Pronunciation guides

[Joe ST he/him]

So, I've noticed that Cem has added some pronunciation guides to articles, and was wondering whether I should make a quick template to make this easier for others to add to other articles. Would it just be a link to the IPA and 'respelling' pages on wikipedia? So:

{{pronounced

|ipa=ˈkælædɪn

|respel=KAL-a-din

}}

With both parameters being optional, resulting in

(pronounced /ˈkælædɪn/ KAL-a-din)

and how much of wikipedia's templating magic do I need to add to format the plain-text input into something acceptable to people?

[Chaos he/him]

I am a little worried about adding pronunciation guides, as Brandon has always said you can pronounce things the way you want.

[cem he/him]

It would be nice to have the template. People often ask Brandon about pronunciations, so I think it's a good idea to add them as much as we can to the Coppermind.

 

I think the best would be to use this for IPA. It also displays the phonemes in tooltip when you point your mouse over the IPA characters. Though it has dependencies on a lot of other templates, so it might be difficult to implement it and I guess you'd have to use another template for respelling.

 

If you want to go with something simpler, I don't think you should put the parentheses in the template itself, so that the editor would have the freedom to use it wherever they want. And maybe make the "pronounced" text optional, too, for the same reason.

[Joe ST he/him]

I kinda agree with Eric, but they can also be useful? I just wanted to see popular opinion and check if it would be worth adding a template for them

[Awesomeness Summoned he/him]

Maybe just put a disclaimer at the top of "These are just suggested pronunciations based off of Sanderson's own readings. He fully endorses the reader creating their own interpretation", or something like that.

 

I think it is a good idea in general. There have been many books that I wanted to know how the author pronounced things and it was immensely difficult to locate that information.

[cem he/him]

Maybe just put a disclaimer at the top of "These are just suggested pronunciations based off of Sanderson's own readings. He fully endorses the reader creating their own interpretation", or something like that.

 

I think it is a good idea in general. There have been many books that I wanted to know how the author pronounced things and it was immensely difficult to locate that information.

I don't know if something like this is necessary. Most people will pronounce however they want, and if someone wants to learn the correct way, then there's no harm in providing them. I mean I don't pronounce Kaladin as KAL-a-din even though I put it in the article, I say it more like kal-a-DEEN.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Maybe just put a disclaimer at the top of "These are just suggested pronunciations based off of Sanderson's own readings. He fully endorses the reader creating their own interpretation", or something like that.

 

I think it is a good idea in general. There have been many books that I wanted to know how the author pronounced things and it was immensely difficult to locate that information.

 

The problem with that is Brandon says some things wrong.  Kelsier/Vin are pronounced differently in-world than what Brandon says, as is Elantris.

[Awesomeness Summoned he/him]

The problem with that is Brandon says some things wrong.

Such a funny statement in itself when we are talking about his characters  but point taken. Maybe something more like "these are just the most commonly held pronunciations. Sanderson himself endorses the reader's own interpretations." IDK, just something to denote they are not WoB but a reference to how they are commonly pronounced would be nice.

[Joe ST he/him]

we could, technically, do as wikipedia does and have Scadrian: pronunciation as well as ours? or a list of alternatives? but I agree that it's all rather subjective, and messy

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

ˈkælædɪn isn't even correct. I suggest the person adding the pronunciations really know IPA well. (it's [ˈkæl·ə·dɪn] )

Edited February 3, 2014 by PeterAhlstrom

[cem he/him]

ˈkælædɪn isn't even correct. I suggest the person adding the pronunciations really know IPA well. (it's [ˈkæl·ə·dɪn] )

Thanks for correcting it, and for the advice. I'd just looked it up from Wikipedia.

[FeatherWriter she/her]

If y'all need some help with IPA, I could give it a shot. My IPA fu is... fairly strong? I could also work on some Scadrial pronunciations if we wanted to give the in-world attempt as well, since I speak French pretty well. Not sure if the website would support it, but I could try to record pronunciations as well?

 

I've got a few names on hand that I wrote up for the other thread:

 

Renarin: [ɹɜn·ˈa·ɹɪn]

Adolin: [ˈeɪ·do·lɪn]

Shallan: [ʃə·ˈlɑn]

Jasnah:  [ˈjaz·nə]

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

If y'all need some help with IPA, I could give it a shot. My IPA fu is... fairly strong? I could also work on some Scadrial pronunciations if we wanted to give the in-world attempt as well, since I speak French pretty well. Not sure if the website would support it, but I could try to record pronunciations as well?

I've got a few names on hand that I wrote up for the other thread:

Renarin: [ɹɜn·ˈa·ɹɪn]

Adolin: [ˈeɪ·do·lɪn]

Shallan: [ʃə·ˈlɑn]

Jasnah: [ˈjaz·nə]

Jasnah is actually pronounced with an s rather than a z. I also wouldn't say the final vowel is ə—it's really more a-like. Perhaps ɐ.

 

Also I personally much prefer the transcription style of [ˈei̯·do·lɪn] over [ˈeɪ·do·lɪn]; the first ɪ is wholly unlike the second ɪ, so i̯ is better.

Edited February 3, 2014 by PeterAhlstrom

[cem he/him]

How about Kholin? AFAIR Brandon pronounced it in some interview like [ˈxo·lɪn], though I'm not exactly sure x actually represents the correct sound.

