Cipher wrote:It's the choice to view people who use "Say-an" as "willfully ignorant," that I really wanted to object too, but I guess it got a bit blurred.
I'm with you. "Say-an," correct or otherwise, has taken a life of it's own. We can have the exact same argument (and have) about "Bulma." We know that
technically her name should be sound something like "Bluuma" but, given the spelling, how can anybody fairly complain about "Bull-ma" being the preferred pronunciation among English speakers?
I figure, given the proliferation of "Say-an" in the English-speaking world, it's effectively become an appropriate English pronunciation by sheer dominance. Especially since "Saiyan" is more often used in English-speaking contexts anyway. Outside of a few minor situations, the Japanese mostly stick to "Saiya-jin."
Now that might sound brutish in a "might makes right" way but that's actually how language tends to develop in general. Things become "correct" by virtue of their common use. Take the word "until." We tend to think of "until" as the whole word and "till" as an abbreviated, less formal approximation. The truth is, though, that "till" came first. "Until" was the result of pretentious Victorian era writers trying to be fancy. But none of that really matters now. "Until" is pretty dominant and people tend to prefer it. Dubious origins or not, it won.
It's perfectly reasonable to indulge in linguistic discourse and have proponents of "sigh-an" continue to use that pronunciation and make their argument for it. But I'd argue, like the word "niche" has two acceptable pronunciations (nitch, neesh), "Saiyan" has two acceptable pronunciations.
