Exult Forum

....why the hell Jhelom is called Valoria in Ultima 9?

Just curious.

Well.. if I remember correctly, Jhelom was destroyed by a volcano. Then, the none-too-bright fighters of Jhelom founded their new city, Valoria, inside said volcano.

Best theory anyone on rgcud could come up with was that nobody could agree how to pronounce Jhelom for the voice acting, so they made up an excuse to change it.

lol. that's probably exactly it.

i'd said jhay-lom [say 'jay' with a slight h sound]

...or

the j is silent so: He-lom

I pronounce it Jel om, like hair 'gel' and 'om' sounding like 'on'. hehe
There was a huge discussion back at Horizons tavern when U9 came out as to a bunch of surprise pronunciations.
A few I remember were 'reagents', when the game pronounced them 're-agents' as to some of us who pronounced it reegents or raygents (like Reagan = Raygan), another was Shamino. I always pronounced it Sha-mee-no, but when I heard Garriots voice (in LBs castle dungeon) say Sha-min-oh, I knew thats how it must be, hehe.
Iolo was pretty straight forward, some always pronounced it Ee-oh-low, and some just Yo-low.
But the one that got me the most was actually Minoc. Forever, I'd always called it Min-ick, then I hear this 'My-knock' business, hehe. Of course, I use all these pronunciations now (except for reagents, thats still raygents to me)
Well, thats what you get for delving into the world of spoken word in the Sosarian universe

Most of the pronounciations were dead on to what I expected them to be,
personally, except for reagents like you said. I always pronounced that 'REG-unts', like the candy Runts with an egg shoved in the middle.

But... Min-ick? Where did you get a short I from the letter O?

Like the word havoc, I dont pronounce it have-ock. I pronounce it hav-ick, or have-eck, if you want to get technical. THATS where I get it from the letter O " ". Exactly the same thing. hehe

I always pronounced Jhelom as 'Jel-Om' too... and 'ree-age-ent'.

i found it weird having 'sha-mee-no' as 'sha-min-oh' as well. just doesnt make sense to me, but i guess technically it is the right pronunciation. Like right there: proh-nun-see-ay-shun. that 'ee' bit sounds right. try saying 'proh-nun-sih-ay-shun' and you just sound like you're talking in a weird accent.

*gets angry and wants to hire all the u9 voice actors to pronounce everything that sounds wrong. no skip that, get new voice actors that dont suck*

Only a couple of the voice actors in 9 really blew. Unfortunately the voice
for the Avatar was the worst of said actors that blew.

hehe...

"Stealing is wrong!"

Well, reagent is the only word that wasn't created. And it is pronounced "ree-ay-jent". You can look it up.

I've always said "Jay-lum", "My-nok", and "Sha-minnow" (minnow... like the fish), "Jay-na" (Jaana), and "Eye-oh-lo".

If people had trouble pronouncing it, why didn't they put it in phonetics in the script? It could have been called New Jhelom since the old one was destroyed. You know like New Magincia. I always pronounced that one with a hard G.

Yes, I agree the Avatar's voice actor wasn't all that good. I didn't care for the people in Minoc either. That accent got annoying after the first person spoke with it. And each of them got progressively worse.

Venom... good point... if we pronounce havoc the same way I pronounce Minoc... We'd have "hay-vok".

minoc - min-auk
shamino - sha-min-oh
jaana - jah-na
iolo - yo-lo
reagents - regents [when i was younger]; reagents [passed 2/3 years]

Jhelom- Yeh-lum
Minoc- Me-Knock

Jaana wasn't exactly an invented name.

'John-uh' and 'Jan-uh' are both more or less acceptable pronounciations
of the name - Never heard anyone pronounce it Jayna. Would make more
sense if it were spelled Jana, but even then...

Hey forum dudes - delete this damn topic so we can all reclaim what little
amounts of a life we have by stop arguing about pronounciation.

I forgot that I said the "made up" part when I added Jaana's name into that post.

Don't delete this thread. We should all fight about how to pronounce Jhelom. It's important. Maybe someday, somewhere, someone will make a voice-enabled U7, U6, U5, or U4 and people will need to know how to say it.

I don't recall seeing any arguements going on about pronunciations, except when you started knocking my pronunciation of Minoc, lol. We're just talking about how we pronounced a bunch of Britannian names/places anyways . It is pretty lame to argue about pronunciations anyways, though. It's almost as lame as arguing about what languages sound the ugliest... *rolls eyes* lol.

lol 8)

Say... voice recognition is something I've been thinking about for a while as a fun thing to do. IBM's ViaVoice SDK is available for free, but I'm afraid they only do that for Linux.

I think it would be fun to say "Hey, you!", and have the closest NPC turn and say "Me?". Then if you say "No," the next closest would ask.

Nu'Jelm sounds like New Jhelom. It's a town in Ultima Online. (jhelom is there too, though)

Ok, here's my go at the pronunciations...

minoc - mai-nok
shamino - sha-min-oh
jaana - ja-a-na
iolo - yo-lo
reagents - ri-ai-jents
Jhelom - yeh-lom
Reagan - re-gan

Concerning the VAs - the German voice actors really are no bit better there, and some of them really *did* suck. Also, there was a plethora of really weird pronunciations... especially the names (of cities, names etc.) were often pronounced really strange.

