Pronunciation!?

[d£v!l'$ ph0£n!x]

ok so i got this game for xmas and completed it on the 27th still a way of mastering it tho!!!

anyway, whilst playing the game it was bugging me that quite a few things were being said differently to how i had imagined them in my head. here's what i got:

Lucrecia - i thought it was "loo-cree-see-a" not "loo-cret-chi-a"
Yuffie - i thought "yuf-i" not "yoo-fi"
Mako - i thought "may-ko" not "mar-ko"
Shera - i thought "shee-ra" not "share-ra"
Tifa - it's "ti-fa" not "tee-fa"

btw i realise that he majority of these are names

anybody agree/disagree with me? think they were something else entirely? think of something else pronounced differently?

discuss.

[Zeromus_X]

I used to pronounce several of them wrong, but now pronounce them accordingly. I'd rather be pronouncing it the proper way.

[Demon Lancer]

its not mar-ko its mah-ko
... nor is it an insurance company uh ok better get mah-ko

[Mo-Nercy]

its not mar-ko its mah-ko

Would I be right in guessing that you're not Australian?

In Australian-English, there is virtually no difference between those two pronounciations. We don't pronounce the 'r' in many words. eg. park sounds like pahk. mark sounds like mahk. Worst of all source sounds exactly like sauce in general speech. That's without hypercorrection, of course (so if you're Aussie and trying it right now and thinking, "hey, I don't talk like that" it's because you're trying to 'fix' that way you speak)



And yeah. Tifa, Yuffie and Lucrecia were the big ones. Turns out I've been saying it wrong for 7-8 years.

[Darth Anarcus]

I had always pretty much been with you, original poster, on all of those except for Shera and Tifa. They turned out to be exactly how I had envisioned. I was, however, suprised at "Mako," "Yuffie" (though I had found that out when I played Kingdom Hearts, but was suprised nonetheless) and "Lucrecia." (I had always thought of it to be "loo-kree-sha." Kind of makes me rethink how "Ultimecia" might be pronounced.")

[Demon Lancer]

I had always pretty much been with you, original poster, on all of those except for Shera and Tifa. They turned out to be exactly how I had envisioned. I was, however, suprised at "Mako," "Yuffie" (though I had found that out when I played Kingdom Hearts, but was suprised nonetheless) and "Lucrecia." (I had always thought of it to be "loo-kree-sha." Kind of makes me rethink how "Ultimecia" might be pronounced.")

Go fight her again and by the time you decide how her name is pronounced you would have won already

[Black Magic Shopkeeper]

You gotta remember: This game is from Japan. So the pronunciation is different from what you'd expect. For instance:

They cannot pronounce "Ti" as "Tih". "Ti" is ち (Tee). Also, "Fa" is not pronounced with an F because the only "F" katakana is "Fu" (ふ).
Instead, they use "Ha" (は).
Therefore Tifa is, in actuality ちは (Tee-Ha).

Next, Shera.
This one is an oddball. The Japanese do not HAVE "She" (Which would be pronounced "Sheh" upon their terms). So in reality she was originally "Shee-Ra" しら
(FUN FACT: Japanese have no real "R" or "L" in their alphabet. Instead, the "R/L" is pronounced by tapping the roof of your mouth with the tip of your tongue--To pronounce a light, almost inaudible D, coming out with the curve from an R.)

MAKO...
Again, they cannot pronounce "May-ko" unless they use "Me-i-Ko". They don't USE Me-I-KO for Mako, though. MA (ま) is simply "Mah". Just like "GA" (が) is Gah. And "YA" (や) is yah. Got it?
So Mako=まこ. (Mah-Ko)
(Another fun fact: Japanese "O" is pronounced only as "Go" or "Woe". That's why CHOCOBO doesn't sound like "Chocolate" at the beginning.)

Yuffie was easy for me to understand when I first saw her name, basically because I played the Japanese version before the dubbed. I saw her name as: ゆひ (YU-HI). So to me, her name is Yoo-Hee. It sounds much better to me that way. Prettier, in my opinion.
(FUN FACT #3: "U" in Japan is pronounced "Oo".)

Lucrecia is hard to get a grip on. When I first saw her name (In Japanese of course) it was spelt as such: るくれしゃ (Ru-ku-re-sya)
So I can't say her name as the Englishified "Lucrecia" at all. It comes out sounding somewhat different. But if I speed my pronunciation up just a bit, It sounds about right. Remember how it's pronounced. AGAIN.
ROO-KOO-REH-SIYAH.

And just for extra measures, I'll throw in my favorite Character...
Cait Sith.
The Japanese were nice to us Celts and decided to use the REAL word: Sidhe (pronounced in Ireland and other Celtic homelands as: Shee). Also, they used the Celtic word "Cat" (known by us as "Ket", or to people more like ME--the Gaelics of Ireland "Kot"--).
So translated from Celtic/Gaelic to Japanese, it sounded like "Ke-to Shii" (けと し)
The "TO" was thrown in, of course, because they cannot end their words in consonants like us. Only vowels. (Except for a short "N" -ん...) So normally they end words of a consonant-abundant language, they use "o" to end each word with.
Sadly, Cait Sith (or rather, Ket Sidhe in more exact manners) is not an Irish faery. It's Scottish. Irish Faeries deriving from cats and other animals of such nature are called "Pooka".

Anyway, I gave my little lesson of pronunciation for the day...Hope it makes some sense.

[DK]

I agree on all apart from Shera, which I pronounced the way it is in the game. I still pronounce them how I do, because it sounds more natural to me than some of the dumbarse ones from the game.

[Kita]

I always said it Mayko.
In the game, someone says "Shinra" just like that. Shinra. And then someone else says it "sheenra"
So I'm thinking...how do you say it?
I always like Yuffie better than Yoofie.
And I pronounced Lucrecia "Lu-cray-cia" or "Lu-cree-cia"
Tifa was Ti-fa not Tee-fa. And Shera was just..."Sheh-ra"
....yeah.

[Enjolras]

Well, with our accents down here is Australia and New Zealand, most of us pronounce Tifa "Tee-fa" by defualt. Mako is also usually "Mah-ko", not "May-ko". Those two are right, but all the people I know in NZ said Yuffie "Yah-ffie" and Lucrecia " Lu-kree-sha", which are both apparently wrong.

[Mo-Nercy]

Well, with our accents down here is Australia and New Zealand, most of us pronounce Tifa "Tee-fa" by defualt.

I think that's more unique to NZ because you guys have a crazy tendancy to shift all your vowel pronunciations. For many years, I had been saying 'tiff-ah'

[Darth Anarcus]

Even if the pronunciations are different in Japanese, they could have changed them in English so that they sound better and are more in line with what most of us were thinking. That would have been the smart thing, I think, rather than throwing all of these weird pronunciations at us, forcing us to adopt weird new words in place of the ones we had always used for ten years in our minds.

[Kita]

NZ pronounciation can be much different to Aus pronounciation!
Everyone I know has said it Tiff-ah..

[d£v!l'$ ph0£n!x]

i found another one on my replay through

niebelheim - i thought it was "n-I-bel-heim" but the game pronounces it "nee-bel-heim"

and btw, i still pronounce things how i originally thought it was cos it's sort of force of habit now stupid ff consuming my life, i love it!!!

[Enjolras]

NZ pronounciation can be much different to Aus pronounciation!
Everyone I know has said it Tiff-ah..

Well, maybe I was wrong on that one then.
...There's probably not much point me talking about this, as I don't think most of the US or GBR people on this site are gonna care much about how a teensy little island like New Zealand pronounces 'Tifa'.