"Kin Shi Huang"

[killmeplease]

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.



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.

no analogy here, in english theres no cccp but ussr, which is pronounced exactly as its spelled. and peter (the great) is peter not pyotr
do you think peter is also closer to pyotr (so close theres almost no difference as nobody seems offended by such pronounciation) than kin to chin?
ok qin is intended to be pronounced as chin but i think everybody will read it as kin in the end.

 

[narmox]

no analogy here, in english theres no cccp but ussr, which is pronounced exactly as its spelled. and peter (the great) is peter not pyotr

But when you watched rockets launched and saw the text on the side of it, and you don't know it's "sssr" and you see CCCP, then you think "cee cee cee pee". So it was until I learned cyrillic, and adapted to the change. Now I know better what is written on there and what it actually means.

I'm not angry about other people who don't know this fact, but I would be worried about them if that was the case while they had any interest at all in the Russian space program or in the Russian language or Russian history...

do you think peter is also closer to pyotr (so close theres almost no difference as nobody seems offended by such pronounciation) than kin to chin? its ridiculous

You're beginning to stretch things now. But yes since Pyotr, isn't it written something like πetp in cyrillic? If someone was trying to be somewhat correct and would say petr instead of pyotr, I would be concerned too. Simple as that.

I fear we'll keep going in circles however, so I'll leave this thread at that, we've all said what needs to be said

 

[Couch Tomato]

no analogy here, in english theres no cccp but ussr, which is pronounced exactly as its spelled. and peter (the great) is peter not pyotr
do you think peter is also closer to pyotr (so close theres almost no difference as nobody seems offended by such pronounciation) than kin to chin?
ok qin is intended to be pronounced as chin but i think everybody will read it as kin in the end.

The bottom line is in the end, the official ENGLISH pronunciation is Chin (people are complicating things by arguing about tones, which do not exist on a word/syllable-level in English). This has never changed throughout history, even though with the advent of pinyin, his spelling has (it used to be "Ch'in"). You can't really argue this. The only thing that can be argued, which has been said before, is that it is easy to mispronounce Qin as "Kin." And for someone ignorant of spelling conventions, that may be okay, but that's not okay for a major historical game. And a game where its staff is clearly well aware of its pronunciation, as you can tell in the civ spotlight videos.

 

[Louis XXIV]

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.

That happens a lot. A shift from a hard C to soft C has affected the English pronunciation of both Greek and Latin names: Julius Caesar, Alcibiades, Tacitus, etc.

 

[kamex]

He has a strong Yorkshire accent. We don't all speak like that.

 

[cools0812]

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".

I have to point out the linkage theory between China and Qin is not widely accepted in China, but I agree it is a particularly egregious mispronunciation.
According to Old Chinese(OC) phonology reconstruction, Qin or 秦 was pronounced as dzin. (In both the proposed systems of Prof. Wang Li and Prof. Zhengzhang Shangfang, not sure whether the western reconstruction theory supports this or not)
In sanskrit word "cina" the first consonant is unvoiced, but 秦 is pronounced with a voiced dz-, and in most cases of loanwords between OC and sanskrit we observed, no voiced character was ever used to translate an unvoiced sound. And more interestingly, when the sanskrit word Cina or Cinisthāna was translated back into OC during Han dynasty, it was translated into "支那"or “震旦”, both starting with an unvoiced consonant. It just shown that these two types of sounds werent exchangable back then.
So for the etymology of "Cina", most scholars in China suggest Jin(晋), a northern vassal state of Zhou and a major player in Warring States era, the same name was used by a chinese dynasty from 3rd to 5th century CE. "晋" was pronounced as sin in OC. Some says “荆”, an alternative name of Chu, a major vassal state of Zhou in the south. State of Qin was not in a very good geographic position to communicate with other civilizations, and the Qin dynasty was just too short-lived to leave an impression on the outside world.

