Do YOU pronounce Sigil with a hard or soft G?

[Anonymouswizard]

Planar stuff often has weird pronunciation. I go with official sources as much as possible. The Baldur's Gate games were what helped me learn to pronounce "drow" (rhymes with "how", as in "how do you do?"), "tiefling" (TEE-fling), and "genasi" ("gen-AH-see", hard "g").

Oh god, don't get me started on 'genie' and 'djinni' having two separate meanings in D&D. One's just a corruption of the other. Which goes mean it should logically be a soft g there.

In this thread:
The GitP forum discovers linguistics for the first time.

You've never seen the 'how is drow pronounced' thread, have you? Rhymes with bow, for the record.

Actually I think we've had more than one of those? Gygax apparently used a shorter o, so it rhymed with know, but the longer o to rhyme with plough might actually be more common.


Did you know that the Clan in Vampire the Masquerade is pronounced Brew-zhah? Even Bloodlines gets that one wrong but it's specified in the 1e core.

The one I see often is mispronouncing 'daemon' as 'demon'. Which is not without precedent, see encyclopaedia, so I'll switch to demon if corrected, but it's notably widespread (the word is technically 'day-mun' with a short u, at least in my accent).

[Taevyr]

You've never seen the 'how is drow pronounced' thread, have you? Rhymes with bow, for the record.

Well, I think we all agree it rhymes with bow; we just might disagree on whether it's bow, the weapon, or bow, the courtly movement to greet someone. I always went with the latter.


Personally, I pronounce it "SI-gill", as in fish gills. "Sijil" still sounds way better than "Siggle" though, in my opinion.

[Unavenger]

Wait a tick. Can you name even ONE word that starts with an "S" that uses a "z" sound?

But when used in the middle of a word (like "laser"), a single "s" can sometimes have that sound.

The point I was making is that the way a word is used in the word whose initial is part of the acronym has no bearing on the actual pronunciation in that acronym, which still stands.

...Not that this has any real bearing on "Sigil" anyway, although much of the rest of the gif discussion (like trying to find words like "give", "gift", "giant" or "giraffe" and then realising that they don't really support a precedent one way or the other) is more pertinent to this discussion.

[Luccan]

Oh god, don't get me started on 'genie' and 'djinni' having two separate meanings in D&D. One's just a corruption of the other. Which goes mean it should logically be a soft g there.



You've never seen the 'how is drow pronounced' thread, have you? Rhymes with bow, for the record.

Actually I think we've had more than one of those? Gygax apparently used a shorter o, so it rhymed with know, but the longer o to rhyme with plough might actually be more common.


Did you know that the Clan in Vampire the Masquerade is pronounced Brew-zhah? Even Bloodlines gets that one wrong but it's specified in the 1e core.

The one I see often is mispronouncing 'daemon' as 'demon'. Which is not without precedent, see encyclopaedia, so I'll switch to demon if corrected, but it's notably widespread (the word is technically 'day-mun' with a short u, at least in my accent).

I've seen the drow thing discussed before, but I don't think I've heard a single person pronounce it "dro". I think even the D&D computer games with voice acting that I've played have been pretty consistent on the "ow" pronunciation.

[Quertus]

Personally, I pronounce it as rhyming with "giggle" - both because that matches the seriousness of Planescape, and because a magic sigil is something that is already a thing.

[Lord Torath]

Sigil the city in Planescape? I rhyme it with giggle.
Sigil the magical rune: gets the 'j' sound. Rhymes with vigil.

Drow: Yes, I know BG II rhymed it with cow, but I rhyme it with snow.
Here's the link to the old thread Anonymous Wizard was talking about: Drow like snow
(It's dead, so don't post in it unless you want a Thread Necromancy warning from the Mods.)

[Eldan]

Actually, Genie is probably from Latin Genius, so it is different from Arabic Jinn.

