Another vote for tea-fling.
Now, how does one pronounce Aasimar?The most technically correct approach would be to treat it as two separate syllables, with the first A pronounced as with the long form and the second A pronounced with the short form ("lame" is pronounced with a long A, "lamb" is pronounced with a short A). This would mean Aasimar would be pronounced as "ay-az-i-mar"
This is precisely how our group pronounces it, and your later reference to Baal is precisely how we came to it.
We also go tea-fling, which was my original internal pronunciation later confirmed for me by Planescape: Torment.
Unrelated since PF doesn't use them by the same name, but our pronunciation for genasi was Jee-nah-see, under the assumption that the "Ge-" beginning and "-i" ending should have the same sound as "genie".
It's pronounced a lot like "Drow".Which is pronounced like bow, I hear.
Like a bow and arrow or the bow of a boat?
We've always gone with bow of a boat. Be quite a nasty shock to be wrong after twenty-five years.
I might be too set in my ways to change at this point; much like I am with Sigil: the City of Doors. Did you know it's officially supposed to be Sig-il, not Sij-il? Bar that, cutter.
I recognise that TEEF-ling is the official decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it.
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Now that we know that, take a look at German dialects that are still the closest to MHG: Bavarian and most Austrian dialects explicitly. In those, the word for 'devil' would be Deifi, Teifl, Deifel, Deibel or similar variations, with the [ei] sound sounding like the word tie (as in: formal neckware), which indicates that this pronounciation might be correct.
I would subscribe to that logic if the word were spelled teifling. Tiefling, on the other hand, is clearly pronounced like «tief» if a German etymology is posited, German pronunciation being straightforward as it is. Otherwise you might as well argue that the Old High German pronunciation ([ˈtyːfal]?) should be used.
I was going to say "if it is derived from the German language, it would be tee..." because the second of two neighbor vowels is typically pronounced, though I did not realize it was a word.
What do you mean, the second of two neighbor vowels is typically pronounced? While it's true that most German vowel digraphs correspond to diphthongs, «ie» is an exception in that is represents the monophthong [iː].
The two «a» in Aasimar clearly mark it as a non-English word, at which point pronunciation should default back to basic Latin vowel values, so: Ah-zee-mar [ˈɑːziˌmɑr].
Sigil is an existing English word pronounced [ˈsɪdʒəl]. The fact that it derives from a Latin word has never prevented English from palatalizing its g's, cf. "page", "gender", "magic", etc.
Like a bow and arrow or the bow of a boat?
Jeez, people, that's what the International Phonetic Alphabet is for.
Drow is [draʊ], not [droʊ].
It's proʊnʌnʐ.
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Sig-il makes sense. It has Latin roots and Latin has no J sound.The City of Doors has Latin roots? I had no idea!
All roads lead to Rome.
All doors too, it seems.
As far as Drow; both R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood pronounce it lie cow. And as they practically invented everything that drow are in D&D (and Pathfinder) I will take their wood for it.
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to me drow will always be pronounced lake bow... and the only thing where I regard salvatore as an authority, is how to write even worse than Moorcock... I've read stuff by him that was actually improved in French translation, and rue the time I spent reading it.
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Of course, long before that, folks at TSR admitted that even within the walls of TSR, both pronunciations were used and accepted.
In fact, I personally heard Frank Mentzer himself (as in, close friend of Gygax and one of the first employees hired at TSR) say 'drow' numerous times many years ago (as in, back in the early 80's) and he pronounced it 'dro', as in, rhymes with no, crow, or show.
So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)
Of course, long before that, folks at TSR admitted that even within the walls of TSR, both pronunciations were used and accepted.
In fact, I personally heard Frank Mentzer himself (as in, close friend of Gygax and one of the first employees hired at TSR) say 'drow' numerous times many years ago (as in, back in the early 80's) and he pronounced it 'dro', as in, rhymes with no, crow, or show.
So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)
I now have to wonder how many times a dark elf party guest hasn't attended in your games, just so you can have a "drow no-show".
Of course, long before that, folks at TSR admitted that even within the walls of TSR, both pronunciations were used and accepted.
In fact, I personally heard Frank Mentzer himself (as in, close friend of Gygax and one of the first employees hired at TSR) say 'drow' numerous times many years ago (as in, back in the early 80's) and he pronounced it 'dro', as in, rhymes with no, crow, or show.
So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)
Interesting. I'm of the same opinion - started with that pronunciation back in '79. Why? Purely anecdotal evidence, but we had friends that went down to Lake Geneva for some early GenCon gaming. They met and either played with (or witnessed) game sessions with Gygax himself. They came back with that pronunciation, because they claimed that's how Gygax pronounced it.
Then they ran our whole Wargames Club through a massive assault on a Drowic stronghold, inspired and based loosely off the D3 Module, Vault of the Drow. We all got slaughtered. Good times...
Now, back to the original reason for the thread...
Tea-Fling. That would be my preference.
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So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)
I first heard it pronounced as 'How now brown Drow,' and it was many years before I even considered that it could be pronounced as No-Show Drow.
I was never a huge fan of the word tiefling, in general, but it doesn't annoy me as much as aasimar (or baatazu or tanar'ri). Made up words are fine, I do it all the time, but made up words with double vowels, y's replacing the i's, or apostrophe's for no Zeus-damned reason hop up and down on my last nerve. In cleats.
Ignoring the vowel issue, is it
tee-fling
or
teef-lingI would say it's the second, because -ling is a reasonably common suffix in English.
This may be a regional accent thing, but both of those sound exactly the same coming out out my mouth at normal speed.
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So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)I first heard it pronounced as 'How now brown Drow,' and it was many years before I even considered that it could be pronounced as No-Show Drow.
Interestingly enough, my experience was pretty much the exact opposite. Literally everyone I knew that played D&D back in the late '70's and '80's pronounced it as rhyming with crow or show. I'd *never* heard anyone rhyme it with now or cow until decades later ...
The idea that there even *was* any other way to pronounce it never even occurred to any of us.
So, to my mind, Drow rhymes with 'show' and always will! :)I first heard it pronounced as 'How now brown Drow,' and it was many years before I even considered that it could be pronounced as No-Show Drow.
I was never a huge fan of the word tiefling, in general, but it doesn't annoy me as much as aasimar (or baatazu or tanar'ri). Made up words are fine, I do it all the time, but made up words with double vowels, y's replacing the i's, or apostrophe's for no Zeus-damned reason hop up and down on my last nerve. In cleats.
James Jacobs has said that each Paizo employee is allowed one apostrophe during their career, apparently. He used his on Cyth-V'sug. (At least the stop actually makes sense there.)
Chalk another one up for "tea-fling." And one for "az-ih-maar."
The thing about English pronunciation rules is that they vary widely based on what language a word was originally derived from. It's kind of a mongrel like that. So you could make a decent argument for quite a few different pronunciations of pretty much anything.
(I'll never be able to stop pronouncing "daemon" as "damn-on," though, even though everyone around me says "day-mon." Thanks, Old English classes!)