Mispronounced Squaresoft/enix Names

[Slothy]

It may be seven years after I took Japanese, but I still remember enough to know that Yuffie is pronounced yoo-fee, and Tidus is tee-dus. The names aren't English names and, therefore, shouldn't pronounced as such.

I shall start calling Sephiroth Sefirosu! :P Wheeee!

The reason games are translated in the first place is because English and Japanese are, indeed, not the same language. Tidus could very well be, in fact, a Shakespearean name. It's very similar to "Titus" and Square has a fetish for Shakespearean, as evidenced in some references in games.

-AND- even if it isn't based on that, in English, the rules still apply. Based soley on the way it's spelled, it should be 'Tye-dus'. Since it wasn't left 'Tida', it was obviously meant to be read and spoken with English in mind.

Yuffie is unique case. "Yufi" is her Japanese name. That is -obviously- meant to be spoken "Yoo-fee", according to both Japanese and English. But her translated name is very different. "Yuffie" doesn't look Japanese at all, and was created for the English speaking market. According to how we'd say it in English, it is correctly pronounced "Yuhf-fee" because of the double F's.

Hope that helps a little. You are correct, but really only on the Japanese pronunciation of the Japanese names. If we pronounced all the names like the Japanese did, Sephiroth would be Sefirosu and Cloud would be Kuraudo! ^^

But you wouldn't pronounce Kojima as koj-I-mah would you? Japanese name, Japanese rules still apply, unless the name changes substantially to a plainly English name or word or is derived from another language or source. Your examples of Sephiroth and Cloud are flawed actually, since Sephiroth isn't a Japanese word to begin with, and neither is Cloud (I don't know if Kuraudo is the actual Japanese word for cloud, but it was translated into a plainly English name for North America). The reason for the somewhat odd sounding Japanese pronunciation is that Japanese doesn't really have some of the sounds that English and other languages have and the word needs to be changed to work in written Japanese. For example, there is no V sound in Japanese, nor is there a vowel or consenant that sounds exactly like cl in Cloud.

I'll just drop it after that little rant, but god help you if you tell me to start pronouncing Ico as I-ko.