Do YOU pronounce Sigil with a hard or soft G?

[LibraryOgre]

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."

What invariably throws me is I think the "jam" is a far harder sound then "grab".

[Hytheter]

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

...Is there a soft way to pronounce vacuum?

[Satinavian]

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

I am not an English native speaker. I pronounce all four of those words differently depending on the language used. Even if Caesar is a name and shouldn't really change but i don't know anyone using the classical pronounciation in daily conversation.

The difference might be that i kinda lack awareness of vigil and sigil as English words even when they pop up in an English text. They are a bit too obscure in English to be really part of a foreigners vocabulary. But i do recognize them as Latin words so i would pronounce them as Latin words. It is not as if there wasn't a habit to pepper English speach with some Latin to sound more sophisticated. There is also the fast that i never have head them with a soft g (because obscure) and would not get the idea to us it on my own.

...Is there a soft way to pronounce vacuum?

English likes to insert some i-sound between the c and the first u to make the transition easier.

[Kane0]

To be more specific:

Sigil like vigil
Drow like prow
Bulette like roulette
Tiefling like stifling
Genasi like... I got nothing. Jen-ah-zee

Flind like blind
Lamia like narnia
Merrow like mellow
Satyr like satire

[Luccan]

Satyr like satire

So it rhymes with fire?

[Jason]

You know, D&D Beyond has pronunciation sound files for every monster entry in the manual now. So there are "official" pronunciations.

[Wizard_Lizard]

To be more specific:

Sigil like vigil
Drow like prow
Bulette like roulette
Tiefling like stifling
Genasi like... I got nothing. Jen-ah-zee

Flind like blind
Lamia like narnia
Merrow like mellow
Satyr like satire

I pronounce the same with most of those, save Satyr which I pronounce "Say-Tier" and Lamia which I pronounce "Lah-Mee-ah"

[dethkruzer]

So, funny thing, it actually changes depending on if I'm using it while speaking in English, or in my native language (Finnish). In English I pronounce it with a soft G, but then when I mention the name as part of a sentence spoken in Finnish, it comes out more often with a hard G.

[Tanarii]

Sigil like vigil
Drow like prow
Bulette like roulette
Tiefling like stifling
Genasi like... I got nothing. Jen-ah-zee

Flind like blind
Lamia like narnia
Merrow like mellow
Satyr like satire

Sigil = sigg-ill
Tiefling = teef-ling
Genasi = Geh-na-see (not jeh)
Flind like wind (that blows)
Satyr = Sat-ear.

[Anonymouswizard]

Satyr should rhyme with greater.

Scro should rhyme with flow.

Minotaur is pronounced 'my-know-tour'.

The h in Birmingham is silent.

[Millstone85]

So, funny thing, it actually changes depending on if I'm using it while speaking in English, or in my native language (Finnish). In English I pronounce it with a soft G, but then when I mention the name as part of a sentence spoken in Finnish, it comes out more often with a hard G.

I think that I am going to do the opposite. I like the idea that, in English, the city uses a hard G while the symbol uses a soft G. But in French, the only way it would be a hard G is if it were spelled Siguil, like in guillotine (to use a stereotypical example).

[Tanarii]

Minotaur is pronounced 'my-know-tour'.

Min-o-tar

The h in Birmingham is silent.

Heretic! Burn the witch!

[Wizard_Lizard]

I pronounce Gnome as "Evil little cheating creatures"
-this post was made by the kobold association.

[Tanarii]

I pronounce Gnome as "Evil little cheating creatures"
-this post was made by the kobold association.

Ko-bald or Ko-bowl-d?

[quinron]

If the apocryphal story I've heard is right and "bulette" being pronounced [boo-LAY] is a gag by the TSR boys about French being pretentious, then I have to conclude that the TSR boys were not very funny. You can spell it "bulette" and pronounce it [BULL-et], or you can spell it "bullet" and pronounce it [boo-LAY], but doing both ruins the joke!

The h in Birmingham is silent.

I actually started chuckling at a podcast recently that referred to the city of "Nor-witch" in the UK. I've lived in the Midwestern US all my life; I just really like studying British regional accents.

I think that I am going to do the opposite. I like the idea that, in English, the city uses a hard G while the symbol uses a soft G. But in French, the only way it would be a hard G is if it were spelled Siguil, like in guillotine (to use a stereotypical example).

Your use of the word "guillotine" is kind of ironic - it tends to be an argument-starter with the native English-speaking neophyte etymologists I've met. When I was younger, I got in at least two arguments about whether the L's are pronounced as L or pronounced as a glide (as in "Guillaume"). Which I think is less an argument over how it's supposed to be pronounced and more over to what degree we should adopt the native pronunciation of loanwords.



As for the usual pronunciation arguments, if it's not something from a real-world language or clearly inspired by one, I typically default to Latin rules: I and E are soft vowels, so if they follow C, G, S, or CH, the consonant becomes soft; stress defaults to the penultimate syllable, and you should treat vowel combinations as single syllables. So "sigil" is [SIJ-əl], "genasi" is [jə-NAH-zi], "Arcadia" is [ar-KA-dya] (though I usually say [ar-KAY-dee-ə] because I'm a Midwesterner), etc.

