Why Can't People Get It Right? Annoying Things and Pokémon

[yukamina]

The Serebii Dex has always used the official romanizations, rather than a transliteration of the Japanese characters.

When the pokedex lists the Japanese name and the romaji doesn't match the katakata, I just scratch my head. But, I suppose if you say the official romanizations come from what names the Japanese came up with and then have to spell with katakana...it makes more sense. I assumed the Japanese version of Pokemon just used katakana, and fans came up with what the katakana must be referring to, or just mistranscribe it (ゾロア Zorua just looked like a poor ability to read katakana).

Official names like Cobalon or Chillarmy etc as romainizations either make the names look nicer or cooler on merchandise, but don't always make the etymology of the names apparent while un-official ones like Wargle, Emboar, Freezio or Vulxena are to make them easier to memorize until we get real English names and also highlight where the names come from that may not be apparent when you're looking at Uooguru, Enbuoo, Furiijio, or Barujiina.

Hm, while Emboar sounds good, the "oo" might mean "king." "buoo" is a rather counter intuitive way to pronounce "boar" even for the Japanese.

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

YES! When I was a kid, my neighbor boy used to always pronouce it as such, not matter how much I would correct him. What's more, is he specialised in Psychic Types. That'd be like me mispronouncing Fighting Types.

Meant to respond to this earlier, but forgot. Haven't you heard of Fig Thing Types?

 

[Sabonea_Masukippa]

When the pokedex lists the Japanese name and the romaji doesn't match the katakata, I just scratch my head. But, I suppose if you say the official romanizations come from what names the Japanese came up with and then have to spell with katakana...it makes more sense. I assumed the Japanese version of Pokemon just used katakana, and fans came up with what the katakana must be referring to, or just mistranscribe it (ゾロア Zorua just looked like a poor ability to read katakana).

The games just use Katakana, but the anime and other official merchandise often use the romanizations. Sometimes they're counter-intuitive too; Hiyakkii etc are clearly derived from monkeybut the official romanizations are Hiyakkie, Boakkie and Yanakkie rather than Hiyakkey etc, probably because people thought they looked better. Or Moguryuu, whose official romanization is Mogurew despite the name's most obvious etymology.

And yeah, a lot of people think Zorua is wrong/born from ignorance, but really they're lacking that extra bit of info.

Hm, while Emboar sounds good, the "oo" might mean "king." "buoo" is a rather counter intuitive way to pronounce "boar" even for the Japanese.

It's not really counter-intuitive, some people will pronounce "boar" like "boor/boo" (like bore) in English and some will say "boar/boaa" (like moar). And the 'u' after b in buoo is a reduced vowel (like Tsutarja) so it's only barely audible. Really, it's one of two potential ways of writing boar in Japanese, but enbuoa エンブオア looks a bit messy, at least in my opinion, which is probably why they chose エンブオー.

Besides, with Jalorda as the Royalty Pokemon, I don't think they'd also give Emboar a reference to kings. Plus, it's a giant fire pig, Emboar just makes sense.

 

[M4zz]

Arceus' name. No one I physically know can pronounce it, mainly because english has strange literations and way out-into-left-field exceptions. It's supposed to be pronounced as "Ark-ee-us" not "Ar-see-us", yet no matter how hard I explain or even if others explain, no one gets it.

 

[Atoyont]

That's simply because the Japanese is clearly "Arseus," with an "s," not a "k." However, I have a feeling that some words, sound-wise, some words weren't taken into Japanese correctly, Arceus being one. In playing through Black, I found that they transcribed Energy with a hard "g." Similarly, I have a feeling that Genosect's name will be pronounced with a soft "g" in English, even though the Katakana clearly indicate a hard "g" sound.

 

[Sabonea_Masukippa]

That's simply because the Japanese is clearly "Arseus," with an "s," not a "k." However, I have a feeling that some words, sound-wise, some words weren't taken into Japanese correctly, Arceus being one. In playing through Black, I found that they transcribed Energy with a hard "g." Similarly, I have a feeling that Genosect's name will be pronounced with a soft "g" in English, even though the Katakana clearly indicate a hard "g" sound.

