Local Authors > Brandon Sanderson

Pronunciation Guide

(1/3) > >>

EUOL:
I know a lot of people have asked for one of these, so I decided to throw one up as the 'May Goodie' for Elantris.  You can find it linked on the main page.

Peter Ahlstrom:
...you're...crazy.

These pronunciations are pretty hard to say and don't make much sense internally! How do you pronounce "en" at the end of "Raoden" and "is" it the end of Elantris and "Sa-" at the beginning of "Sarene"? Is it Ray-oh-deen and Ee-lain-trice and Say-ray-nay? Or is it "-en" (as in "end" with no "d") and "-triss" (rhymes with "kiss") and "Suh-" (front rhymes with "Samantha")? Or Because if it's "-en" and "-triss" and "Suh-" then these pronunciations are not allowed by your AEIO rules, and if it's "-deen" and "-trice" and "Say-" then your listed pronunciations are not helpful.

Spelling some "a" sound with "e" instead also throws a wrench into the whole thing. Basically, the fact that you felt the need to do that should have been an indication to you that there were issues with the system to start out with, and that regular English speakers and especially Fantasy readers would just not automatically pronounce your names close to the way you meant them to be pronounced.

I will hopefully comment later, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to base a language around the just 4 long vowels A E I O (which are pronounced, phonetically, "ei ii ai ou"). It looks like there are some problems in implementation though.

Eagle Prince:
I thought that only applied to the Aons.  The different names and words, ie Raoden, is only part Aon... the other half is like a totally different language.  Sort of like a pidgen language combines two different languages into is own sort of language, and can eventually turn into a whole new language (creole).  I think that is what happened here....

I would need to reread the article, but I think it also mentioned something about only the first so many vowels being long and the rest normal.  That or just the vowels that dealt with the Aon part  of the word.

I also think the 'ae' thing is pretty common in fantasy.

Peter Ahlstrom:
...I did think something along those lines after I wrote the post above, and I haven't had time to read the whole thing... Well, I'll go back and check it later...

EUOL:
Ookla,

You're missing the long/short combination.  (EP has it exactly right.)

The Aon has long vowels, the rest of the word has short.  Maybe I need to make that more explicit.  However, reading it, it makes sense to me.

So, RAY-Oh-den would be pronounced, I think, exactly as I wrote it there.  Two long--for the Aon--one short, for the non-Aon.  


As for the 'A' exception, it was done out of necessity.  You see, the truth is that I was creating a language to accent my novel, not the other way around.  So, when it came down to writing a name like 'Sarene,' I just couldn't force myself to write it the way that looked worse, just to make the language feel a little more consistent.  (There was no physical way to make the name on the page sound like the one in my head without writing something very silly, like Saraynay or Saraenae.)

I think that people in the world would pronounce her name, therefore, as "Sa-REE-Nee," as I pointed out in the article.  However, I'm still going to pronounce it how I want, because I'm an English speaker, not an Aonic speaker.  Just like I call Korea 'Korea,' instead of 'Kor-ryo' (or even Hanguk) as would be correct.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page