[ImNotTrevor]

Again, linguistically speaking, the idea that a made-up fantasy word has a."correct pronunciation" is as hilarious as it is incorrect.

Language doesn't care how the creator wanted it pronounced. That's not how it works.

If people pronounce Drow so it rhymes with "Snow" or rhymes with "Plow," at this point both are probably right. So long as you know what they're talking about, all is well.

Getting into a tiff over which way is "correct" is kind of a holdout from a lot of... iffy and uncomfortable historical information about the English Language.
(Ain't was perfectly acceptable,.high-brow English for nearly 100 years. Then the poors started using it too much and it was removed from proper English. I wish I was joking.)

[Lord Raziere]

Getting into a tiff over which way is "correct" is kind of a holdout from a lot of... iffy and uncomfortable historical information about the English Language.
(Ain't was perfectly acceptable,.high-brow English for nearly 100 years. Then the poors started using it too much and it was removed from proper English. I wish I was joking.)

Well.

that just ain't right. I knew this kind of thing was nonsense.

[RedMage125]

Oh god, don't get me started on 'genie' and 'djinni' having two separate meanings in D&D. One's just a corruption of the other. Which goes mean it should logically be a soft g there.

Well, D&D appropriated the word "genie" to be the greater umbrella under which "djinni", "efreeti" and "marids" are related.

D&D appropriated lots of words. "Medusa" shoudl not be a creature type, and should not be plural, if you want to get down to it.

And I see your point about genasi, but that's the way it's pronounced in official sources.

Did you know that the Clan in Vampire the Masquerade is pronounced Brew-zhah? Even Bloodlines gets that one wrong but it's specified in the 1e core.

I did not know that. I was still new to VtM when I played Bloodlines. I've always assumed "BROO-hah" was correct.

The point I was making is that the way a word is used in the word whose initial is part of the acronym has no bearing on the actual pronunciation in that acronym, which still stands.

...Not that this has any real bearing on "Sigil" anyway, although much of the rest of the gif discussion (like trying to find words like "give", "gift", "giant" or "giraffe" and then realising that they don't really support a precedent one way or the other) is more pertinent to this discussion.

And yet, "S" isn't ever really "soft" like "G" is. It's always a hard consonant sound. When you say "hard G", you really just mean "G that sounds like a G" as opposed to "G that sounds like a J". Or how a "C" is either "sounds like a K" or "sounds like an S", or "combined with another letter to make a new sound (like CH)".
Also, this:

Not to mention plenty of people say "Lay-ser" and not "Lay-zer". I've even heard it pronounced something like "Lay-shure".

Again, linguistically speaking, the idea that a made-up fantasy word has a."correct pronunciation" is as hilarious as it is incorrect.

Language doesn't care how the creator wanted it pronounced. That's not how it works.

Actually, that's exactly how that works. Especially if you are referring to it within the same wheelhouse as the creator intended it for.

If I was talking about Harry Potter lore with Harry Potter fans, and referred to Voldemort's Horcrux, pronouncing "hor-KRUZH", I would actually be objectively wrong.

If people pronounce Drow so it rhymes with "Snow" or rhymes with "Plow," at this point both are probably right. So long as you know what they're talking about, all is well.

Getting into a tiff over which way is "correct" is kind of a holdout from a lot of... iffy and uncomfortable historical information about the English Language.
(Ain't was perfectly acceptable,.high-brow English for nearly 100 years. Then the poors started using it too much and it was removed from proper English. I wish I was joking.)

That standards change and the bar of "acceptable" or "correct" changes doesn't mean that bar doesn't exist.

[Unavenger]

And yet, "S" isn't ever really "soft" like "G" is. It's always a hard consonant sound. When you say "hard G", you really just mean "G that sounds like a G" as opposed to "G that sounds like a J". Or how a "C" is either "sounds like a K" or "sounds like an S", or "combined with another letter to make a new sound (like CH)".

