"Kin Shi Huang"

[Gorbles]

That's typical British english pronounciation that really annoys me. They say "drawring" instead of drawing, "Miranur" instead of Mirana etc.

"typical" "British" "English"

There's three mistakes in a row, right there.

 

[kaspergm]

I thought that one was a particularly egregious mispronunciation, given the fact that the country is named in his honor. And it's not called "Kina".

Actually, in Danish, it's called exactly that: Kina.

 

[Couch Tomato]

Even if the narrator is coached to pronounce Qin as Chin with the ch sound coming from the front of the mouth, and even if Shi is pronounced Shr, none of it is correct if the tones aren't right.

It's like all those hipsters telling you pho is pronounced fuh. It is if you get the tone right and it so isn't if you don't. In English, you may as well call it foe because unless you speak Vietnamese pretty well, you're still saying it wrong.

There is however a kind of broadcast speech in which news anchors and such people are taught to pronounce Chinese names with proper consonant and vowel sounds but with neutral tones. This is likely the best compromise when saying Chinese names in English, but it doesn't mean Chinese people will understand who the hell you're talking about.

Eh, I don't think it needs to be that correct. English isn't a tonal language, so there's no expectation to include the tones. Native pronunciation isn't an expected standard either. Or else we'd have to say Vladimir Putin as "VlaDEEmir" and throw in a Russian accent while we're at it.

 

[killmeplease]

Yeah in English its Moscow not Mahskvah (or whatever you spell it) and in Russian its Vahshinkton not Washington.
Why it should be different with Qin?
People change pronounciation so its easier for their language. Its better than trying to imitate foreign accent.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Offtopic: I'm not a native English speaker (although I read English well). What does lizzle and rizzle mean? I'm not familiar with those words.

I think only Snoop Dogg is familiar with those words.

 

[Perl]

Chinese spellings in Romantic and Germanic languages are weird to the fault of scholars in the 16th century and on not agreeing on one standard of latinization. It's less of Qin being mispronounced, and more of it being misspelled. Didnt help when the CCP made their own latinization standard. There are countless standards, and for other scholarly languages like Arabic and Sandkrit. It's hard to translate a language with no concrete alphabet like other Asian languages such as Korean, Thai, or Tamil.

 

[Manifold]

Actually, in Danish, it's called exactly that: Kina.

In a lot of languages "China" is pronounced "Kina" or "Kitai". That pronouncement also explains why the Scythian city names are as they are.

 

[True_Candyman]

Qin Shi Huang is almost as difficult to pronounce from paper as Sean Bean

 

[cephalo]

China should dispense with existing transliterations, which are impossible to understand in any western language, and update it with something that makes sense. There's no way to know how to say something in Chinese by looking at it's spelling unless you are highly educated on the subject. That should probably change.

 

[Olleus]

The soft c in Optimus Princeps made me wince. Going for medieval church latin over classical latin seems like an odd choice.

But I also accept that this is a pretty small academic point that most people wont care about.

 

[Joketa]

Eh, I don't think it needs to be that correct. English isn't a tonal language, so there's no expectation to include the tones. Native pronunciation isn't an expected standard either. Or else we'd have to say Vladimir Putin as "VlaDEEmir" and throw in a Russian accent while we're at it.

It's not that it has to be correct. It has more to do with Hanyu Pinyin being an entirely different phonetic system than English, and it has to do with language tones being a whole other beast beyond accent. You've got some big leaps to make just to pronounce it, and as it stands, it will always sound like failed Chinese. This is because we don't have a proper standard for Chinese pronunciation. Any literate Chinese person can read Brad Pitt in Chinese characters and pronounce it the Chinese way. They don't have to know how it is pronounced in English. The same could be true for Chinese names except it requires people to learn a very different phonetic system. Looking at the letters of pinyin is more likely to fool a person than give them the ability to read it without English. Therefore, it's neither English nor Chinese.

Through language meme English speakers have learned some basics about Spanish. Most people will say "Hosay" and not "Joes" when they look at Jose. Obviously we aren't quite there yet with Chinese. At an academic level we have a decent standard for pronouncing Chinese names, but we don't at a common level.

I don't disagree that the pronunciation in Civ VI should've been at an academic level. I only submit that it's more complicated than that because there's not a common level pronunciation. At best, most people end up sounding like someone with a thick Texas accent saying, " I'm going to gay Pareee." To avoid sounding like a dork, they should've just used the common English pronunciation, "Paris." Unfortunately, no common standard exists, therefore you will always end up sounding like a dork unless you are well-coached.

That was my only point. Sorry if it was long-winded.

 

[Couch Tomato]

China should dispense with existing transliterations, which are impossible to understand in any western language, and update it with something that makes sense. There's no way to know how to say something in Chinese by looking at it's spelling unless you are highly educated on the subject. That should probably change.

For all the talk in these forums about Civ being Eurocentric, this is a very Eurocentric view. It's like saying that all J's should be pronounced like in English. Pinyin (the Mandarin Romanization) is highly effective and doesn't need to conform to western languages. All you have to do on your part is to open up your own world and learn a bit about language. For starters, if you know to pronounce Q's as CH, X's as SH, and C's as TS, you're already in a good spot.

 

[God of Kings]

Offtopic: I'm not a native English speaker (although I read English well). What does lizzle and rizzle mean? I'm not familiar with those words.

Good question.

