Pronunciations

[Theozilla]

@Theozilla, that's fine I guess. And I'm not arguing that her name IS You-fee, I'm just saying the localization team kinda screwed up the romanization as I don't know how any (American) kid got You-fee out of that spelling. (I know Sony did VII's localization.) Seems a bigger flub to me than the Aeris/Aerith thing, considering those are exactly the same letters in Japanese. And as I recall, Nightow specifically chose that spelling for himself, so that's a little different. Also it's still spelled phonetically.

I think another reason why the spelling/pronunciation never bothered me is because I was already well immersed into anime/manga media when I was introduced to FFVII and Yuffie's name was obviously non-Western to me, so I automatically assumed that the "Yu" would be pronounced with a long "ū" sound from the start, even in spite of the double ff consonants.

 

[Ryushikaze]

I imagine "Barrette" would be closer, the hair clip.

My last name is Barrett, so I never had a problem with that one

I had a Doctor Demento Album as a child, so I knew it rhymed with Claret.

Growing up, I had a friend named Tiffany. I shortened her name to Teef, and Teefa made sense to me.

Cait Sith was a mythological creature, official pronunciation of that creature is Ket Shee.

Mako I started off as May-ko, due to the shark. Not hard to correct myself, though.

Nibleheim was always nee-bel-haim because obvious mythological reference was obvious. I also looked straight at the Zolom and went 'LIAR! YOU ARE MIDGARDSORMR!'

I did that shit a lot.

Still do. I say Verdandi (Hard V, basically a B) when talking the Norn and the AMG character.


In none FF7 funky ass named, Citan Uzuki. Citan is pronounced Shee-tan. (Oddly, Shaitan would have been more appropriate, but maybe too on the nose.)

 

[Flare]

Not sure if Elmyra usually sounds like 'El-mee-ra' or 'El-my-ra', I just pronounce it the former way. I suppose it just depends on what sound you have in mind when you name someone?
And I just like the sound of the 'Jee' tribe. Watch it be pronounced with a hard g in the remake.

 

[Wolf_]

I always though nanaki'd name came from guru nanak the Sikh.

 

[Octo]

Wait wait it IS Chock -a- bo. Not Choke-a-bo. I will fight anyone who says otherwise!

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

This is why I'm shy to talk about Final Fantasy IRL. I'm afraid I'll make a complete arse of myself mispronouncing everything.

I thought it was choe-KOE-boe.

 

[ForceStealer]

And I just like the sound of the 'Jee' tribe. Watch it be pronounced with a hard g in the remake.

Assuming it's written ギ in Japanese, it will be.

Wait wait it IS Chock -a- bo. Not Choke-a-bo. I will fight anyone who says otherwise!

Man, nana-kai, chock-a-bo. You're just battin' a thousand
I would say that one comes back to the single consonant following the vowel, but I remember your usual example of "chocolate"

 

[Octo]

I always said Gee Eye tribe. As in GI-Joe

 

[Ite]

Red 8! Haa. Although, I'm one to talk. Before I could sight-read roman numerals (thanks FF) I didn't bother remembering what number Thirteen was and just called him Red Ex-eye.

 

[Octo]

Red 8! Haa. Although, I'm one to talk. Before I could sight-read roman numerals (thanks FF) I didn't bother remembering what number Thirteen was and just called him Red Ex-eye.

I thought that was just me!

 

[55-]

And I just like the sound of the 'Jee' tribe. Watch it be pronounced with a hard g in the remake.

Assuming it's written ギ in Japanese, it will be.

I was thinking about this too, actually.

Katakana has hard and fast rules. Unlike latin characters, pronunciations can't be left up to interpretation. I've used it a lot to make sense of bullshit fantasy names in manga.

Everything had definite pronunciations all along, we just don't know all of them because none of us played the game in Japanese. I'm actually very surprised if no one on this site has made a pronunciation guide using katakana already?

Just because I happen to have it on hand, here's some pictures of the Japanese booklet, for names. 1 2
(also I just realized it looks like Sephiroth is grabbin Nanaki's tail on the second page there)

 

[Channy]

A name spelled "Lucrecia" cannot be pronounced "Lucretsia". Even if you spelled it "Lucretia". you wouldn't get Lucretsia from that. Loo-cre-tee-a, maybe. To pronounce it Lucretsia, you have to spell it Lucrezia.

I pronounce Bugenhagen with the hard gs because it look likes a German name. Boojenhajen would sound silly. Same with Nibbleheim rather than Kneebleheim. If they wanted it pronounced Kneebleheim, they should have spelled it Niebelheim. I suspect some of the errors may be due to the actors not knowing how to pronounce foreign names.

Yeah, Lucret-sia still boggles my mind.

Nibelheim though I got right when CC came out, which kinda shocked me.

I don't know how any American kid that played the game when they were young ever said Yuffie and Tifa as anything other than Yuff-ee and Tee-fuh. I've tried to train myself on You-fee. The best way is to just rename her "Yufi" during a playthrough, which is how they just should have done it.

Yuff-ee

Surprised how many people are set on making Yuffie sound like dog's name.

See, and I never got the whole Yuffy thing. I always pronounced it You-fee... but it was kinda a moot point anyway because I renamed her Yuri (which sounds similar) because I was going through this phase.

....not a lesbian phase, I just liked the name.

YOU TELL 'EM FORCE

(I'm seriously butthurt about Yuffie and Tidus I'm not even joking)

Yaaaaah, the Tie-who-shall-not-speak-his-name.... makes me glad that it was optional to change his name so we didn't get stuck with Tee-dus for 60 hours.

Wait wait it IS Chock -a- bo. Not Choke-a-bo. I will fight anyone who says otherwise!