 

[killmeplease]

according to this, originally qin sounded somewhat like dzin (le guan)

 

[killmeplease]

The bottom line is in the end, the official ENGLISH pronunciation is Chin (people are complicating things by arguing about tones, which do not exist on a word/syllable-level in English). This has never changed throughout history, even though with the advent of pinyin, his spelling has (it used to be "Ch'in"). You can't really argue this. The only thing that can be argued, which has been said before, is that it is easy to mispronounce Qin as "Kin." And for someone ignorant of spelling conventions, that may be okay, but that's not okay for a major historical game. And a game where its staff is clearly well aware of its pronunciation, as you can tell in the civ spotlight videos.

i believe theres no such a thing as "mispronounciation". any variant is valid as far as people understand each other. languages change over time and if viewed from such a perspective every language is a spoiled version of some older language, and any pronounciation is wrong. i think most english speakers would read it as kin so you may consider it to be a "not-a-historian" dialect of english. not to say ch'in is a modern pronounciation and it is not much more accurate than kin when referring to a 220 BC state.

 

[True_Candyman]

TBH anything that conveys intended understanding is correct enough and if it's game breaking or immersion breaking for you then you are living in an idealistic bubble that doesn't reflect reality.

Sean Bean's pronunciation gives me a little chuckle every time I hear it and that's good enough for me

 

[Kwami]

Can we at least all agree that it's super annoying when broadcasters (and as a result, pretty much everyone else) Frenchifies the Chinese 'j' as a 'zh' sound, as in Beizhing instead of Beijing?

Anyway, Tokeemoon is worse than Kin.

EDIT: Also, for anyone interested, a brief history of the word 'China' and how not to say it in Japanese, 'less you want to sound like a racist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shina_(word)

 

[Menzies]

Can we at least all agree that it's super annoying when broadcasters (and as a result, pretty much everyone else) Frenchifies the Chinese 'j' as a 'zh' sound, as in Beizhing instead of Beijing?

Both ways are perfectly valid and understood in English.

 

[Kwami]

Both ways are perfectly valid and understood in English.

They're both understood, but one is much more wrong than the other. Chinese words aren't the only ones that suffer from this phenomenon. It seems that English speakers, at least in the US, treat every foreign word as they do French words, because French is foreign.

The reason that it's so annoying is because the English 'j' character and the Pinyin 'j' character are pretty much exactly the same! There's no good reason to make a 'zh' sound when you're pronouncing Chinese words in English!

Here's some interesting analysis of it, from The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...c-olympic-announcers-please-read-this/260473/
http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...ons-more-on-the-beijing-beizhing-wars/260715/

 

[Zaarin]

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?

Because Moscow and Qin "Chin" are the correct English pronunciations.

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.

That happens a lot. A shift from a hard C to soft C has affected the English pronunciation of both Greek and Latin names: Julius Caesar, Alcibiades, Tacitus, etc.

True, and Greek upsilon was also a front rounded vowel (at least in Attic Greek) like French u and German ü. And of course at the time θ φ χ were aspirated stops, not fricatives. So ultimately something like Skutia would probably be closer to the original Greek and therefore probably also to the original Scythian. But language change happens, especially when transmitting from one language to another (and Scythia got passed through three or four languages...).

 

[Xen]

Likewise, native Mandarin (and native Japanese) speakers will have an extremely difficult time differentiating between "lizzle" and "rizzle."

The difficulty for Japanese speakers in separating r/l is real, but in my experience teaching. English to Mandarin speakers they tend not to have any real difficulty. Indeed, the Beijing accent sounds like it puts “R”s into everything anyway. (but mybear is more accustomed to the Taiwanese accent, which is much softer. Northern Mandarin sounds rough by comparison. To me at least!)

 

[Menzies]

They're both understood, but one is much more wrong than the other. Chinese words aren't the only ones that suffer from this phenomenon. It seems that English speakers, at least in the US, treat every foreign word as they do French words, because French is foreign.

The reason that it's so annoying is because the English 'j' character and the Pinyin 'j' character are pretty much exactly the same! There's no good reason to make a 'zh' sound when you're pronouncing Chinese words in English!