"Lizzle" and "rizzle" are nonsense English-looking and English-sounding words used to illustrate how native Mandarin speakers, native Korean speakers, and native Japanese speakers can't differentiate some sounds.

By the way, many native English speakers have an extremely difficult time pronouncing some Polish words correctly.

Wroclaw doesn't sound like "rock law" or "war claw" in Polish at all. It sounds more like "vroh-tswahf."

Nahuatl orthography is based on Spanish orthography.

 

[Chinese American]

For all the talk in these forums about Civ being Eurocentric, this is a very Eurocentric view. It's like saying that all J's should be pronounced like in English. Pinyin (the Mandarin Romanization) is highly effective and doesn't need to conform to western languages. All you have to do on your part is to open up your own world and learn a bit about language. For starters, if you know to pronounce Q's as CH, X's as SH, and C's as TS, you're already in a good spot.

Pinyin is actually very consistent. Since Chinese allophones are also very consistent.

It is English and other European languages who mangled the alphabet to all kinds of contorted spellings.

There are like one billion native Mandarin speakers in the world, but a AAA game developer can't find a professional Chinese voice actor.

 

[Zaarin]

My first game was as China. I about cried when Sean Bean said /kɪn/. Surely there was a voice director--was he too starstruck to correct Bean's pronunciation? Don't get me wrong, Sean Bean is a great (voice) actor and I appreciate having a narrator who can actually emote, unlike "dry and stuffy" from Civ5--but someone could have at least given him some tips on how to pronounce the foreign names...

"Sithia"

Uh...that's exactly how Scythia is pronounced in English.

The soft c in Optimus Princeps made me wince. Going for medieval church latin over classical latin seems like an odd choice.

But I also accept that this is a pretty small academic point that most people wont care about.

I would have preferred Classical Latin myself, but by the time Trajan was emperor the velar plosives in Vulgar Latin had been palatalized. Actually, by the time Augustus was emperor the velars in Vulgar Latin had been palatalized. So I can't fault them too much on that one. And if it were Ecclesiastical Latin, it would have been /prɪnʧɛps/ instead of /prɪnsɛps/; the pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin is based on Italian.

 

[killmeplease]

There are like one billion native Mandarin speakers in the world, but a AAA game developer can't find a professional Chinese voice actor.

chinese are a very small fraction of the civ players and most of them use a pirated game anyways so no big deal
and i see no reason why the narrator should imitate chinese pronounciation while he speaks english
why its ok to say Moscow but Kin somehow is wrong? are chinese a master race everybody should be trying to please?

 

[narmox]

chinese are a very small fraction of civ players and most of them use a pirated game anyways so no big deal
and i see no reason why the narrator should imitate chinese pronounciation while he speaks english
why its ok to say Moscow but Kin somehow is wrong? are chinese a master race everybody should be trying to please?

Because Moscow is closer to the original sound than Kin is to Qin. Saying Kin is saying it based on the romanization, rather than how it originally sounds. If you had never seen it written in alphabet and just heard someone say his name, we'd never even be having this talk.

 

[killmeplease]

Because Moscow is closer to the original sound than Kin is to Qin. Saying Kin is saying it based on the romanization, rather than how it originally sounds. If you had never seen it written in alphabet and just heard someone say his name, we'd never even be having this talk.

Moscow is closer to MahskvAh than Kin to Chin?
In Russia we say Tsin' and nobody cares. Its our language, we can name anything how its easier for us. If its written Qin and people read Kin, why not. If some people are so much anxious about the "right" pronounciation they should rather promote the change in spelling (Qin to Chin or whatever).

 

[Menzies]

My first game was as China. I about cried when Sean Bean said /kɪn/. Surely there was a voice director--was he too starstruck to correct Bean's pronunciation? Don't get me wrong, Sean Bean is a great (voice) actor and I appreciate having a narrator who can actually emote, unlike "dry and stuffy" from Civ5--but someone could have at least given him some tips on how to pronounce the foreign names...

Unrelated, but one thing I've never thought about is how he himself would have said the title Qin Shi Huang. To my understanding, Old Chinese does not have /tɕʰ/ as a consonant.

Uh...that's exactly how Scythia is pronounced in English.

The great irony here is that we say it that way because of how it was written in English. The greek that it came from was Σκυθική.

 

[narmox]

Moscow is closer to MahskvAh than Kin to Chin?

Yeah, it sounds a lot closer! Now if I were to apply similar logic though, maybe we should call it Mock-ba (based on teh cyrillic MOCKBA)?

12 years ago I learned some Russian. To my surprise, CCCP wasn't "cee cee cee pee" but "ess ess ess air" (and not an English approximant "r" either), so I adapted and adjusted, now that I had learned something new. Makes sense to me, it's not about catering to overlords, being a hipster or anything of the sorts.

In Russia we say Tsin' and nobody cares. Its our language, we can name anything how its easier for us. If its written Qin and people read Kin, why not. If some people are so much anxious about the "right" pronounciation they should rather promote the change in spelling (Qin to Chin or whatever).

We all agree I think that the mistake is a result of romanization of the original Chinese character, for which there's no direct equivalent, so pinyin has to be used. Since there are a lot more Chinese sounds than English letters, the Q was chosen to represent the Ch sound, simple as that. I can't fault people who don't know that to pronounce it as Kin. The whole issue here is that for a game with a heavy history and world focus, it is a glaring mistake which could have been avoided.

Narmox.