I want to hear the German version. I love that language. No matter what you say in it, you sound angry. hehe.

zhat is noot trew!
Seriously. It always depensd on who you are listening to. If you only hear German in bad American Movies it tends to sound like you describe (especially with movies that feature Hitler-like voice acting). It´s probably the same if you let non-Americans watch "Fargo" and tell people that is how the Americans sound. Wouldn´t any justice, would it?

To Tim & Dominus:

The opinion on the sound of a language depends on how a person is used to the language and what is the original sound of his native language.

Example:
My native language is Czech. I have started to learn English long time ago, so I do not remember how it felt to me at the beginning.
As for other languages: I do not know French, but it seems to me too *sweet* (reminds me something containing too much sugar). German sounds normal now (I watch German TV almost every day and prefer it to Czech TV). However I remember that at beginning (not now) it sounded quite *hard* to me. Well, to a certain way opposite of French.

This was just an illustration. I DO NOT WANT TO START ANY LANGUAGE WAR. I do not thing that any language sounds better than another. It is just matter of what a person is used to.

Mirek

Mirek: well stated!

Well. as a native french I have to say that I like the sound made by French words. Especially if you ever went to the south-west of France, like Toulouse, you would really appreciate the singing form of French.

Beautiful!


Artaxerxes

All latin languages sound much softer than their anglosaxon counterparts, which instead have lots of "harsh" sounds. English is a notable exception.

I also must say that a bunch of african languages sound pretty neat, especially when they sing. Those guys know how to get something with their voicebox.

I (re-)watched "The Gods Must Be Crazy" recently and it was really neat to hear them sing all together.


Artaxerxes

Didn't mean to initiate a language war. I just want to hear the Avatar yell at Blackthorn or the Guardian in a foreign language and I think German would be cool. French too.

Wouldn't be the first language war. hehe. We should just have another forum to talk about languages in. Seems to be a frequent topic.

Actually Tim, I would like to hear it as well. I´ve got the Dragon Edition which was only availlable in English I think. So the only Ultima I own in German is U8

Seeing as "reagents" are just things that "react" or make a "reaction", I find it fuuny how anyone could say the word any other way!

We don't say "Chain Reection" or "Chain Rayction" after all!

I knew that Chemistry Degree would come in handy one day!

But that doesn't matter to a person who had never heard the word before out of Ultima context, like myself when I started playing ultima at the age of 5, and who has never taken a single chemistry course, even though I'm in college. Not to mentioned the aforementioned pronunciation of Ronald Reagan's last name. At least here in Connecticut anyways, lol. No one calls him Ronald Ree-Agan. Not everyone has the same experience with every word in the english language.

'agent' is a noun - I never even considered calling it re-agent because you
can't repeat an action when it's not an action but rather a noun.

"I RE-CHOCOLATE MY CAKE"

an agent is something that acts, a reagent is something that reacts. Easy

I always pronounce it:

Jeh Hel Um

Well, to add my little bit to this already long message thread.
My native language is german, but I always prefered english.. Now that I love in the USA with my wife (who speaks no bit of german) I know why. I had Ultima IX in German, but left it "home" when I moved. the voice actors where really not that hot.. I have still nightmares of the Avatar's "Wie heisst du?" (What is your name)...
The best way to solve this trouble is .. try to get hold of Richard Garriott. Anybody got his number? Maybe he can tell us how to pronounce the names.. and it seems that, if we could find him, he even would.

Mmmm, I always pronounce jaana as yar-nah. Must be the way we pronounce A over here. Just like I say toe-mar-toe, and you say toe-mate-o.

Iolo I really had no idea so I just said eye-o-lo.

Shamino was a no brainer as sha-min-o. I'm pretty sure that's the way he spells it out if you ask his name in u7 tbg.

Dupre, well, du-pray.

Jhelom = gel-ohm.

Minoc = min-oc.

yay, someone else that pronounces the J in jaana as a Y... sounds scandinavian

my personal interpretations of strange words:

dupre: duh-pray
shamino: sha-mee-no
iolo: yo-lo
jaana: yar-na

jhelom: jell-um
minoc: my-nok

reagent: ree-ay-jent

i think that covers it.
god i'm bored, this topic has got me thinking a lot though...

dupre: doo-pray
shamino: sha-min-no
iolo: ee-O-lo
jaana: Jan-na
minoc: my-nok
reagent: ree'-uh-jent
Skara Brae: Scar-a-bray

Hello, this is the first time I've posted here but I think I ought to add this.
Let us not forget that both Dupre and Iolo have pronunciations given in
Ultima VI: The False Prophet.

Dupre='dew pray'
Iolo='Yo-low' (although I've always said either eye-oh-low or ee-oh-low)

My own pronunciations:
Minoc=Mee-knock
Shamino=Shah-mee-know
Skara Brae=Scar-uh Bray-uh
Jhelom=Jell-Hum

Nah, Australian Kurt. But yea, I see what you mean by the pronounciation.

Also:

Skara-brae = scar-ra-bray

reagent = regent. Yea, that's how I used to say it. But, re-a-gent does make more sense.

But it's pretty diverse on how people pronounce words. Some can be the same, most very different.