"Tiefling" seems pretty clearly to come from German tief, "deep," so I pronounce if [TEEF-ling] as it would be in German. Same for "kobold," which is actually originally a German word.

[Kane0]

save Satyr which I pronounce "Say-Tier"

Satyr = Sat-ear.

Satyr should rhyme with greater.

Like I said, intentionally wrong :P
Largely because when I’m DMing and a Satyr appears, satire is its intended function in the game.

[Anonymouswizard]

I actually started chuckling at a podcast recently that referred to the city of "Nor-witch" in the UK. I've lived in the Midwestern US all my life; I just really like studying British regional accents.

Shouldn't it be pronounced 'Norrich'? But yeah, UK accents and slang are interesting just because of how much they vary, it's the 'what do you call the most basic playground game' thing.

Oh, and UK place names, especially Frome (rhymes with 'room') Either they're from languages not spoken any more (like Old English) or have sounds missing for easier pronunciation.

[Willie the Duck]

What invariably throws me is I think the "jam" is a far harder sound then "grab".

One really has to take the whole hard/soft thing as a 'we need a boolean adjective, and there's no specific reason to give one or the other a given name' situation (completely different example used for illustration: electrons being 'negative' and protons being 'positive' is a completely arbitrary decision). I guess you could say that a 'hard' g is hard because it involves bringing your hard teeth together to help form the sound while a 'soft' g uses just soft tissue to create, but that's completely arbitrary (and fails when you consider hard and soft Cs).
EDIT: As has been noted below, I got my hard and soft g switched in this example. Which, honestly, considering the overall point being made, is almost perfect!

Ko-bald or Ko-bowl-d?

Growing up, we --a group of kids who learned most of these words exclusively from books and the occasional inquiry to adults (who would know how to pronounce words like charisma or chaotic, but probably didn't know kobold or lamassu or the like) -- always thought it was ka-bowl-d (I guess kind of like 'cobbled'). No idea why.

If the apocryphal story I've heard is right and "bulette" being pronounced [boo-LAY] is a gag by the TSR boys about French being pretentious, then I have to conclude that the TSR boys were not very funny. You can spell it "bulette" and pronounce it [BULL-et], or you can spell it "bullet" and pronounce it [boo-LAY], but doing both ruins the joke!

I've conversed with a few insiders to the early days of gaming and/or TSR, and one thing they all seem to allude to is a general 'look, no one thought that people would be over-analyzing this stuff forty years later, much less taking it seriously. A lot of this stuff is accidental, or was mildly funny at the time, or happened in the playtest gaming and we just ran with it. Who knew it would take on a life of its own.' and I think that shows. The material components for Lightning bolt are a glass rod rubbed with fur because of supposed historic static electricity experiments, and fireball requires guano and Sulphur because those were part of gunpowder creation -- why? Because Gary thought it was funny (those two to me being prime examples of 'jokes' that aren't really jokes at all, so much as just strange allusions). Gelatinous Cube was apparently originally just a giant-ified (as in 'attack of the 50-foot _____'-style) single-celled organism of no particular shape that was squeezing through a square-shaped tunnel and someone thought it would be cool/funny if it retained that shape once it got past the tunnel. None of it was supposed to survive the close scrutiny we later have applied to it any more than comic book continuity or other things the creators didn't know we'd still be thinking about years later.
Not that that makes the joke suddenly funny, I'm just saying that it is unsurprising.

[Imbalance]

One really has to take the whole hard/soft thing as a 'we need a boolean adjective, and there's no specific reason to give one or the other a given name' situation (completely different example used for illustration: electrons being 'negative' and protons being 'positive' is a completely arbitrary decision). I guess you could say that a 'hard' g is hard because it involves bringing your hard teeth together to help form the sound while a 'soft' g uses just soft tissue to create, but that's completely arbitrary (and fails when you consider hard and soft Cs).


Growing up, we --a group of kids who learned most of these words exclusively from books and the occasional inquiry to adults (who would know how to pronounce words like charisma or chaotic, but probably didn't know kobold or lamassu or the like) -- always thought it was ka-bowl-d (I guess kind of like 'cobbled'). No idea why.


I've conversed with a few insiders to the early days of gaming and/or TSR, and one thing they all seem to allude to is a general 'look, no one thought that people would be over-analyzing this stuff forty years later, much less taking it seriously. A lot of this stuff is accidental, or was mildly funny at the time, or happened in the playtest gaming and we just ran with it. Who knew it would take on a life of its own.' and I think that shows. The material components for Lightning bolt are a glass rod rubbed with fur because of supposed historic static electricity experiments, and fireball requires guano and Sulphur because those were part of gunpowder creation -- why? Because Gary thought it was funny (those two to me being prime examples of 'jokes' that aren't really jokes at all, so much as just strange allusions). Gelatinous Cube was apparently originally just a giant-ified (as in 'attack of the 50-foot _____'-style) single-celled organism of no particular shape that was squeezing through a square-shaped tunnel and someone thought it would be cool/funny if it retained that shape once it got past the tunnel. None of it was supposed to survive the close scrutiny we later have applied to it any more than comic book continuity or other things the creators didn't know we'd still be thinking about years later.
Not that that makes the joke suddenly funny, I'm just saying that it is unsurprising.

