Why make things hard to pronounce?

[SavingPrincess]

This is more of a question than a "bug report" but I've noticed a trend of a few transpositions in consonants and vowel sounds that seem to make things very hard to "read" the first time.

Here are some examples:

English: Azys Lla
Japanese: アジス・ラー
Romanization: Asiju Ra

Asiju Ra (Ah See Joo Ra) is way easier to read on first glance than... than... however you pronounce Azys Lla (I still don't know how it's supposed to be said out loud).

English: Sidurgu
Japanese: シダグ
Romanization: Shidagu

Another one that's awkward to pronounce, Sidurgu (Cid Oor Goo?) versus Shidagu (She Da Goo), which rolls off the tongue pretty easy. I understand the desire to not want things to sound "too Japanese" by probably both Eastern and Western teams, but why not just go with Sigurd?

I give the Roe names in Limsa a pass, because those are even weird in Japanese (メルウィブ・ブルーフィスウィン ? Seriously?)... but the constant consonants (name of my next band) are very tricky for people to read, and end up breaking the flow of the text boxes.

Naming things a little more phonetically would go a long way. Asi Jura (Asijoo Rah, Asi Joo'Rah, pick your poison) instead of Azys Lla (seriously can someone from the localization team record them pronouncing that so I know how it's supposed to sound?), or Uru'da instead of Ul'dah (is it Ool Da? Uhl Da?).

[Rongway]

English: Azys Lla
Japanese: アジス・ラー
Romanization: Asiju Ajisu Ra

The anglified pronunciation is "ah-ziss la".

I give the Roe names in Limsa a pass, because those are even weird in Japanese (メルウィブ・ブルーフィスウィン ? Seriously?)... but the constant consonants (name of my next band) are very tricky for people to read, and end up breaking the flow of the text boxes.

Roegadyn names are german-ish with some systemic changes to sound non-modern.

Merl・wyb Bloe・fhis・wyn
sea・woman blue・fish・daughter
Sea Woman, Daughter of Blue Fish

Most languages in the game are some language with slight modification to sound more historic. English, French, German, Mongolian, and Japanese, all with archaic spellings are the basis for Hyur, Elezen, Roegadyn, and Auri. This is a conscious effort by the lore team to establish a medieval feel in their naming schemes.

[Iscah]

"Azys" seems easy enough to pronouce for me, but they definitely could have left the second 'L' out of "Lla".

Another one that's awkward to pronounce, Sidurgu (Cid Oor Goo?) versus Shidagu (She Da Goo), which rolls off the tongue pretty easy. I understand the desire to not want things to sound "too Japanese" by probably both Eastern and Western teams, but why not just go with Sigurd?

I don't see how one is more difficult than the other, but in any case "Sidurgu" isn't meant to be a Japanese name (or an attempt to westernise one) in the first place. The Xaela have Mongolian names. The English version is probably closer to the intended pronounciation while "Shidagu" is simply the closest they could get to spelling it in katakana.

Meanwhile the names that actually are meant to be Japanese are not changed in translation.


All the races have their own intended language equivalents, and it's very worthwhile reading the Race Naming Conventions in the Lore forum to understand the intent behind them.

Uru'da instead of Ul'dah (is it Ool Da? Uhl Da?).

Again, I don't think the alternate translation would make it any easier to pronounce - if anything, slightly harder as it puts in an extra syllable - and makes it look like they just took the katakana literally instead of asking what the Japanese writer was intending. Eorzea is full of non-Japanese names. Did they want to call it Uru'da or were they unable to write "Ul"?

I didn't think about it until now but the apostrophe helps the English pronounciation anyway. You know it's not "Uld-ah".



(Personally I struggle more with French pronounciation for the Elezen names.) :/

[Maeka]

You hear "Azys Lla" said several times by voice-acted characters in the game... they TELL you how to pronounce it.

And it's easy by just looking at it.

Merlwyb? Well, I don't even bother with her last name, lol.

