Re: Karazhan = Gearasdan?

On Aug 19, 1:00 am, blah <p_o_y2...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 19, 7:24 am, Moosen <nos...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:01:09 +0100, "Bessy" <noth...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Am I way out in thinking that Karazhan sounds like the Scots Gaelic
word "Gearasdan", which means "Armoury"?

Mmm, only if you ignore the fact that a G in no way sounds like a K.
And that 'dan' may rhyme with 'zhan', but the d doesn't much sound
like a zh.

Hoofu, 70 tauren shaman, Argent Dawn (EU)

I always called it cah-ra zhan until I saw a American guy call it car-ra
zhan.

I'm American, I pronounce it CARE-uh-zan. That's 'care' as in rhymes
with 'bear', and 'zan' as in rhymes with 'van'.

I'm guessing he was right, or is there a different way that English
and Americans say the word?

Well, since it's not an official word in any way shape or form, and
just a made-up placename that Blizzard coined for the instance, I
guess you can pronounce it any way you please :-) But yes, being
American, and noticing how differently the English manage to pronounce
many words from us, I'd say it is very likely that we are apt to
pronounce it differently. Americans are more likely to pronounce words
with a direct-sounding, literalist interpretation of the spelling and
phonetics- whilst English, being English, will naturally prefer their
native English interpretations. Which, I cannot help but chuckle
about, have frequently wandered quite far from anything remotely
resembling an actual phonetic representation of the spelled name or
word ;-).

Also do you say Gold sh-hire or Gold -sh-ear

Excellent case in point. The literalist pronunciation is 'SHY-er', as
enunciated by the famous hobbits of The Shire in The Lord of The Rings
movies. But no englishman or woman would be caught dead pronouncing it
any way other than 'SHEAR', as in shearing sheep (or perhaps 'SHIR',
rhymes with 'sir'). Although if forced to look inside a dictionary of
proper pronunciation methodology, they would be unavoidably forced to
admit that to properly pronounce it as 'shear', it would have to
actually be spelled 'Goldshear', or 'The Shear'. It's not, but that
never stops the English :-)

To any non-English native, placenames like Worcestershire, for
example, using the set rules of official english pronunciation, should
properly be pronounced as 'War-kest-er-shy-er'. But the first time I
heard that city's name pronounced in the native english, I just
scratched my head and wondered where the heck 'Wooster-shear' was.
Although admittedly, saying 'Woostershear' instead of 'Warkestershyer'
is much easier to roll off the tongue during normal conversation.

Which I believe is the basic root of why so many english
pronunciations sound so different than the spelled reality of the
names/words... lazy tongue disease, magnified by many centuries of
acceptance thereof- until eventually they can't even wrap their minds
around saying those things any other way... proper pronunciation rules
be damned ;-)

Give us Americans another 500 years or so, we'll catch up. We'll
probably be saying things like 'Abakoork' for Albequerque, or
'Sanfran' for San Francisco. Oh, wait.... run for your lives, it's
begun!!!

hmmm... Seattle could become Seabucks.... hehe

One word: Ankansas.
Now shut up.

As already pointed out, r, not n.

But since no one else pointed this out, I feel I had to. Arkansas is
not an American English word. It was the name of a Native American
group that lived in the area, translated into French, then later
absorbed into American English. In fact, at one point in history,
legislation had to be passed because of a fight between 2 state
senators. One wanted the official pronunciation to be ArkansaS, a
phonetic pronunciation. The other, wanted the pronunciation to be
ArkansaW, keeping with the pronunciation of the Native American group
that inspired the name of the state. They created a law making the
official pronunciation ArkansaW in 1881.

Notably, the same group inspired the name of the state of Kansas,
which we pronounce KansaS and not KansaW.
.

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