I thought it was choe-KOE-boe.

It's not?

 

[Tetsujin]

Red 8! Haa. Although, I'm one to talk. Before I could sight-read roman numerals (thanks FF) I didn't bother remembering what number Thirteen was and just called him Red Ex-eye.

I thought that was just me!

All this time...and I thought I was the only one...;__;

 

[leadmyskeptic]

This whole thread is actually remind me of, while there's no going back, how a certain degree of "personalization" is allowed when there's no voice acting and only text, and how if you later come to find out you were "wrong", it can hit hard. I recall years ago an English kid describing to me how when he first popped in FFX, and this squeaky American accent came popping out of the speakers he was horrified, as he had always imagined the protagonists to be like himself, even changing their names to his own, and this was no longer allowed. Never even thought of it

Ehhh but this is the excuse game developers use to justify making all main characters white guys. Is it really that hard to identify with characters that don't look or sound like you?

Obviously super delayed response, but yeah, while I sympathize with my friend's sudden shock that only entered irrevocably in the voice-acting age, I do agree that needing the character to not think, or act, or feel like you might, but to LOOK and SOUND the way you would, is a cutulral-shutout-step too far. Some of my favorite characters feign rather majestic british accents...

 

[Starling]

And this is why the heroic mime still has a reason to be around, as Link demonstrates.

 

[Ite]

Just as a point, "Lucrezia" is the Italian form of the name, although in history variations appear such as "Lucrece."

 

[Lex]

One that really threw me for a loop, is I always said Cait Sith phonetically, "Kate" "Sith (like star wars)". But apparently it's "Kai" "Shee"??

Kneebleheim is probably closer to the correct pronunciation, as it's another accepted spelling for Niflheim. It's like how people get mixed up with the pronunciation of Sean because its linguistic roots aren't necessarily obvious to people who encounter the name and don't realize it's supposed to be pronounced the same was as Shawn.

"Cat Sith" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_sìth) is apparently more common in Scottish folklore than Irish...but the name is gaelic? Always amazes me just how many little nods to, sometimes even unconnected mythology and things the FF creators throw in there. It still boggles my mind that they threw in a reference to a brilliant shoegaze album into FF7..

We've probably moved on from this but I tl;dr'd most of the thread

It's Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) (kind of sounds like you're saying garlic without the r, like "gah-lich" (soft "ch" sound)) which is very similar to Irish Gaelic (they're essentially the same language but Gàidhlig hasn't really evolved much because less people still speak it). The Scots Gàidhlig version is like "Kaah-t Shee" and the Irish is more like "Kashee".

I barely know how to speak some Gàidhlig but the equivalent in English should really have been something simple like "Cat Shee".

His name in the OG and it's spinoffs has always been Cait Sith though, so I pronounce it "Kate Sith" and always have done. Like so much else in FFVII, his name might be based on something from mythology but it sure isn't spelled that way

So here are some of mine (a * denotes that I've changed my pronounciations since the OG based on how it's been spoken in canon)

Tifa: Tih-fa*
Yuffie: Yuh-fee
Midgar: Mid-gar
Mako: May-ko (yes, still)
Chocobo: Chock-a-bo (again, still, because say Chocolate)
Lucrecia: Loo-cre-sha
Reno: Ree-no
Nibelheim: Nibble-heim*
Nanaki: Na-na-kih

Please note also, the letters "i" and "y" are never "ee" where I'm from. That's not to say that a billion words which use this pronounciation are incorrect, it's just that we have a different way of saying them.

Tidus is an example. There is obviously the argument between "Teedus" and "Tiedus" but my pronounciation of the "Ti" part can't be phonetically reproduced with letters here. It's literally like I'm starting to say "Tie" but it loses the "e", so phonetically it's "Ti" (maybe like "Tigh"?). I really struggled when I joined TLS to reconcile that "Ryu" pronounced his username "Ree-oo", when to me it would be "Rai-oo". I've obviously realised that these letters following certain consonants in Japanese always make an "ee" sound, which is how my brain let me make the switch with Tifa and Nibelheim.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yes, it's unlikely we're all going to pronounce fantasy names the same way when we don't even pronounce English the same way!

 

[Starling]

I'd like to add that for some reason, while I always pronounce Nibelheim the way I said, I occasionally pronounce Nibel as Knee-bell, depending on the rest of the sentence.

 

[NikolaiBroketheZoom]

I'd like to add that for some reason, while I always pronounce Nibelheim the way I said, I occasionally pronounce Nibel as Knee-bell, depending on the rest of the sentence.

I say Nibelheim "Knee-ble-heim", but I pronounce Mt. Nibel "Mt. Nye-ble". Even when I used to say "Nibbleheim", I still usually said "Mt. Nye-ble". However, I would never say "Nye-ble-heim"! Weird.

 

[ForceStealer]

I had always said Nibble-haim and Mt. Nih-bell.

 

[Lex]

Reading your posts Force, I pronounced most of the names and words the same way you did.

 

[Channy]

So the Canadian's the only one to get it right. Go figure

 

[Dashell]

Red 8! Haa. Although, I'm one to talk. Before I could sight-read roman numerals (thanks FF) I didn't bother remembering what number Thirteen was and just called him Red Ex-eye.

I thought I was the only weirdo who did that


Anyways, I played Kingdom Hearts first so I knew how to say Yuffie's name before I played the game... the other stuff... it doesn't surprised me they used the Japanese pronunciation... I mean you know how weeaboos can be about this stuff, one wrong pronunciation and the whole game/movie/anime is ruined

 

[Db 14]

I always said sep-hi-roth....... everyones wrong but me