Is there a game related thing you refuse to pronounce the "right" way?

For example, I always pronounced Titus from FFX, "Tide-us" and when things like Kingdom Hearts came out and called him "Tee-dus", I absolutely refused to acknowledge the official, "right" pronunciation. Even to this day, I almost have to plug my ears if someone pronounces it that way.

Another one for me is Zealot from StarCraft. I always call the unit "Zi-lot" but watching pro-SC and SC2, apparently it's pronounced "Ze-let" which just doesn't sound right to me having called him my way for so many years.

At the moment, I read Nier as "nigh-er" 100% of the time, and when I hear people on podcasts say "near," it takes me a second to figure out what the hell they're talking about. Similarly, I still see/say Nioh as "nigh-oh." There is no way I can convince myself that it should be pronounced "neo."

Ryu will always be Riye-ooh to me.

I'm pretty sure the right pronunciation of "Orokin" is "Or-o-keen" and not "Oro-ken" like the voice-overs say.

Well, "zealot" is an actual word with a specified pronunciation, but I can understand the confusion, considering how the "zea" IS pronounced the way you use it in the word "zeal".

It's the made up terms that I occasionally refuse to pronounce the "right" way. The only one that immediately comes to mind is chocobo, which is supposed to be pronounced with the O sound emphasized with each O. As a kid I always thought it started out like the word chocolate(choc-a-bough), and I hold to that. The canon pronunciation is a little muddy sounding for me.

@relkin:

As far as I'm concerned, this is how you pronounce Tidus's name:

The reason I like Tidus pronounced the unofficial way is that it's essentially the same as Titus the Roman emperor, and it's a much cooler sounding name as a result. It also implies the water element affinity the character has by preserving the pronunciation of "tide." I feel like the only reason they made the "tii-dusu" pronunciation official is because that's how you'd read it in Japanese, and the Squeenix didn't want to lose the wordplay by respelling it to pronounce properly in Japanese. It feels like a hypercorrection by snooty "the Japanese way is always the right way" people. It's also less official than people think, as Square themselves have zig-zagged back and forth in various Final Fantasy-related works.

I pronounce Mario the same way Jeff Bakular does even though Mario himself (of Super Mario fame) pronounces it the other way. I realise this is just some weird regional thing and you can say it whichever way you want but I still feel like i'm being a dick saying it any other way than how Mario specifies. But it's how i've always said it and I like saying it that way.

Lara is not pronounced Laura though, they're two different names, lets get that straight. Right? Cool.

I usually change to proper pronunciations if I learn them. Ninja Gaiden for example.

I'm about 50-50 on saying Katamari Damacy and Damashi.

I do get slightly miffed when people say things pretty objectively wrong. Like saying Choca-bo, an example from earlier. I've heard Zelda terms get really weird. Kokiri and Deku have like four different interpretations it seems for what should be really simple. The Persona 5 dub at times triggered me.

I like to get words right because no one likes someone who says libarry, expresso, exzecutable, expecially, artic and so on.

It's weird to put the word right in quotes, as if you're disputing that the creators of a thing could tell you the proper pronunciation of the thing that they created. It's like if somebody told you their name was pronounced Ste-FAWN but you insisted on calling them STEF-in because 'that's how I think it should be pronounced based on its spelling.'

Also, zealot is a real word divorced of its usage in StarCraft.

Swee-kid-in

Essentially only when the developers have used a foreign word that they mispronounce but which I know the actual pronounciation of. Can't remember any specific examples, but Skyrim certainly had some Scandinavian/Norse names in there that they mangled a lot.

American games often tend to mix up the German "ei" and "ie" sounds too, so names ending in "-stein" tend to "officially" be pronounced "-steen/stean" when in the actual language it's supposed to be "-stayn/stine".

Chocobo. Tidus. A lot of final fantasy things I guess.

DIE-AH-BLOW

@fisk0: Oh gosh, that just reminded me of Final Fantasy XII and the Marquis which the dub team decided needed its British pronounciation "mar-QUISS" instead of its French one "MAR-key" even though they used the French spelling.

Most of the "official" Pokemon pronunciations (if you count the show as official) are really bad in my opinion. I mean some words are up for debate, but I dunno how they came up with some of these

Exec You Da Bull

I pronounce "NES" like a word. Not "N.E.S.", but "nes". I pronounce "SNES" like snake, only with an es instead of an ake on the end.

"Zebes" is pronounced "Zeb-es", not "Zeebs". BRAD.

One of the (several petty) reasons I don't want to play the DS version of Final Fantasy IV is because they pronounce Cecil "Sess-ul", not... well, Cecil.

I pronounce Asus as A-Sus, instead of the supposedly the correct way of Ah-Seuss. But, then I also pronounce 9 in French as Nerf.

I call Pokémon, Pokéman, sometimes. Does that count?

