Different Dragon Ball pronunciations that bother you

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Insertclevername » Thu Jul 11, 2013 3:35 pm

I say Satan as in the biblical figure but I totally acknowledge and understand why people would choose to say Sah-tan.

It's something like "Seiyan" that annoys me since there's no way to rationalize that pronunciation.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Fizzer » Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:02 pm

ABED wrote:
No, but this is a special case. Everyone in her family essentially has the exact word for some kind of underwear as their name, and Goku actually made fun of her name meaning underwear.
But the joke still works if it's a character makes a mistake. I'm sure you've heard jokes where a character makes a mistake about some character's name. Bulma sounds like a quirky name that could actually exist. By the way, not everyone in her family has a name that's the exact word for some type of underwear, unless you call him Dr. Briefs. It's usually written as "brief", but underwear is called "briefs", plural. This seems like making a mountain out of a molehill, plus, her first appearance has her wearing a shirt with "BULMA" written on it.
Maybe "essentially" wasn't the right word to use, I guess I meant "almost" but it's very clear what "Brief" is meant to be. In romaji, the name is "Buruuma", and I think it's basically known at this point that Toriyama was going for something like Blooma (but not "Bloomers"), but he transliterated it incorrectly on her T-shirt, and that ended up being the dub pronunciation.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by ABED » Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:04 pm

kei17 wrote:
ABED wrote:Does the pronunciation of Mr. Satan bother you? Videl is an anagram of Devil, so I would think the dub pronunciation wouldn't be that different.
No, it doesn't because it is not even an anagram or pun and can be considered to be just an English word.
ABED wrote:Unlike Japanese, vowels can have a number of different sounds.
That's not a problem with vowels themselves though. It's just that English has old-school and very weird spellings.
Videl is an anagram of Devil. The letters are changed around to form a different word or name. And yes, the vowels do have different sounds. The "a" in bar and cat have a different sound. Take "super" and "supper". One more consonant changes the sound of the "U".

Maybe "essentially" wasn't the right word to use, I guess I meant "almost" but it's very clear what "Brief" is meant to be. In romaji, the name is "Buruuma", and I think it's basically known at this point that Toriyama was going for something like Blooma (but not "Bloomers"), but he transliterated it incorrectly on her T-shirt, and that ended up being the dub pronunciation.
I hear ya, but 1 - I'm used to it, and 2 - I've never been that concerned about if the name scheme is retained. If people get the joke, good, but if they don't, it's just a name. Plus, Bulma roles off my tounge easier than Blooma.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by kei17 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:29 am

ABED wrote:And yes, the vowels do have different sounds. The "a" in bar and cat have a different sound. Take "super" and "supper". One more consonant changes the sound of the "U".
They're different vowels spelled the same. It's not that one phoneme metamorphoses into something different. I mean, it's a problem with orthography instead of phonetics.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by dbzfan7 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:42 am

Kao-Ken. I know it may not be spelled like that somewhere, but why call it Kao-Ken. It sounds like KO-Ken. There is no reason to use that over Kaio-Ken which they actually use in english names such as King Kai and Supreme Kai.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Kamiccolo9 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:45 am

dbzfan7 wrote:Kao-Ken. I know it may not be spelled like that somewhere, but why call it Kao-Ken. It sounds like KO-Ken. There is no reason to use that over Kaio-Ken which they actually use in english names such as King Kai and Supreme Kai.
Didn't one of the English Gokus pronounce it correctly?
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by dbzfan7 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:51 am

Kamiccolo9 wrote:
dbzfan7 wrote:Kao-Ken. I know it may not be spelled like that somewhere, but why call it Kao-Ken. It sounds like KO-Ken. There is no reason to use that over Kaio-Ken which they actually use in english names such as King Kai and Supreme Kai.
Didn't one of the English Gokus pronounce it correctly?
Peter Kelamis did.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Gonstead » Fri Jul 12, 2013 6:26 am

dbzfan7 wrote:
Kamiccolo9 wrote:
dbzfan7 wrote:Kao-Ken. I know it may not be spelled like that somewhere, but why call it Kao-Ken. It sounds like KO-Ken. There is no reason to use that over Kaio-Ken which they actually use in english names such as King Kai and Supreme Kai.
Didn't one of the English Gokus pronounce it correctly?
Peter Kelamis did.
Once.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by ABED » Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:02 am

kei17 wrote:
ABED wrote:And yes, the vowels do have different sounds. The "a" in bar and cat have a different sound. Take "super" and "supper". One more consonant changes the sound of the "U".
They're different vowels spelled the same. It's not that one phoneme metamorphoses into something different. I mean, it's a problem with orthography instead of phonetics.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by OutlawTorn » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:40 am

Insertclevername wrote:It's something like "Seiyan" that annoys me since there's no way to rationalize that pronunciation.
"Sail"
"Saint"

I'm not justifying the "Say-an" pronunciation, but there most certainly are "ai" combinations in English with produce the sound.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by dbboxkaifan » Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:29 pm

Gonstead wrote:Once.
And surprisingly just in that once he proved to be an absolutely amazing voice actor, he imitated Masako perfectly and oh wow, the way he said Kaio-ken was completely spot-on.