The specific ways that specific letters are pronounced has literally no bearing on the fact that it is still true and will be forever true that the pronunciation of letters in individual words in an acronym hs no connection to the pronunciation of the letters in that acronym.

[Mastikator]

Actually, Genie is probably from Latin Genius, so it is different from Arabic Jinn.

According to google it's both.
Latin (genius) -> French (génie) -> Modern english (genie) <- arabian nights entertainment (génie) <- arabic (jinní)

(source: I typed "genie etymology" into google)

[Faily]

If they wanted it pronounced with a hard g, they should spell it differently from the real word that is pronounced with a soft g.

Why?

Hard G is pretty common in a lot of languages, my own included. Not everything in D&D follows the trends of English.

[Theodoxus]

Full disclosure, I pronounce GIF as "Gift". But I can see a case for pronouncing it like the peanut butter Jif, if only to avoid confusion with the word "gift". Especially early on in their development/utilization.

Now a days, if you're not using jpegs (pronounced gee-pigs, obviously) you're imaging wrong

[Anonymouswizard]

Well, D&D appropriated the word "genie" to be the greater umbrella under which "djinni", "efreeti" and "marids" are related.

D&D appropriated lots of words. "Medusa" shoudl not be a creature type, and should not be plural, if you want to get down to it.

Monster names in D&D are a complete mess, 'medusas' should be 'gorgons' as a passing similarity with Greek myth would reveal. I occasionally try to fix it for settings, in which case Djinni, Efreeti, Marid, and Dao become the four main species of Elemental Lord.

And I see your point about genasi, but that's the way it's pronounced in official sources.

Oh, I get that it's how it's pronounced officially, but like with Sigil the hard g just sounds off to me,

I did not know that. I was still new to VtM when I played Bloodlines. I've always assumed "BROO-hah" was correct.

The only place I know it's pronounced correctly is Redemption, but yeah. 'BROO-hah' comes from the word looking like the spanish word 'bruja', which is pronounced like that, and as most Brujah in Bloodlines are young it's possible that they literally have never heard the 'classical' pronunciation. Fun thing to play atound with in game, because of course a lot of Brujah legitimately do not care, and most of the Clan's scholars likely care more about clear communication than prescriptivism, so I wouldn't be shocked if it oficially changes bot in and out of universe at some point.

[Kane0]

I purposely pronounce it wrong and revel in the chaos

[ezekielraiden]

The ordinary word is pronounced "sijil," so I pronounce the name the same way. (Likewise "vigil," which came from the same Latin root and underwent the same sound change.)

However, I also recognize the "dah-tuh" vs. "day-tuh" thing. Sometimes, a name is a word, and sometimes it's apart from that word. If it belongs to a specific person or authority, you ask them if you're unsure, clean and simple. But since Sigil doesn't belong to anyone IRL the way that "day-tuh" belongs to a specific Soong-type positronic android in Star Trek, it's our choice as content creators, and thus messy and individual.

I would generally be confused if someone spoke "siggle" and expected me to know that it referred to the city, just as I would be confused if someone told me to be "viggle-ant" for criminal activity. I could probably figure it out from context clues or just thinking about it, but it would need that "thinking about it" moment before I figured it out.

Why?

Hard G is pretty common in a lot of languages, my own included. Not everything in D&D follows the trends of English.

Because the authors were English speakers originally writing in English. To turn the question around: why should I expect to pronounce words the way a French person would (just to make up a language; I have no idea what your native tongue is, so if it's French, I promise this isn't targeted at you) if I'm reading a work originally written in English? Why should I expect English pronunciations if I'm (say) playing a game made in Poland, Germany, or Japan? (The last there can be complicated, since many terms or names in Japanese are merely transliterated Engl, e.g. the recurring FF entity Bahamut is literally バハムート, Bahamūto, but for the sake of argument I'll say I'm only thinking about names of actual Japanese origin, not transliterated names.)