Not sure if they're wrong or just regional (American?), but the way most of the GB staff pronounce Yoshi and Mario sound weird to me.

Yoshi pronounced like "Yo! Shi" sounds wrong to my ear (the "o" sound is _way_ shorter when I say it), and Mario pronounced as "Mahrio" also sounds odd (the "ma" sound is like in mattress for me, again a shorter vowel).

Not something I insist on, and I don't know which is right (could just be accent differences), but they are the only things that come to mind.

Edit: Just thought of "Agi" from Persona 4 etc. Does anyone know how it should be pronounced? I don't recall ever hearing it said in official media, so always gone with a soft G ("Aji", like Jeff and Vinny), but IIRC the katakana in the Japanese version suggests it should be a hard G sound.

When I read it to myself, I still pronounce it Oo-be-soft, but when I speak it, it's You-be-soft. Same deal with Bomb-omb vs. the correct Bo-bomb

I don't really care if people pronounce stuff wrong but what does annoy me is when people explain their incorrect pronunciation to others as if it's the correct way.

Happens all the time with Ryu from Street Fighter or Nikon the imaging company.

Epona will always and forever be pronounced in my mind as "Ep-poe-nay" and I will not hear otherwise.

@stordoff: I think I heard them say it in P3? You're right. It's Japanese so you say "a-gi."

For years the devs pronounced their game as 'Republic', and it always annoyed the hell out of me. I think they eventually caved and started pronouncing their game the damn way that it's spelled!

'Repub-leek'

Also, I too get triggered every time I hear someone from the East Coast say 'Merry-oh.' It never sounded right to me.

I'm still not entirely sure the proper way to pronounce "Suikoden" even after all these years, but I will pronounce it Soo-ee-ko-den until the day I die. It is ingrained into my soul.

• I say Mario like Mah-rio with a short A. Just my North Jersey accent coming through (along with Wadder instead of water and caawwfee instead of coffee, and whateva instead of whatever)
• I used to say N.E.S. and S.N.E.S. but after listening to the bombcast for so long I'm now saying Ness and S-Ness like they do.
• D-Ab-Low
• A-Seus for Asus

I mess that up constantly, I've found that here in the US that name changes a bit depending on the person's ethnicity. I know a few Jewish people who use -stein as "-steen" and a few German people who use it like Stine.

German is hard, M'Kay?

I put this weird inflection on Yu Narukami so instead of nah-roo-kah-mee, it sounds more like char-lee-too-noh-koo.

I think many Battlegrounds players would be surprised how you really should pronounce Dacia (roughly "Dah-chia").

I refuse to ever say snes. It's S-N-E-S you fucking monsters.

Not gaming related, but I get pretty triggered by how most Americans pronounce French words that are in common English. Like, I've never heard Americans say "quiche" or "microfiche" wrong, yet basically every American pronounces "niche" wrong.

Maybe I'm being unfair, this problem may be common to most English speakers.

@rosesaredan: One that always kind of bugged me (and may be mentioned in the video) is Blastoise. The official pronunciation (if Super Smash Brothers Melee is correct) is blass-toyz. Considering the whole point of its name is "blast + tortoise", I'd imagine it should be "blass-tuss". But this isn't a hill I'm willing to die on.

I will never ever stop saying "gib" like the start of "gibbon" rather than like the start of "giblet". It's a case of "if this is wrong I don't want to be right".

I live in North Carolina and have never heard anyone say "merry-oh".

Persona 5:

it's Ryuji Sa-ka-moe-toe said fast, not Sah-KAH-moe-toe, and to me it's Anne (like pan) Ta-ka-ma-ki, not On Ta-KAH-mah-kee

I tend to pronounce MOBA as "DoTA Clone"

@justin258: It's a Jersey (Italian-american) thing. That's why Bakalar and Vinny both do it.

This. Insta-GHIB tyvm.

@themanwithnoplan: Yu-gi-man

I keep mispronouncing 'PLAYERUNKNOWN's Battlegrounds" as "Murder Island".

Can't help it.

Bugger games. Thanks to Homestar Runner, there's a bunch of regular words I mispronounce on purpose.

Most game things I sometimes start off mispronouncing, but then change if I realize I didn't read the name right. Sometimes the correct pronunciation can be hard to discern, though. Is the G in "Lagiacrus" a g or a j sound? Which is the stressed syllable?

That said, I know there's a grave accent, but no-one should be calling Pokémon "Poke-ay-mon". It just sounds really dumb.

When I heard that the creator of the GIF said it's pronounced jiff I thought "huh, so that's how you say it", and pronounced it that way ever since.

When I heard tee-dus in Kingdom Hearts, I thought "fuuuuuuccck that".

It's a contraction of the loanword ポケットモンスター Pocket Monsters, with the accent added to preserve the Japanese pronunciation.

I don't think I've ever pronounced Ubisoft the same way twice.