What lore do you ignore?

[KatiaRelanah]

There's a cursory pronunciation guide for Seeker prefixes in the Race Naming Conventions thread. So, based on that, it should be "yah-SHTO-la" and "goo-RA-ha" respectively (or "goo-RAH-a", perhaps; the pronunciation for given names isn't detailed, except to say that aitches are usually unvoiced by non-Miqo'te because of their peculiarity -- and with that in mind, it's possible that the "sh" in "shtola" wouldn't be pronounced as a digraph in the Miqo'te language either, but that's neither here nor there).

Some actors get close enough with "yeh-" or "yuh-SHTO-la", which really doesn't bother me much, but you'll hear others say "ish-TO-la" (following the pronunciation logic used for "Ysayle").

Conversely, there's at least an internal consistency to the pronunciation of "G'raha" in the dub that makes that change a lot more palatable to me, since although it's different, the difference is always the same. But would I like to hear the "proper" pronunciation? Yes lol.

All that said, I do have one gripe with the aforementioned pronunciation guide, and that's its treatment of F. If I'm understanding correctly, we're told it works the same way the dub treats the prefix in "G'raha", where it simply merges with the first syllable of the given name. It works for a name like F'lhammin, or with any given name that starts with a vowel, or R, Y, or W, but that's it. Try to say "fsteak" lol.

A schwa-ed Y collapses down to a sound not dissimilar to a long ee sound. I put the rest down to accents/force of habit.

Along similar lines, try getting a person with an accent where they say Mare-eeo to play Super Mario 64, and even with Mario literally yelling "ITS-A-ME, MAH-RIO!" on the startup screen; they'll still turn around and five minutes later say "yeah mare-eeo 64 is a great game!"

[Turnintino]

Seeker name pronunciation really deserves to be its own thread, not tacked into this separate topic.

You're probably right, but it was a combination of "this reminded me and feels tangentially related" and "I'm not quite invested enough to make a separate thread" lol. Regardless, I apologize if this was a derailment.

The thing is, that is essentially how it's pronounced, but the "oo" part is so short that you skim over it and end up with "gRA". It's generally how Japanese representation of English sounds would work.

Not at all inconceivable to me, but taking the pronunciation guide at face value, imperfect though it is, I'm still inclined to disagree with the treatment. That said, again, the pronunciation of his name is an instance I take the least issue with.

I think it relates back to your last paragraph. The "oo" sound would come out more if you needed it as a a dividing sound because the following given name doesn't flow nicely from the starting letter. Thus F'lhaminn can be pronounced with "fLA" but with a less compatible name it would be more of a "fu".

This, I agree with pretty much entirely, especially as it relates to the F prefix. It's a bizarre oversight, I think, to present it the way that it is. And if they'd described the rules the way you do, my only real criticism would be the lack of internal consistency for "Y'shtola" as it appears in the English dub.

And maybe the team at the time did consider those things, but opted to simplify the guide for easier consumption. Regardless, here we are.

A schwa-ed Y collapses down to a sound not dissimilar to a long ee sound. I put the rest down to accents/force of habit.

It would be silly to say I disagree, but I'd argue that the two sounds still aren't so closely related that we should be hearing them all simultaneously from characters in the same social circle. But as I said earlier, that's a directorial issue.

I've touched on this with "G'raha", but I don't think I would bemoan the "Y'shtola" issue nearly so much if it were at least consistent. It would still bug me if it didn't resemble what we'd been taught previously, but at least it would still feel grounded.

[Turnintino]

Along similar lines, try getting a person with an accent where they say Mare-eeo to play Super Mario 64, and even with Mario literally yelling "ITS-A-ME, MAH-RIO!" on the startup screen; they'll still turn around and five minutes later say "yeah mare-eeo 64 is a great game!"

Lmao absolutely. I said earlier that I think most of us are familiar with that kind of thing irl. And in the case of "yeh" or "yuh" versus "yah", the discrepancy is so minor that only the most pedantic of nerds would take real issue with it. And that's also indisputably an accent thing, like you said. The "ish" pronunciation feels like a bigger stretch to me. But back to what I keep saying about internal consistency, I could more easily accept it if it were the one pronunciation that we heard across the board, even if I still think it's the furthest from the localization's original intent.