How do you pronounce this?

[Calanon]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

section by section. Yes, I know Lovecraft left it up to interpretation but how do YOU pronounce it :smallbiggrin:

bonus points if your voting C'thulu for 2012 :smallbiggrin:

[Pokonic]

tas-ty hu-ma-ns om-nom-nom.

[Castaras]

tas-ty hu-ma-ns om-nom-nom.

Thread won, mods can close it now. :smalltongue:

[UrsielHauke]

Fen-GLEE Muh-GLUE-Noff Cuh-THOO-LOO RALL-yuh* Wag-nall Fah-ta-Gun.

*R'lyeh is a word of often varied pronunciation. I'm not exactly sure on it, I've also heard it pronounced Rah-LAY.

[Remmirath]

fn-GLOO-ee m-GLOO-naf k-THOOL-hoo r-LYAY w-GAHN-ag-ll f-TAHN

Or something like that. I'm not very good at the whole phonetic spelling thing.

[Howler Dagger]

fin-glue-ee mug-luw-noff-cloo-loo-ree-lay-wu-gah-naw-gul-fah-tahn
Or better

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Washington DC wgah'nagl fhtagn

[Pokonic]

fin-glue-ee mug-luw-noff-cloo-loo-ree-lay-wu-gah-naw-gul-fah-tahn
Or better

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Alabama wgah'nagl fhtagn

Messed up there.

[Siosilvar]

I pronounce it like it's spelled, obviously.

phn-gloo-ee mm-glweh-nafh cthu-lu rlyeh w-gan-nagl fhta-gn

[Howler Dagger]

Messed up there.

I'm confused.

[HalfTangible]

HELP-me-I-am-cho-KING

[The Underlord]

I pronounce it

fi-nu-glue-ee mug-wa-noff-cloo-loo-ree-lay-wu-gah-naw-gul-fah-tog-in

[Pokonic]

I'm confused.

I changed it to Alabama. Also known as the arsecrack of the U.S.:smalltongue:

[The Underlord]

I changed it to Alabama. Also known as the arsecrack of the U.S.:smalltongue:

But Cthulhu obviously lives in the hellhole of the U.S, Texas. :smalltongue:

[Pokonic]

But Cthulhu obviously lives in the hellhole of the U.S, Texas. :smalltongue:

Nah, the nearest portal to hell is somwhere around Chicago. Texas is more like Mordor, exept they actualy have no farmland. At least Texas has civilised life, something Alabama cannot claim to have. :smalltongue:

[Vacant]

Don't even try to front on Providence. I mean, c'mon. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/akuchling/50446758/) Do you know what house that is? That is the house from The Call of Cthulhu.

EDIT: Oh, yeah and we have RISD students. Let's see Texas or Alabama top that. :smalltongue::smalleek::smallfrown:

[Kindablue]

Like this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut82TDjciSg)


But Cthulhu obviously lives in the hellhole of the U.S, Texas. :smalltongue:

ALL OF MY HATRED. TAKE IT. NO REALLY. HERE. I WASN'T USING IT.

[Jimorian]

"Throatwobbler mangrove."

[The Succubus]

The best way to pronounce any Cthulhu mythos language is by the following:

1) Spend a great deal of time making out with someone with a severe cold
2) Drink enough of your favourite tipple so that speech starts to slur
3) Place a small potato in your mouth (Bonus points for anyone that gets the very obscure reference)

Congratulations, you are now able to beg for your life in perfect Cthulhuian when the Great Old Ones arise to enslave the world.

[Vacant]

Do I get it? (http://satwcomic.com/language-lesson)

[The Succubus]

10 points to the guy with the vacant avatar space! :smallbiggrin:

[Yanagi]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

section by section. Yes, I know Lovecraft left it up to interpretation but how do YOU pronounce it :smallbiggrin:

bonus points if your voting C'thulu for 2012 :smallbiggrin:

My attempt to break it down uses this logic:


Read the ' between syllables as a glottal stop...a brief, punctated pause.

There are several -h-s scattered about make more sense as aspiration... -ḥ-...than they do a fully-voiced -h- (voiceless glottal fricative). It's pretty much the only way to make the digraph -fh- work.

Similarly, the -n- and -m- usages in several places suggest a nasal sound, like lamb, sign, or land.

The -l- uses could be vowel -ḷ- (like the end of the word bottle) instead of consonant -l-, meaning that constructions like -glu- or -lye- would actually be sounded out like a dipthong: -gəl oo- and -əl ye- rather than -gloo- and -lai-

-ph- could be a digraph making the sound of an English -f- or a aspirated -p-. There's a similar ambiguity to the trigraph -cth: -t- plus aspiration, or θ?