Hard G is also present in English (giggle, for example, or give, or vogue), so it's not like this is an allophonic difference issue like with liquid consonants in Japanese vs. European languages.

[Jason]

I thought the quote was a joke. The Guvners are rules fetishists who are all about following the letter of the law to screw people over, so being pedantic about the pronunciation of "Sigil" would be par for the course with them. It's not necessarily the correct pronunciation or even one most inhabitants of Sigil would use.
There's another bit in the Planesacape books somewhere about the Guvners discovering that the are 18 distinct levels of strength in everyone in the multiverse, and trying to discover if the other attributes can be rated similarly and decide how they can use this information.

[Imbalance]

Appalachian g: Si'il

I purposely pronounce it wrong and revel in the chaos

Or this. I have purposely pronounced Drow with as many different vowel sounds as possible in the same session. Drough, Drah, Droo, Drhoe, Drau, Drao, Dreugh, and even Jrow, for good measure. It's a hobby.

[Willie the Duck]

All of this is missing the more important question -- does 'Flind' rhyme with sinned or blind?

[Segev]

In this thread:
The GitP forum discovers linguistics for the first time.

Ok guys, I have shocking news for you:
The idea of each word having one objectively correct pronunciation is LAUGHABLE. And in many instances, wrong.

For instance, the following word:
Crayon.
Some pronounce it "CRAY-on"
Some pronounce it "Cran"

Both are correct.

How about "Coupon?"
Some pronounce it "COOP-on"
Some pronounce it "KYOO-pon"

Again, both are correct.

How about the ever-debated "GIF?"
Welp, according to how linguists do things, (Go look at how people say it, and then describe how people actually pronounce it) the most common is hard-G "GIF", by a fairly big margin.
"JIF" is in second place
And pronouncing it "G-I-F," letter-by-letter is the rarest.

So you'll get fewer odd looks with hard G. But those top two are still both correct for now. The bottom one is weird but probably not wrong.

There is a difference between slight vowel shifts - as most of those examples are - and a complete consonant-switch that is only ambiguous because a vaguery of English spelling lets the same symbol make either sound.

Pronouncing "D&D" to sound exactly like the word "dandy" would, in fact, be incorrect, in no small part because it would create needless confusion as nobody would know to what you were referring (and might make incorrect assumptions), for example.

[Lord Torath]

All of this is missing the more important question -- does 'Flind' rhyme with wind or bind?

It rhymes with wind, obviously!

I personally rhyme it with 'binned' as well.

[Imbalance]

All of this is missing the more important question -- does 'Flind' rhyme with wind or bind?

With as much sense as some of the other official articulations make, it probly rhymes with orange.

[Willie the Duck]

It rhymes with wind, obviously!

I personally rhyme it with 'binned' as well.

Goodness, I didn't even notice that I chose an ambiguous option. Will change.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Put my vote down for soft G sound.
Sigil. Like Vigil.

[Satinavian]

Put my vote down for soft G sound.
Sigil. Like Vigil.

Both hard g for me as it fits the classical latin roots.

Not that i have used those words/names when speaking English so far.

[ezekielraiden]

Both hard g for me as it fits the classical latin roots.

Not that i have used those words/names when speaking English so far.

If I may ask, how do you pronounce "Caesar," "vacuum," "agenda," and/or "homicide"?

[LibraryOgre]

I have never understood the difference between Hard and Soft G

[ezekielraiden]

I have never understood the difference between Hard and Soft G

It's the difference between the j sound in "jam" or "jeopardy" ("soft"), and the g sound in "grab" or "glitter" ("hard").

If you're familiar with the typical English pronunciation of "geography," the first g is soft, while the second is hard. "dzhee-oh-gra-fee."

[Eldan]

If I may ask, how do you pronounce "Caesar," "vacuum," "agenda," and/or "homicide"?

Kaiser, Vakuum, Agenda and Homizid, but then I'm a German speaker.