z
Iggy wrote:If I'm reading that right, the Q makes a K sound? So like... Krain-es-fur?
Just try as best as you can
Wunderbar wrote:The Q is a sound actually made in the throat, even further back than the sound romanized as q in Arabic. The ai is line the i in "mine". The "e" is a schwa sound like the a in "about" the "s" is a hard and sharp s sound, the pf is like German pf, the "u" is like the oo in book, and the hr is another throat sound that sounds a bit like an h and r mixed. IPA is [ˈʡʀaɪ˥.nəsˌp͡fʊʜ˥].
Wunderbar wrote:[...] a beast of a word in terms of not being similar to English and having rare sounds.
Wunderbar wrote:If you pronounce it like crane-ez-fur you will not be understood by any Choskcher.
Gladius wrote:Wunderbar wrote:The Q is a sound actually made in the throat, even further back than the sound romanized as q in Arabic. The ai is line the i in "mine". The "e" is a schwa sound like the a in "about" the "s" is a hard and sharp s sound, the pf is like German pf, the "u" is like the oo in book, and the hr is another throat sound that sounds a bit like an h and r mixed. IPA is [ˈʡʀaɪ˥.nəsˌp͡fʊʜ˥].
So, you're taking two arbitrarily-chosen languages which have little to no plausible/previous historical cultural crossover and mashing them together into something that by your own admission is:Wunderbar wrote:[...] a beast of a word in terms of not being similar to English and having rare sounds.
I am a language major, having formally studied four languages if you count my native tongue, and generally have a good gist of being able to pronounce words I have not seen often in said languages when other people get their eyes or tongues tied in a knot trying to read them. And I am struggling to pronounce your names. (And yes, Arabic is one of those languages, and I am intimately familiar with the "qof"/ق sound which you have described.)
If you will notice, in Tolkien's books and some of the other aforementioned literature in Jhinx's post, though the names sound or look foreign to us, they are still generally easy on the eyes after a relatively short period--about a quick moment--to decipher what Romanized characters make up that name. And even if the reader doesn't pronounce it quite right, generally they will come close.
These names are not that.
These are stumbling blocks. If not outright walls.
As Snoink said, these are names that will get your readers putting down the book because what average reader is going to want to torture their eyes with that for three-hundred-or-so pages?Wunderbar wrote:If you pronounce it like crane-ez-fur you will not be understood by any Choskcher.
Well, there's at least one good thing about this discussion--you'll know what non-Choskcher characters will totally butcher your MC's name!
P.s.--Just to be clear, my four languages stretch the gammut of pronunciation types: Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and English.
Gender:
Points: 17
Reviews: 63