Well, that would be because Japanese has no soft G sound...unless you mean a J sound (as I assume you mean you're pronouncing them like Enurjii and Jenosect), they have that, but at least with Genosect's name it would have pushed it over the character limit (to ジェノセクト)

EDIT: BCVM22, I believe Genesect was confirmed to be the official romanization as genesect.com redirects to Melbourne IT, like meloetta.com and kyurem.com while genosect.com leads to a 404 of doom.
EDIT2: I actually fail at reading ... I mean, I was actually supporting supporting, not correcting, BCVM22... sure.

 

[Kuraikarasu]

Tha problum iz that Inglish speling iznt eksaktlii tha moust konsistunt thing in tha wurld in tha wai that it reprizents tha saundz that akchualii kum aut ov piipulz mouthz. Unforchunaitlii, this ofun liidz tu mispronunsiashun wen piipul furst kum akros wurds in riten form espeshalii tha maid-up wurdz yu ofun faind in fikshun, laik Poukamon.

Foa tha tl;dr kraud: English spelling != pronunciation and pronunciation != spelling and should be taken as a guide only.

(of course the above pseudo-phonetic transcription is representative of my own odd brand of Australain English

lol a grammar nazi's worst nightmare XD

I find it really annoying when a specific lower classman at my highschool will continue to talk about how he knows everything in pokemon when he doesn't know the difference between a ninetales and a grimer,
seriously he once tried to convince me that ninetales was a fire/psychic type

 

[Pucca_ness]

Hmm i've been noticing various peeves with spelling.

Houndour - Houndoor I've always pronounced it this way. I know it's Hour pronounced like our but for some reason it's always translated as "oor" to me.

Arceus - putting a K sound in there messes with how i was taught to spell and pronounce words. It's all about how and where you were taught. So it's "See-us" to me.

Arcanine - Arca-nine. I've always pronounced it this way, again it's how i perceived it whether it has Canine in it or not there's more to the word that makes it sound different.

Kyogre - Kai-o-grr - Seriously what is the other way of pronouncing this? I cannot see how. Kee-o-grr? That sound silly to me.

Dialga - I've always said DIE-al-ga. I think because the "Dia" part is relevant to Diamonds.

Interesting how we all think we're right but someone disagrees. It's best not to get annoyed by this sort of thing.

Although i remember laughing when a boy of around 11 said Pidgeot as "PIJ-IT" But ohwell.

I had one of those sticker books! I noticed the same thing with the hitmons and Farfetch'd and put it down to the editors being twits. Really they don't care and never will.

All this translation pronunciation and what not reminds me of the arguments i've had with people about how to pronounce FF character's names before voice acting came into them.

 

[Rennon]

The only things that annoy me in Pokemon are the pronunciation(<is this spelling right? to lazy to check)like Houndour - Houndoor
Arceus - Ar see us
and so forth.
When Kyogre first came out I pronounced it like this: Kayog-ree. Hahaha!

 

[Atoyont]

Well, that would be because Japanese has no soft G sound...unless you mean a J sound (as I assume you mean you're pronouncing them like Enurjii and Jenosect), they have that, but at least with Genosect's name it would have pushed it over the character limit (to ジェノセクト)

Yeah, that's how I'd pronounce it. But because they do have the "ji" sound, there's little excuse for the way they write "energy," IMO. I understand that writing Genosect with a "J" as ジェノセクト would have pushed it over the limit, but I understand that its etymology is from "genocide," couldn't just a plain ジ worked fine?

Meh, I'm a novice when it comes to Japanese.

 

[Sabonea_Masukippa]

Yeah, that's how I'd pronounce it. But because they do have the "ji" sound, there's little excuse for the way they write "energy," IMO. I understand that writing Genosect with a "J" as ジェノセクト would have pushed it over the limit, but I understand that its etymology is from "genocide," couldn't just a plain ジ worked fine?

Meh, I'm a novice when it comes to Japanese.