Edited February 3, 2014 by cem

[Joe ST he/him]

So does Peter approve of adding pronunciations to the coppermind?

I'm thinking there's a number of possibilities for different bits we could make note of:

- In world

- Brandon's

- Audiobook

- Popular mispronunciations?

Would that escape us from the possibilities brought up by Eric and Weiry?

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

Brandon sometimes says [ˈxo·lɪn] but I'm pretty sure the Alethi would actually say [xoˈlɪn]. However, [koˈlɪn] or [kʰoˈlɪn] are the recommended pronunciations for people from Earth.

 

On whether pronunciations should be added to the Coppermind, I have no strong opinion except that any pronunciations that do get added should be pretty much correct and should also link to Brandon's pronunciation caveats.

Edited February 3, 2014 by PeterAhlstrom

[FeatherWriter she/her]

[ˈjas·nɐ]? That works. Peter has so much good insight in correcting all my silly incorrect pronunciations. Hmm, Kholin with an [x]? I like it! I tend to use [kʰoˈlɪn] when I'm trying and  [koˈlɪn] when I'm being lazy but the [xoˈlɪn] is a really cool way to say it.

 

I was thinking about mocking up some Scadrian pronunciations if we were interested, but that's a very subjective field. Basically the pronunciations that I would use for "in-world" are the ones I use when I'm reading my French copy of Mistborn. Be wary: My French IPA is much less polished than my English IPA though...

 

Kelsier: English ['kɛl·si·ɚ] vs. Scadrian ['kɛl·si·e]
Vin: English [vɪn] vs. Scadrian [vɛ̃]

Breeze (Brise): English [briz] vs. Scadrian [bʀiz]

[cem he/him]

Brandon sometimes says [ˈxo·lɪn] but I'm pretty sure the Alethi would actually say [xoˈlɪn]. However, [koˈlɪn] or [kʰoˈlɪn] are the recommended pronunciations for people from Earth.

 

On whether pronunciations should be added to the Coppermind, I have no strong opinion except that any pronunciations that do get added should be pretty much correct and should also link to Brandon's pronunciation caveats.

We can add a footnote next to the "pronounced" for this. Like so:

 

(pronounced<ref group=fn>Pronounce it however you want</ref> [xoˈlɪn])

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Pronunciation stuff would be cool to have on the wiki but as Peter points out we have to be very careful in making sure it is correct.  I personally don't know IPA so I probably won't be of much help.  (I know what things should sound like, but don't know how to transcribe it really).

 

Also is Renarin pronounced "Ren-a-rin" or "Re-nar-in" or some other way?

 

@cem, I'm not really a fan of how that would look.

 

Do we definitely want to put this at the beginning of articles, or could we put it in the Trivia section, with the caveat?

[cem he/him]

ren-AH-rin would be the correct way if I'm not mistaken.
 

Do we definitely want to put this at the beginning of articles, or could we put it in the Trivia section, with the caveat?

I'm in favor of putting at the beginning, though only because that's how Wikipedia does it, thus what people are used to.

[Joe ST he/him]

It could go in a part of the infobox, along with the local depiction of the names (using steel alphabet/alethi script/aons/etc.) if people think that would be cool...

[PeterAhlstrom he/him]

Breeze (Brise): English [briz] vs. Scadrian [bʀiz]

LOL! Actually we have no idea what his Scadrian name would be. Breeze is a translation into English of the word they actually use. (So are Spook and Clubs, etc.) And it's not the French word either, because they don't actually speak French.

[FeatherWriter she/her]

(rih-NAH-rin) would be my best attempt at the transliteration, Weiry. 

 

At this point, we might want a page dedicated to pronunciation actually. So we could put an IPA vestion/"regular spelling" version, with a click-through to the full pronunciation page. That page would be where I would put things like Brandon's policy on pronunciations, descriptions of linguistic heritage and similarity for each world, differences between in-world and out-of-world pronunciation, and maybe lists of pronunciations for major words and characters from each book?

 

If not, I'd say that most common, out-of-world pronunciation should go at the top, with in-world pronunciation down in Trivia.

 

 

[WeiryWriter he/him]

It could go in a part of the infobox, along with the local depiction of the names (using steel alphabet/alethi script/aons/etc.) if people think that would be cool...

 

Actually I like this the best.

 

Edit: @Feather Okay, from the looks of the IPA thing you did for his name it looked like ren-a-rin, but then again I can't exactly read it.  I like the idea of a pronunciation page.  Personally though I think we should prioritize the in-world pronunciation over the out-world one.  Because Brandon says we can pronounce things however we want there are going to be numerous out-world versions but there is only one correct in-world one.  (that got confusing fast...)

 

Anyway, I think the in-world pronunciation should go in the infobox, with a link to the pronunciation page.

[FeatherWriter she/her]

LOL! Actually we have no idea what his Scadrian name would be. Breeze is a translation into English of the word they actually use. (So are Spook and Clubs, etc.) And it's not the French word either, because they don't actually speak French.

 

I was just wondering about that! I know in the French version changes the spelling of Breeze to Brise, and Spook to "Spectre" but I wasn't totally sure. I suppose we only need pronunciations on names that aren't actually words. So... most of the Returned probably wouldn't need them either.