How do you pronounce them?

[Humer]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
R'lyeh: Rye-lee (like the name Riley; could be rye-leh, though)

I'd go for: R-lee, IMO no vowel between 'R' and 'l'. It's kinda hard to pronounce (like "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!", any pronouciation guides?)... Then again, I'm not a native speaker of R'lyehian(?) or english...

- Humer

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Raen:
I don't know who CJ Cherryh is,

CJ Cherryh is a history lecturer turned fantasy sci fi writer who produces, IMO, the best Sidhe inspired fantasy I have read.

but her view is incorrect.,

You may well be right but I'm cautious of your certainty as I'm not sure the pronunciation of Daoine Sidhe is something a modern person can be sure of. This might account for the fact that you and CJ have different pronunciation despite both being knowledgeable about your subject.

I've just been reading up on the Celts after having been told the Picts were Celts - they were probably the amalgamen of a previous people with a small Celtic conquering overlay later reinforced by the merging of the Scots (ie Celts from Ireland) and the Picts. The thing that came through out of my reading is that the Celts were a dynamic sub-group of the peoples occupying central Europe around ~1000 BC who split off and went a conquering establishing themselves as a warrior aristocracy dominating other peoples. As such their myths and legends have influenced and been influenced by many different cultures as has the language which evolved many sub branches.

Although I am of primarily Celtic origin I have a caution about the Celtic thing as its a bit of fashion to applaud the Celtic achievements and accredit them with the achievements of others. According to many Celt enthusiastic authors the Celts were the inspiration for everybody at the time. However the Celts were a peripheral group to the then center of civilisation (the near east/eastern mediterrainen) so this is unlikely. If you study the Bronze Age mediterrain you will read that supposidly Celtic designs were in fact slight modifications of earlier imports from Crete as the trade for Tin (crucial in making bronze and very rare in the Near East) meant large amounts of goods produced in the mediterrain found there way north and west into Celtic and other hands. If you look at the armour and weapons of Anatolia around the time of the Trojan War and the subsequent Sea Peoples conquests some of them could be Celtic warriors. Hardly suprising since many of these Sea Peoples ended up going west and amongst other things were possibly responsible for founding Rome and bringing a higher level of culture to much of the western mediterrainian basin and in turn influencing the emerging Celts. Its not impossible that the impetuos that created the Sea Peoples had its reflection in the emergence of the Celts or even that descendents of a branch of the Sea Peoples played a role in the emergence of the Celts as a dynamic force.

As an example of how this can work it is postulated that Mycaenean Greek culture emerged after a Greek prince/mercenery fled the defeat of the Hyksos occupation of Egypt with his Hysos princess wife, many retainers, craftsmen and much wealth. The most impressive Mycaenean grave finds are at the very start of the first dynasty of rulers and reminsicent of Egyptian and Hyksos work. So just as bands of Celts came to dominate many other cultures and inject a new dynamism in them it is likely that the begining of Celtic dynamism had an external ingredient.

It is a fascinating period of history in which great progress is being made due to the ongoing translation of Hititte writings and the recent finds such as that of the Royal Library of the original ruling House of Carchemesh. This survived the sack by the Hittites as the Palace feel on top of it.

I really have wandered off the topic - but I am fascinated by this period as it feeds into so much.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

My favourite cuthullu mad Game Master prononucies it "ril-ee-a" - this is at least easy to say.

[Graeme Dice]

Doesn't anybody else speak any French here? Look at all the people who are massacring Marignon.

I mean, how do you pronounce Champagne.

[HJ]

Ar-kos-kef-ah-leh - the word has a Greek sound to it. Cephale (Kefale) means head in Greek.

[Edi]

Arcoscephale: Arko-ske-FAH-LEH
R'lyeh: RI-ly-EH (and the y is a separate sound in Finnish, much like in 'system', but more pronounced. Try pronouncing 'oo', but at the front of your mouth instead of at the back)
Jotunheim: Yo-TUN-hime
Vanheim: Van-HIME
Ermor: Err-MORR
Abysia: Aby-SIA (again the Finnish y)
C'tis: k (glottal stop) TISS
Caelum: Ca-e-LUM (the ae is pronounced together, the Finnish spelling would be Cae-lum, with a diftong in the first syllable)
Marignon: Mar-ing-NYON
Machaka: Mah-CHA-kah
T'ien Chi: T(glottal stop, but can be omitted) ien TSHEE (or alternatively Khee)
Pythium: Pyy-THIUM (y is Finnish again, and long, sort of like in python, not the why y)

Edi

[johan osterman]

We pronounce the names as swedish as possible.

Kristoffer, who is the principal originator of the nations their flavour and their names, had words or names from different cultures in mind when he made most of the nations, but that doesn't mean that he or anybody else around here bothers to pronounce them in the 'correct way' suggested by the language that the name originated from, this is partly due to that we chatter quite a bit about dominions and after a while the names etc tends to get swedified. Since Vanheim and Jotunheim are the two nation whose names are Scandinavian in origin these are probably the only ones that we pronounce somewhat similarily to their etymological roots. C'tis and a few others do not really have any etymological roots so I guess our colliqual swedish pronounciation is the 'correct' one for those. But Illwinter and its associates are not particularily good at linguistics, or particularily interested.

If you still think that the 'correct' pronounciation is important you might try to reconstruct it from the cultures that the nations are derived from or inspired by, in all likelyhood your guess at the 'correct' greek pronounciation of Pangaea is as good or better than ours, if you are chinese I wouldn't dream of trying to teach you how to pronounce Tien Chi in a believable way, and so on.