Another solution to the messy digraphs could be an implicit reduced vowel, like ə...which is the "uh" exhalation you make when you're pronouncing a consonant without an explicit vowel attached. Particularly relevant to -cth-.

The initial -r- of R'lyeh can be interpreted as pretty much an rhotic phoneme. A wild guess would be an English -r-, or maybe the rolled vowel r̩ (like in the Hindi loanword r̩shi).

-w- treated as a semivowel like in Welsh.



So roughly:


pa(h) AN gul oo ee
am gul wee NAF(h)
ka t(h)ool hoo
ra UL yei(h)
wee gaa(h) NAA gul
fa(h) taag an

a as but
ul as bottle
oo as good
ee as see
aa as avocado
ei as say
(h) as a soft exhalation at the syllable end, like enough

and capitalization representing them manner in which the glottal stop would emphasize the next syllable.

[The Succubus]

I've always wondered....did Lovecraft expend time and consideration carefully crating the language of the old ones, or did he just faceslam his typewriter, roll his head and call it a day?

[Pokonic]

I've always wondered....did Lovecraft expend time and consideration carefully crating the language of the old ones, or did he just faceslam his typewriter, roll his head and call it a day?

The bolded part is correct. Basicly, he just came up with gibberish that is, inherently, impossiable to speak properly with a human mouth.

[Eldan]

Exactly as written :smalltongue:

Ah, the wonders of the German language. Where every word is pronounced as written and Ph'glui doesn't need any vowels inserted into it to be pronounceable.

[Shyftir]

In the darkness over a freshly slaughtered sacrifice. or not at all.

[Mauve Shirt]

"That thing from Lovecraft that I see in a bunch of signatures"

[Mono Vertigo]

The best way to pronounce any Cthulhu mythos language is by the following:

1) Spend a great deal of time making out with someone with a severe cold
2) Drink enough of your favourite tipple so that speech starts to slur
3) Place a small potato in your mouth (Bonus points for anyone that gets the very obscure reference)
4) Learn how to speak Flemish.

[Telonius]

Ph'nglui
fn (glottal stop) loo ee

mglw'nafh
(sounds like mug) loo uh naff

Cthulhu
k-(th like thorn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9E))ool-huuu

R'lyeh
(rolled r)ill yuh

wgah'nagl
(Rhymes with McGonagall)

fhtagn
ft (voiceless breath stopping with t; sounds like two syllabes) ahg (rhymes with bog) n (no vowel between ag and n)

[Winter_Wolf]

"Geshundheit." Okay, not really.

Get a phlegmy throat then just kind of warble and hiss. Et voila, R'lyeh speak. Also,glottal stops, symbolized by the apostrophe. Glottal stops are essential.

The problem I have trying to tell you how I'd pronounce it is mainly because the way it's spelled now is pretty much exactly the way I'd try to write my pronunciation of it. :smallsigh: So helpful, I know. But if you've ever seen how Alaskan Yup'ik is spelled and then heard how it's spoken, you'd understand completely.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

The only differences I'd make are the 'ph' sounds like 'ff' and 'Cthulhu' sounds like 'Hloo-hlhoo' pronounced from the very back of the throat. Learn how to croak like a toad.

[Xuc Xac]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn


This is how I would say it (rendered in IPA):

/phʔɲluj mgɫwʔnafh kthuːʎuː ɽ͡rʔʎeː
ʍgaħʔnagɫ fhtagn/

[Ajadea]

fe'ng-LOO-i mm-glue'NA-feh keh-THOOL-hu re'LI-yeh oo-GAH'NA-gle feh-TAHNG

' being a glottal stop as opposed to a normal syllable break.

[RndmNumGen]

I've always wondered....did Lovecraft expend time and consideration carefully crating the language of the old ones, or did he just faceslam his typewriter, roll his head and call it a day?

Lovecraft spent a lot of time and consideration crafting the language of the old ones... he spent most of that time and consideration making sure it wasn't pronounceable.

I've heard from a Lovecraft-devoted friend that when he wrote letters to people, he would often spell the names a certain way. When they wrote back using that name, he would then change how it was spelled. I wouldn't be surprised if he did the same thing with pronunciation, never saying it the same way twice.

[The Durvin]

You fool! Don't say it out loud!

Seriously, though, I wonder sometimes if Lovecraft was so crafty that he purposely made the language hard to pronounce so that you couldn't just read it out loud and shrug that nothing happened. With it being the way it was, you could never be sure you'd done it quite right...

[Xuc Xac]

You fool! Don't say it out loud!

Seriously, though, I wonder sometimes if Lovecraft was so crafty that he purposely made the language hard to pronounce so that you couldn't just read it out loud and shrug that nothing happened. With it being the way it was, you could never be sure you'd done it quite right...

Can you name a single story written by Lovecraft where something happened just from saying any of the names he provided?