Well, enerugii is just the way it happened to come into the language and even some Japanese people have commented how weird it sounds comapred to the English original, if that's any consolation.

And it's just as likely that genesect's name comes from genome (ゲノム genomu) since it's been genetically altered with, in my opinion. Even if it was genocide, ji just wouldn't be the same as je or ge at getting the sound across - the vowels are too different.

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

The only things that annoy me in Pokemon are the pronunciation(<is this spelling right? to lazy to check)like Houndour - Houndoor
Arceus - Ar see us
and so forth.
When Kyogre first came out I pronounced it like this: Kayog-ree. Hahaha!

Seriously?! Everybody's just--"Houndour, Arceus, and Kyogre"--it's all I hear! Is everyone going to talk about those three pronunciations?

I'm kidding. I'm nowhere near that annoyed by that. On a serious note, I'd like to mention that I have an idea of how Arceus got two different pronunciations. In Japan, I guess they might have been deriving the "seusu" part from "Zeus." Arceus's myth does bear some resemblance to the Greek cosmogony.

That part of the name also seems slightly reminiscent of the Japanese goddess Amaterasu. I can't see any particular reason for this, but....

By pronouncing it "Ar-kee-us" in English, I believe they where emphasizing both his antiquity and his power. For example, in "Archaeopteryx," the "Archeo" means ancient. In "archangel," the "arch" means foremost, most important, etc.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[Tropios]

wait, is it pronounced arseus? That sounds pretty weird, like not powerfull enough for a god pokemon. But thats probably because i always said arkeus.

and about houndour, Im not english but Im pretty sure our shouldnt be pronounced as oor, thats pretty akward to pronnounce tbh.

 

[yukamina]

Or Moguryuu, whose official romanization is Mogurew despite the name's most obvious etymology.

What's the obvious etymology? Moguru? Looks like moguru and shrew.
How much Japanese do you know? It's unusually to find people who know Japanese off of my language forums...

 

[Tropios]

What's the obvious etymology? Moguru? Looks like moguru and shrew.
How much Japanese do you know? It's unusually to find people who know Japanese off of my language forums...

uum i know its not my business but just saying: he does a lot of the translations for this site

 

[yukamina]

uum i know its not my business but just saying: he does a lot of the translations for this site

-__- Well, if I knew stuff like that I wouldn't be asking. Besides, it still doesn't tell me how much Japanese he knows.

 

[Sabonea_Masukippa]

-__- Well, if I knew stuff like that I wouldn't be asking. Besides, it still doesn't tell me how much Japanese he knows.

I know enough to get by in daily conversations, and can understand ~80-90% of regular TV/movies without subtitles, unless it's a specialist area (like maths or science) but I'm working on that.

I can understand Kansai dialect (esp. Nara) and also a little bit of Nagoya and Yamagata dialects, although I can't speak the last two.

 

[GastlyMan]

The only thing that bothers me is that non-fans think Pikachu is the only Pokémon. I like Pikachu, but nobody has ever heard of Gastly.

Other than that...Who cares if someone can't pronounce a Pokemon's name right when maybe they don't watch the anime, or if they spell it wrong because Nintendo makes difficult to spell names? That's a little harsh, isn't it? Also, you can't expect everyone to know about EV/IV stuff, when some of us just don't have the time or patience to learn it. Besides, I read the guide on the main site and it made absolutely no sense to me.

I don't pronounce Pokémon Poh-Kay-mon, I pronounce it Pok-eh-mon. Is that such a sin? :/

I understand how it can be bothersome, and no offense or anything to any of you awesome people, but really! Just my opinion, anyway. :]

People can't get it right because they are imperfect.

 

[MetalFlygon08]

What irks me is that nostalgia freaks can only see 1st gen as Pikachu, Charizard, and Mewtwo.

 

[Adrexus]

I know that a lot of people say the names wrong, but even I a poke maniac still have trouble getting them right. I think one for me is pronouncing Dialga Die-al-ga. Also arceus is ar-see-us for me. Although I think a lot of people probably pronounce it that way.