Schemmel improved his voice acting in Kai but still isn't near to Kelamis performance. He probably can't put so much power into his voice acting as Kelamis did, or just doesn't want to.

That reminds me, Schemmel's Goku going Super Saiyan on Freeza's arc his voice cracked/beeped for a second don't know if this was intentional or not but never liked it.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by kei17 » Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:40 pm

Gonstead wrote:
dbzfan7 wrote:
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Didn't one of the English Gokus pronounce it correctly?
Peter Kelamis did.
Once.
Three times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuViG2-w_To#t=1m49s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyYGQauafGw#t=2m53s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_4knRNn5qw#t=1m45s

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by ABED » Sat Jul 13, 2013 1:00 pm

dbboxkaifan wrote:
Gonstead wrote:Once.
And surprisingly just in that once he proved to be an absolutely amazing voice actor, he imitated Masako perfectly and oh wow, the way he said Kaio-ken was completely spot-on.

Schemmel improved his voice acting in Kai but still isn't near to Kelamis performance. He probably can't put so much power into his voice acting as Kelamis did, or just doesn't want to.

That reminds me, Schemmel's Goku going Super Saiyan on Freeza's arc his voice cracked/beeped for a second don't know if this was intentional or not but never liked it.
I disagree. Why is him imitating another actor a good thing? He should make it his own but keep it within the bounds of the character, and Kelamis is not all that good as Goku. The rhythm of his delivery is just one step up from Nadolny's young Goku who was so unnatural in her performance.

Schemmel took some time, though I don't think it took that long, to do Goku justice.
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Rocketman » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:15 pm

OutlawTorn wrote:
Insertclevername wrote:It's something like "Seiyan" that annoys me since there's no way to rationalize that pronunciation.
"Sail"
"Saint"

I'm not justifying the "Say-an" pronunciation, but there most certainly are "ai" combinations in English with produce the sound.
And there's "ei" combinations that make "igh" (Poseidon), which amuses me when people type "Seiyan".

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Gonstead » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:26 pm

Four times, actually. 3 in Movie 2 and once in Movie 3.

I should brush up on my DBZ movie info.

But Tree of Might? Eh... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvm7GM1qdU
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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by LeprikanGT » Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:13 am

Goku. I know I will be in the minority on this one but I distain with a passion "SonGoku". Not sure what it is about just hearing it said aloud, or any of the Japanese nicknames for him. And, yes, I've watched the entire show in Japanese AND English. I just prefer Goku or Kakarott.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Insertclevername » Sun Jul 14, 2013 1:16 am

Rocketman wrote:
OutlawTorn wrote:
Insertclevername wrote:It's something like "Seiyan" that annoys me since there's no way to rationalize that pronunciation.
"Sail"
"Saint"

I'm not justifying the "Say-an" pronunciation, but there most certainly are "ai" combinations in English with produce the sound.
And there's "ei" combinations that make "igh" (Poseidon), which amuses me when people type "Seiyan".


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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by Cipher » Mon Jul 15, 2013 2:01 am

Re: Videl: I can see that bothering some people. It's never gotten to me, personally, as I think, more than just reflecting the English pronunciation of her name pun, it's simply a more natural English pronunciation, but I can certainly see how it might be grating, as it's juuuuuuuuust off enough from the Japanese version to sound odd if you watch both.
kei17 wrote:They're different vowels spelled the same. It's not that one phoneme metamorphoses into something different. I mean, it's a problem with orthography instead of phonetics.
I know this is off-topic, but where did you learn such high-register English? Do you work in translation or something related to linguistics academia?

I'm not trying to be nosy; I'm just genuinely impressed.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by kei17 » Mon Jul 15, 2013 3:21 am

Cipher wrote:Re: Videl: I can see that bothering some people. It's never gotten to me, personally, as I think, more than just reflecting the English pronunciation of her name pun, it's simply a more natural English pronunciation, but I can certainly see how it might be grating, as it's juuuuuuuuust off enough from the Japanese version to sound odd if you watch both.
While I don't like it, I can understand why FUNi's pronunciation doesn't bother you because it's how English speakers pronounce when they simply read "Videl." It's the same as why you pronounce "Piccolo" as [píkəlòu] instead of [píkːolo]. But to me, the long and strong "i" in [bi:deru] is a very distinct and important part of her name in the Japanese pronunciation, so making it weaker feels a little too off.

Cipher wrote:
kei17 wrote:They're different vowels spelled the same. It's not that one phoneme metamorphoses into something different. I mean, it's a problem with orthography instead of phonetics.
I know this is off-topic, but where did you learn such high-register English? Do you work in translation or something related to linguistics academia?

I'm not trying to be nosy; I'm just genuinely impressed.
Thanks for your compliment. I major/specialise in sociolinguistics and smattered English phonology at university. I can't communicate well enough without dictionaries, though.

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Re: Different Dragon Ball pronunciations you hate

Post by ABED » Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:58 am

The Japanese only pronounce "I" one way. Seeing as how Videl is an anagram that comes from Devil, a weaker "i" sound is more appropriate. Beederu is the closest pronunciation they have to Videl. Are you suggesting Videl should be pronounced "Veedel"? Piccolo is pronounced they way it is because it's the name an instrument.
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