where an object in origin or person coming from Sharlay is identified as being Sharlayan, but it's not.

Also, to turn your entire naming convention on it's head. The correct Suffix to use is 'ite'.

It’s not unheard of irl.

For example, Romani (or Roma) can refer to the people as a collective noun “The Romani people” or as an adjective “Romani culture” or “Romani dress”.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

It’s not unheard of irl.

For example, Romani (or Roma) can refer to the people as a collective noun “The Romani people” or as an adjective “Romani culture” or “Romani dress”.

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Thank you! I was trying to search my brain if there were any countries or places that did the same and couldn't find one.

I mean, to be fair, even the word "English" is used in a variety of ways.

As an adjective describing people from England or the language.
As a noun of the language itself.

..I could very well be an English English Teacher speaking English.

But you don't say you come from English, is the issue.

Or call things England tea, England People.

Countries that do the same or similar things, in alphabetical order (not necessarily all countries) (For the record, these are called Demonyms)

Botswana - Botswana
Kiribati - I-Kiribati
Laos - Laos
Myanmar - Myanmars
Sahwrawi - Sahwrawis

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

But you don't say you come from English, is the issue.

Or call things England tea, England People.

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That was not my point;

My point was words, like English, can mean a variety of things.

Moreover, it is that it is not uncommon for spellings to be shared between Nouns/Adjectives or Verbs, whether they share meanings or not. As the "Famous" example, "Buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

More-moreover, this is not that uncommon in languages outside of English. English is actually pretty weird in having a huge variety of suffixes to make an adjective-form of a country. Many languages just translate it to "Person from England" or "Of England".

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I mean, to be fair, even the word "English" is used in a variety of ways.

As an adjective describing people from England or the language.
As a noun of the language itself.

..I could very well be an English English Teacher speaking English.

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That's better than being a ship-shipping ship shipping shipping ships.

I always thought it was Sharlay until I was corrected by an FC member who told me the country is Sharlayan. I had assumed that Sharlayan was the term used to mean something or someone of Sharlay.