What lore do you ignore?

[Turnintino]

Yeah, like I said in my initial post about this, inconsistent pronunciation is a problem in general. And I'll keep saying it, that's a failure on the current ADR team's part that I wish they would improve on. I don't want the ARR cast back, but whoever was voice-directing at the time was better at keeping that kind of thing straight.

I also don't personally put much stock in Japanese pronunciation versus English, at least as it pertains to non-Japanese names, but I didn't wanna disregard Ryu's suggestion out of hand. Regardless, it's clear that it isn't taken into account by ADR, whether or not it supports what we were taught about it.

Re: the Alphinaud and Thancred thing, it just breaks my immersion too much. I could rationalize it all I want, but I know it's just oversight on the production side lol. In-character, I think both boys are too keen to make that mistake for long. And in EW, Y'shtola says her name herself (I think she went with the "ish" pronunciation) in front of them both when they arrive at Sharlayan. I personally think Alphinaud would've been mortified if he'd suddenly learned he'd been mispronouncing her name all this time lmao.

[Iscah]

Looking to the Japanese VO seems like a good angle, but I find it's not as useful of one as you'd want, since often the names vary in spelling or pronunciation anyway; 'Krile' is just 'Kururu' (which is why she's a lalafel), Mhach's official pronunciation is completely different from how it's written in Japan because Japanese straight-up doesn't have the 'ch' sound it uses.

Krile is an odd one out because they're not trying to represent the same name. Because she is a reference back to a character in FFV whose name was changed for the English dub, they are maintaining that change here and excusing it as "she uses a Hyuran version of her real name" which presumably is still originally the Plainsfolk-sounding Kururu.

[Cleretic]

Yeah, like I said in my initial post about this, inconsistent pronunciation is a problem in general. And I'll keep saying it, that's a failure on the current ADR team's part that I wish they would improve on. I don't want the ARR cast back, but whoever was voice-directing at the time was better at keeping that kind of thing straight.

Genuine question: do you have a name that's commonly mispronounced, or has multiple different accepted pronunciations/spellings? Or live near places/people that have the same?

I ask because I actually have a name that's commonly misspelt, and live in a city that's reasonably commonly mispronounced by people who live outside of it; neither is because they're especially foreign (on the contrary, all of these names are White As Hell) but my name happens to have a number of alternate spellings, and the place I live has a sound in its name that's got a few different ways to say it. And I've grown up with a lot of people who've had similar situations.

I'd actually describe that as why I like the slightly inconsistent approach to pronunciation. Sure, it's annoying sometimes when I want to figure out the generally agreed-on way to say a more minor name, but not only does the looser approach feel more realistic, it also makes it a lot easier to discuss these things in, say, video content. Since it doesn't truly matter what sound you use to connect the 'Y' and 'S' in Y'shtola's name as long as you're clearly still saying 'Y'shtola', I didn't need to police myself when making a whole dang video about her, nor did I need to stress too hard about noticing that I approach pronouncing her and her sister's names differently ('yish-tola' versus 'ee-mitra'). VERY useful when dealing with a game with a whole bunch of weird fantasy names with a diverse amount of language inspirations and pronunciation rules in the first place! Seriously, god help you if you need to read a script that involves multiple Sea Wolf names.

[Turnintino]

Genuine question: do you have a name that's commonly mispronounced, or has multiple different accepted pronunciations/spellings? Or live near places/people that have the same?

My name's constantly misspelled, but never mispronounced. Like yours, it's not that it's an uncommon name (it's biblical), but it has spelling variations.

I'd actually describe that as why I like the slightly inconsistent approach to pronunciation. Sure, it's annoying sometimes when I want to figure out the generally agreed-on way to say a more minor name, but not only does the looser approach feel more realistic, it also makes it a lot easier to discuss these things in, say, video content. Since it doesn't truly matter what sound you use to connect the 'Y' and 'S' in Y'shtola's name as long as you're clearly still saying 'Y'shtola', I didn't need to police myself when making a whole dang video about her, nor did I need to stress too hard about noticing that I approach pronouncing her and her sister's names differently ('yish-tola' versus 'ee-mitra'). VERY useful when dealing with a game with a whole bunch of weird fantasy names with a diverse amount of language inspirations and pronunciation rules in the first place! Seriously, god help you if you need to read a script that involves multiple Sea Wolf names.

I can respect that. And yeah, I'm not about to touch on Sea Wolf names lmao. Although I do have fun trying to break them down when I see them.

And as I've said from the beginning, I understand the phenomenon of flexible pronunciation in real life, and I'm not really criticizing that so much as its lack of basis in-world -- because that isn't why it's appearing in the first place. I could pretend that that's what's going on, that it isn't a lack of coordination on the part of the ADR crew, but instead I choose to pretend that they're saying Seeker names "correctly" lol.

But I also don't think the comparison to something like place names, or really any situation where someone is more likely to read the word in question first and then formulate a pronunciation (or perhaps the pronunciation is regional), is really equivalent. Because in the case of "Y'shtola" -- this is speculation -- but it seems more likely that the characters themselves would've heard the name before they would've read it on paper and been forced to guess.

That said, although I've talked at length about how silly I think the inconsistent pronunciation is, it's only tangential to my issue with the treatment of Seeker names in general. What we were taught versus what we've received in practice, at least post-ARR. And I prefer what we were taught, probably just because it's been in my head longer lol.