[Kurando]

I'm kind of lost at what he issue is. I mean players are either going to be playing the game in one language or the other (excluding subtitles) so the pronunciation is going to vary greatly depending on a player's mother tongue. Like some names will be designed to be English (or German etc) first as then translated to Japanese or vis versa, it's not always the case that something is purely made to be Japanese and change it from there otherwise a lot of things would be phonetically easier to say. Unfortunately Japanese is quite restricted on how they romanise some words and hearing it straight off may not always be what you think it is.

But yeah like Maeka mentioned, a lot of the main stuff (like characters, locations etc) are often voice acted at some point during the game giving you that opportunity to hear how it is supposed to be.

[Eloah]

I find this thread sorta funny, lol. Sorry I hope it doesn't come across as disrespectful but here are some things that might help things make sense.

Okay to start, Japanese only has their set number of pronunciations, which in total is like 150 or so; its a really small number. English on the other hand has over 4,000 pronunciations, as well as many other non Asian influenced languages. in order to fix this, new characters were added to the Japanese Hiragana and Katakana charters to represent more "western" pronunciations. This is the reason why the myth that Shiva originally being Shiver is false since the characters for Shiva are シヴァ the last "two" being a new character to represent Va.

The next thing to indicate is that there are certain characters that they use in place of some of our more "complex" sounds. Su representative of our Th is the most common example. These characters are actually what denote a similar sound in other languages not necessarily the corresponding letter. For example an elongated A or O sound would/could represent an Er sound. And while most people are aware of the changing of these characters with the " marks, they may not know that is to vocalize the sound, something we do in other languages naturally. In these instances its to show the reader that its the vocalized version, even if the translated letter isn't. This is the case with the Fantasy, in Final Fantasy, ファンタジー the final character is Ji the voiced version of Shi, to make the reader aware of the proper pronunciation.

So lets see if I can address some of these questions now, XD

English: Azys Lla
Japanese: アジス・ラー
Romanization: Asiju Ra

English: Sidurgu
Japanese: シダグ
Romanization: Shidagu

Uru'da instead of Ul'dah (is it Ool Da? Uhl Da?).

For Azys Lla the Romaji would be A-Ji-Su Ra. As for pronouncing it, it would be close to saying "Ah jeez" with Ra being the same regardless

As for Sidurgu's name you have the Romaji correct but you are connecting the D with the Shi not the A where it goes. if the D was ment to be with the Shi character the next one would be Du not Da. Break it up like Shi Da Gu and you can see that it's "Si Durg" in English. The u is a left over phoneme, that has a sound but is virtually silent, similar to the Os in both Dorothy and Deborah; they are always pronounced but usually aren't "actively" pronounced.

With Ul'dah, you have to remember that Japanese most kana are the equivalent of an English consonant and vowel combined, Ra, Du, Mu, or just a vowel, A, E, I, O, U, they only have one character that is just a consonant for us, N. That being said, sometimes they will write loan words that don't have all of those extra vowels, in these cases they use the character that has the least vowel sound to represent just that one letter, "(letter)u". The U in these characters is almost silent so it doesn't sound like it's there. That's why Uru'Da is Ul'Dah, the R(L) is all they want to represent.

"Azys" seems easy enough to pronounce for me, but they definitely could have left the second 'L' out of "Lla".

The double LL is a Digraph. Most of us are probably pronouncing it wrong, as just one l, but it's an actual character.

[MicahZerrshia]

The double LL is a Digraph. Most of us are probably pronouncing it wrong, as just one l, but it's an actual character.

Depends. Its found in different languages. In Welsh it sounds like a hissed S, like make an S sound while pushing your tongue out of your mouth and slightly slurring it.

In Spanish Lla would sound more like the way we say yeah or "ja" in German

Myself I pronounce it "Ah-ziss Ja"

They also pronounce Hraesvelgr and midgardsomer wrong, don't trust the voice actors, they are not linguists lol

[Genisay]

Kind of late, but some of the names found in the English version, and written in katakana for Japanese speakers, are actual names from other parts of the world.
Sidurgu is one such name. It is a name based on Mangolain, the inspiration for the home of the tribes on the Azim Steppe.

[Breakbeat]

Kind of late

Understatement of the century, so far.

[Shadotterdan]

What we should really have a pronunciation guide for is all the gaelic in the return to Mhach raids