Here's some interesting analysis of it, from The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...c-olympic-announcers-please-read-this/260473/
http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...ons-more-on-the-beijing-beizhing-wars/260715/

It's called a hyperforeignism.

Again, cities get different names in different languages, and how we say Beijing is already different enough that a minor hyperforeignism that is well understood is anything but a major issue. Particularly in a language with so many regional differences, I would have Beijing low on my list of concerns for "wrong".

To quote a friend from Beijing: "You all just mangle the sound anyhow, just call it Baltimore for all I care".

Equally, if something is common enough to complain about, it's part of the language now. The linguist in you should be reveling in this hyperforeignism, not trying to stamp it out like some genocidal maniac.

 

[Guandao]

Nothing compares to Morgan Sheppard's mangling of Majapahit and Gajah Mada in Indonesia's loading screen in Civ5

Without pronunciation guides, it's expected that English speakers will mispronounce foreign names.

 

[Menzies]

Nothing compares to Morgan Sheppard's mangling of Majapahit and Gajah Mada in Indonesia's loading screen in Civ5

Without pronunciation guides, it's expected that English speakers will mispronounce foreign names.

Without pronunciation guides, it's expected that all speakers will mispronounce foreign names from languages they aren't familiar with.

 

[Ozisl]

(In Latin letters it is just Moskva)

 

[Couch Tomato]

i believe theres no such a thing as "mispronounciation". any variant is valid as far as people understand each other. languages change over time and if viewed from such a perspective every language is a spoiled version of some older language, and any pronounciation is wrong. i think most english speakers would read it as kin so you may consider it to be a "not-a-historian" dialect of english. not to say ch'in is a modern pronounciation and it is not much more accurate than kin when referring to a 220 BC state.

Again, that's a loose definition of "mispronunciation." By your logic, we can pronounce any guy name Jose as "Joes." Yes, people understand what you mean when you say "Joes" or "kwesadillah," but you make yourself look like a fool. Names like Qin are no different. The only time that it's really considered acceptable to butcher the pronunciation of names is when they are non-English sounds. So "Recep Erdogan" is still expected to be pronounced "Rejep Erdo-an" (as most well-trained news broadcasters do), but it is okay to butcher "Chinese yuan" because the u does not exist in English.

 

[Menzies]

Again, that's a loose definition of "mispronunciation." By your logic, we can pronounce any guy name Jose as "Joes." Yes, people understand what you mean when you say "Joes" or "kwesadillah," but you make yourself look like a fool.

I've never met a person in my life who would hear "Jose" said like "kwesadillah" and understand what they meant. Someone's name is an interesting one as well, as it's one of the few times that there is a particular pronunciation, as it's set by them. If someone calls their kid Kviiilynne, and it's meant to be said like Caitlin, then that's what it is. English spellings and pronunciations are linked by little more than magic and fairies for a lot of names though anyhow.

A mispronunciation isn't something that you'd understand outside of context though, and using your example, a lot of people wouldn't get "José" from someone saying /dʒəʊz/. With it being someone's name, it has a very particular pronunciation for it to be understood as that person, as people talk to that person and have heard their name said in that particular way. There are plenty of people who share names, so a mispronunciation in a name can make it misunderstood very easily.

Names like Qin are no different. The only time that it's really considered acceptable to butcher the pronunciation of names is when they are non-English sounds. So "Recep Erdogan" is still expected to be pronounced "Rejep Erdo-an" (as most well-trained news broadcasters do), but it is okay to butcher "Chinese yuan" because the u does not exist in English.

The way Sean Bean read it was a mispronunciation, but at the end of the day, it's the mispronunciation of the English form of the Mandarin form of an Emperor who died over two thousand years ago. I'd hope they do better, but it's hardly a disaster, and from context it's clear he's not talking about anyone else, particularly with the great big picture of him on the screen, and the name written next to it. Qin Shi Huang is not a common enough name that it's likely to cause confusion.