Katawa Shoujo Forums

Atario wrote:Hiragana seems to work pretty well. Anyway, this is not a matter of interlingual subtleties like rising tones that English doesn't encode for or the like. It's outright lazy wrongness. "Reen" and "Rihn" are not that close, any more than nice and noose are.

Wahaha!~ as someone might say. I guess the problem is that where I'm living right now, the range of phonemes I'm exposed to is broader than usual. It doesn't improve my ability to tell native English speakers how to pronounce Asian sounds: it only improves my ability to tell when they're not making the right sound.

The 'r' sound in quite a large part of East Asia varies from something like a French 'r' to some sort of 'zhr' sound. It's not a clean 'r' as in 'reliable' or 'rage'. And so on, and so forth. About the only European language I know which attempts a wide enough range of symbols is Romanian, I think.

Perhaps it's a possibility that it's not 'outright lazy wrongness' but the inability to distinguish certain phonemes. Here's an old article about this phenomenon.

brythain wrote:Perhaps it's a possibility that it's not 'outright lazy wrongness' but the inability to distinguish certain phonemes.

Any native English speaker should certainly be able to distinguish grin from green. If we're talking about nonnative speakers, then they should be forgiven if not in possession of the range of phonemes necessary to distinguish, but at the same time they should also probably refrain from such debates…

Atario wrote:

brythain wrote:Perhaps it's a possibility that it's not 'outright lazy wrongness' but the inability to distinguish certain phonemes.

Any native English speaker should certainly be able to distinguish grin from green. If we're talking about nonnative speakers, then they should be forgiven if not in possession of the range of phonemes necessary to distinguish, but at the same time they should also probably refrain from such debates…

Oh, of course. That's obvious.

Random shower thought: It's a shame the devs can't experience KS the way the rest of us do, everything being a new experience and all. Must be one of the only downsides to being a developer.

TerrorOfTheHighSeas wrote:Random shower thought: It's a shame the devs can't experience KS the way the rest of us do, everything being a new experience and all. Must be one of the only downsides to being a developer.

As a developer, writing the scenes for characters that you guys then experience is the best part of being one. You guys get to experience it, we get to design, develop and write these characters from effectively nothing.

CoffeeDrive wrote:

TerrorOfTheHighSeas wrote:Random shower thought: It's a shame the devs can't experience KS the way the rest of us do, everything being a new experience and all. Must be one of the only downsides to being a developer.

As a developer, writing the scenes for characters that you guys then experience is the best part of being one. You guys get to experience it, we get to design, develop and write these characters from effectively nothing.

That does sound wonderful. I can imagine the sense of pride for your work, especially when well-received by your target audience, is a feeling like no other. Although there must be some part of you that wishes to get the chance to experience your final outcome as a consumer, rather than a developer?

@CoffeeDrive: Can I just say I can't stop watching your avatar .gif? Just lookit 'er go…

Atario wrote:@CoffeeDrive: Can I just say I can't stop watching your avatar .gif? Just lookit 'er go…

I've been doing the exact same thing for far too long

LolI.dance

Have fun!

CoffeeDrive wrote:LolI.dance

Have fun!

I can listen to that indefinitly and not get bored, so addicting.

and on the topic of Rin, though not conclusive, I started watching Shuffle and the protagonist's name is also Rin and it was just pronouned as Rin like you read it in a short and quick way and not like Reen, though again thats just one example so lets not open that debate again, just wanted to add something I heard

Guess men like Munchy just want to watch the world burn.

Anyway, here’s my contribution to the fire: I pronounce Rin as in bin, which seems to be the general approach for Westerners. Look at the Englsh dub for Rideback, the main character is called Rin and funimation went down the bin path. If it’s good enough for the pro dubbers, its fine for us plebs. Incidentally, the Rin from Rideback has a little brother called Kenji…Now if that happens in KS…..*shudders*

On the other side of the coin, the Japanese seem to have no idea how to pronounce Western names. Look at the main character in Gurren Lagann: Spelt Simon, pronounced Sea-Moan. When ADV dubbed it, they stuck with the Japanese way.

Rhodri wrote:Look at the main character in Gurren Lagann: Spelt Simon, pronounced Sea-Moan. When ADV dubbed, they stuck with the Japanese way.

It's also a valid Western pronunciation if the character is of Spanish/Latin American descent, among other ethnicities.

Well, you learn something new everyday. I think I've heard of the Latin American varient before, but never realised they were spelt the same as Simon.

CoffeeDrive wrote:LolI.dance

Have fun!

Heh, another one of those freaky doesn't-look-like-an-URL-anymore whatever-you-want TLDs! Whoa, it turns into a rave if you leave it long enough…

ogorhan wrote:I started watching Shuffle and the protagonist's name is also Rin and it was just pronouned as Rin like you read it in a short and quick way and not like Reen

If it's a dub, yeah, I'm not surprised. A lot of them don't bother getting it right either.

Rhodri wrote:If it’s good enough for the pro dubbers, its fine for us plebs.

[Shrug] Just know that one day you're going to offend an actual Rin in real life…

Incidentally, the Rin from Rideback has a little brother called Kenji…Now if that happens in KS…..*shudders*

She can keep him in line with her Nuclear Kicks.

On the other side of the coin, the Japanese seem to have no idea who to pronounce Western names.

Yeah, all sides are prone to it. Though the Japanese have the added layer of a rather limited native phoneme set, so even the closest they can come without going outside of their comfort zone will most often be pretty comical-sounding, e.g., "personal computer" → パーソナルコンピューター = "paasonaru konpyuutaa". I can only imagine what it must sound like to a native Russian speaker to hear a Japanese person alter and insert vowels between what should be twelve consonants in a row…

Rhodri wrote:I think I've heard of the Latin American varient before, but never realised they were spelt the same as Simon.

Usually it has an accent, like Simón, but I guess not in all cases, probably. New headcanon: Gurren Lagann takes place in far-future Mexico! (Wait, wrong thread. And fandom.)

Atario wrote:If it's a dub, yeah, I'm not surprised. A lot of them don't bother getting it right either.

Its was subbed.