Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Orc Town

I was reading a blog about the pronounciation of various areas and names in WoW and was reminded of something funny. While I sometimes struggle to say names of places, I feel I have a pretty firm grasp on how to say them aloud, as well as the proper way to vocalize player character names that are of greater complexity that Xxxxsephirothxxxx (on a side note, anyone who names a character any variation of "Sephiroth" should be forced to pick another name. Come on people, you can do better than that). It's probably a bit mean of me, but I always take a perverse pleasure in listening to other people butcher WoW names in Vent. The first time I came across this was when my brother was trying to say the name of the Orc/Troll Capital City of Orgrimmar. He had (still has) a terrible time with it. I have no idea why. It got to the point where he'd sound like the giant in all those Disney cartoons: "In Orgama . . Orgrinn . . .Ormagon . . . . . . . Orc Town . . . with green gravy." While I get a chuckle when I think about this (and when my GM tries to say the name of anyone in the guild who he doesn't have a nickname for), it always makes me wonder: what am I saying wrong? Is it really pronounced Oot-gahrd Keep? or am I right in saying You-teh-gahrd? Who knows? I think I'll just type that one from now on.

1 comment:

  1. I think that one in particular is "Ho" just because it sounds right . . . and it sounds more Native American (see: Navajo) which seems to be the heavist influence for the Tauren race. Some of the Tauren stuff just has too many vowels for it's own good though, like the name of their language. Taurahe, anyone?

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