Pronunciations for voice acting.

--- Thread in Construction --- Feel free to help me restructure ---

Pronunciations and You

I created this post after realising that I could hardly pronounce anything in Morrowind. This should be used as a reference for voice actors so they know how to pronounce words correctly, and to assure that two voice actors do not pronounce the same thing differently.

Of course not everything in Morrowind naturally has a correct pronunciation. However from what little spoken dialouge is heard we know some things and others

There are actually many real English words that may be unfamiliar with you. For example, "Ampoule" as in Ampoule Pod. If you come across a word like this, do a google search for "Define x" x being your desired word. There will be a button that plays a voiced clip of the word for your reference. (This may not work in Safari or outdated browsers)

Some names could see like a catastrophe to pronounce. But we just need to break them down, for example the Dwemer ruins of Arkngthunch-Sturdumz could be pronounced Ar - King - Thunch - Stir - Dums (I'll look into writing pronunciations another time)

Reference Table

I would like the help of the community to create a reference chart of words and their pronunciations. It would be even better if someone voiced each word.

Is there anyway to create spoiler tags? That way we could start work on this from this post.

Last edited by grumpycat on 8 Dec 2013 - 16:48.

I think this is an excellent

I think this is an excellent idea!

nice

If we do this, we should

If we do this, we should probably archive the names in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), for absolute precision when conveying pronunciations.

It should also be noted that even in vanilla Skyrim (and Oblivion, for that matter), not all characters agree on how things are pronounced. In fact, if everyone pronounced everything exactly the same way, it may take away from the believability of the world. I, for example, pronounce "th" in Dwemer words as [tʰ] rather than [θ] or [ð], as I feel it better fits the aesthetic of the Dwemer language. But since the language is lost, there would be disputes as to its pronunciation rules.

I addressed this in my first

I addressed this in my first draft. I will re add that section soon.

Hmmm.. I can see that this

Hmmm.. I can see that this topic never really got off the ground.

I had brought this up in the Voice Acting Hub topic ( on the first page, actually ) and it wasn't given much attention. However, having not contributed, I feel that I don't really have a say in the matter, and it's not my intention to step on anyone's toes or devalue anyone's hard ( and exceptional ) work.

It seems to me that, checking back in this forum after over a year, I realize that it just doesn't seem like a big concern. Looking on the Facebook page for the group, there is currently a question on the pronunciation of "Hlaalu" and whether the "H" is silent or spoken. In situations like this, this topic here could have really helped, had it ever taken off. I can see how it would add some realism if certain groups had their own dialog, however, as some of the locals in Vvardenfell could believably not be able to pronounce "Arkngthand" correctly, but I would expect everyone to be able to pronounce the most widely used names, locations, flora, and fauna. This is where a smaller team benefits.

The only problem here is that with a group of people that each have their own way to pronounce the words, who also have little-to-no vocal contact, there's going to be a lot of different ways to say the same word, and I get the feeling that two people from the same village could easily pronounce all of their scripted locations or names differently, which would break the immersion in my opinion.

As I've said, I'll leave it to the professionals how to work it out. I would also like to say good job to all of the VA's on here, some of these clips seriously take me back because of how close they sound to the originals.