Taurajo, Mojache ?

[Scyepogg]

It so happens that I learn Spanish quite well, after 6 years of studying it at University and after visiting the country several times.

So when I first saw the names of these camps, I naturally pronounced them for myself as "Tauraho" and "Mohache". Recently it occurred to me that they must have been named in English.

But when I think of them pronounced like "Modzhache" and "Tauradzho", it really hurts my ear (dunno if I can say that in English, it's a Russian idiom but I think it is understandable)
These names sound somewhat trollish, but not taurahe to me with "dzh".

What do you think? How do you pronounce them?

[The Deserted Grail]

Taur-ah-yoo
Moyaash

Pretty much how a Finnish person would normally pronounce that, I guess.

[Lywon]

Heh, I seem to have mixed them up. Always thought of them as "tauraho" and "moyatche" – assuming a Spanish-style spelling for the former but not the latter. :-)

[Aroh]

And I thought all along it is Taurayo and Mohache.
Then again, I think to myself most of the places and names in game as they would be pronounced in finnish. when I hear someone else say them out loud I have no idea what they are talking about when they use the english pronounciation. Take Jaina Proudmore (Manya's dog's name by the way) for example. I always thought it is Yaina, when it should be Yeina.

[Scyepogg]

Shouldn't Jaina be as "Dzheina" in English?

Strange it seems, ~50% of the server are Scandinavians though the server is English-speaking and UK has more people than whole of Scandinavia.. Maybe they have more things to do apart computer games. Maybe they play football good enough to be interested in it and not in WoW ))

[Aroh]

You are right. My phonetic transcribing sucks.

[Moonya]

Aaaaactually, we pronounce Jaina as it would in english, Hrm... How to make that scandinavian phonetic stuff...

Djeina? Hell if I know.. *shrug* I LOVES HER ANYWAY! *cuddles fugly dog*

[Scyepogg]

actually, I know 4 variants of ja/jo pronunciation (perhaps there may be more):

1. Germanic/North European: [YA] - Yaina
2. English, Italian: [DZH] - Dzhaina
3. Spanish: [KH] - Khaina
4. French, Portuguese: [ZH] - Zhaina

I guess that sums up the western Europe languages, but I am not sure about this letter's pronunciation rules in eastern Europe languages, specifically Hungarian, Romanian and all of the Slavic that use Latin alphabet.
I know "Jiri" is pronounced like "Irzhi" in Czech but I am not sure it is the same for J followed by any vowel.

[modified] P.S. It seems Jiri should be actually pronounced as [Yirzhi], so this is similar to 1.
It seems that all eastern European and Turk languages do not have any other pronunciation variants for J.

[Aroh]

I love it that we actually discuss phonetics
As far as I see Dzheina and Djeina are the same thing, just 2 different transcriptions.
And what comes to czech Jiři, as you corrected, it is a Y in the beginning. It might be the tremulant r ř only used in the czech language (and if I remember correctly maybe one dialect of Sorbic language) that fooled your ear. It is my favourite letter in the world! And as for othre slavic languages I've studied, j is pronounced y.

Wouldn't spanish j be mor of a H than KH though? I never bothered to study phonetics, so dunno if that is some official transcription of the sound.

But this game is voiced by americans who have no idea about how to speak foreign languages. It makes my skin crawl to hear the blood elf voice speak "thalassian". It is so american it makes me sick. But I'm weird like that.

Anyways... carry on...

[Scyepogg]

Spanish has many accents depending on country and region, but the official and most widespread version of pronouncing J is quite hard, even harder than "KH", I suppose the Spaniards adopted it from Arabic.

As for the blood elves, they are really too glamorous.. Nothing in common with the nice and proud elven archers of Warcraft II (I never played WarIII for some reason..). I love how they said "Serve the alliance" - that voice would be the best, imho..

I haven't tried the realms in other languages, but as far as I know they have translated everything, even the names of characters.. I can't imagine how awful that would be when they translate the whole game into Russian and create Russian servers (they announced that recently).. I think every game should be played in the language it was originally made.

[Scyepogg]

Of all of this, I prefer red wine supply