The original humor of the jokes themselves may be gone, but the nerd-rage over such things does put a smile on my face.

[Tanarii]

Like I said, intentionally wrong :P
Largely because when I’m DMing and a Satyr appears, satire is its intended function in the game.

Given that all three of us you quoted pronounce Satyr wildly differently, I'm not sure your Sa-tire is any more wrong.

Growing up, we --a group of kids who learned most of these words exclusively from books and the occasional inquiry to adults (who would know how to pronounce words like charisma or chaotic, but probably didn't know kobold or lamassu or the like) -- always thought it was ka-bowl-d (I guess kind of like 'cobbled'). No idea why.

Kabbled sounds like a great option for Kobold to me. Although it's considerably different from Ka-bowled.

[LibraryOgre]

Ko-bald or Ko-bowl-d?

kobbld, of course.

[Imbalance]

COB-old

I first saw the word in allcaps in the NES game Hydlide. My buddy went with the long 'o' for both vowels, but we agreed on the placement of the 'b'.

[Lord Torath]

One really has to take the whole hard/soft thing as a 'we need a boolean adjective, and there's no specific reason to give one or the other a given name' situation (completely different example used for illustration: electrons being 'negative' and protons being 'positive' is a completely arbitrary decision). I guess you could say that a 'hard' g is hard because it involves bringing your hard teeth together to help form the sound while a 'soft' g uses just soft tissue to create, but that's completely arbitrary (and fails when you consider hard and soft Cs).

Whoops, you got that backward. Hard "g" is like grab or giggle. Soft 'g' is like giant or giraffe.

The hard 'g' sound is sharp. You make it by closing your throat. You cannot sustain a hard 'g'; it's a singular sound, like hitting a drum.
The soft 'g' can be sustained, and it's made by air flowing between your teeth and tongue. It's very similar to the 'sh' sound, with a hum thrown in.

[Willie the Duck]

Whoops, you got that backward. Hard "g" is like grab or giggle. Soft 'g' is like giant or giraffe.

The hard 'g' sound is sharp. You make it by closing your throat. You cannot sustain a hard 'g'; it's a singular sound, like hitting a drum.
The soft 'g' can be sustained, and it's made by air flowing between your teeth and tongue. It's very similar to the 'sh' sound, with a hum thrown in.

<checks notes> Hey, you're right! In which case my analogy fails for both hard/soft Cs and Gs.
That does exemplify my main point, however, that the entire hard/soft thing is fairly arbitrary and you can only get it right by knowing the convention and following it.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Ko-bald or Ko-bowl-d?

Koh- Bowl-d.
The ko-balds are the ones that are unfortunately born without scales...

[quinron]

Shouldn't it be pronounced 'Norrich'? But yeah, UK accents and slang are interesting just because of how much they vary, it's the 'what do you call the most basic playground game' thing.

Oh, and UK place names, especially Frome (rhymes with 'room') Either they're from languages not spoken any more (like Old English) or have sounds missing for easier pronunciation.

My go-to's to frustrate people out are always Leicester and Worcester, which both seem to be spelled with one more syllable than they're pronounced with.

I recently moved to Kansas City, and there's a suburb here called Kearney. I figured they might pronounce it either [KEER-nee] or [KAER-nee]; nope, it's pronounced like "carny."

[Anonymouswizard]

My go-to's to frustrate people out are always Leicester and Worcester, which both seem to be spelled with one more syllable than they're pronounced with.

I recently moved to Kansas City, and there's a suburb here called Kearney. I figured they might pronounce it either [KEER-nee] or [KAER-nee]; nope, it's pronounced like "carny."

It's because the syllable was dropper for easier pronunciation, if I'm remembering correctly.

And oh, there's annoying place names all over, ust the UK seems to have a bit more due to historical reasons.

Family names are even better. Featherstonehaugh, for instance.

[Tanarii]

Family names are even better. Featherstonehaugh, for instance.

Let me guess: Fetter-stun-hug?

[Eldan]

Let me guess: Fetter-stun-hug?

Fan-shaw.

For bonus points: try Toolmake, Bagehot, Talliafero, Buccleugh, Cholmondeley or Wriothesley

Spoiler

Show

Dolmash, Badjet, Tolliver, Beh-clue, Chum-lee.
The last one is a trick question and can be pronounced Riz-lee, Rize-lee or Rocks-lee, depending on the family.

I love the English aristocracy, sometimes. I collect these names.

[Batcathat]

Fan-shaw.

Yup.

Together with all the "Leicester is pronounced Lester" type places this makes me think British names get frail with age so some parts of them just fall of. It's the only logical conclusion.