In college, many of my friends and I became enamored of the rather shoddy VHS dub of ‘Akira’, to the point where some were kind of jerks about it. Posers were identified by the fact that they call it “uh-KEER-uh”, something to which I myself fell victim more than once. When it comes to matters of correction, I like to think I’ve matured, but I still feel a tiny stab of dismay whenever someone talks about how cool a character “John ConstanTEEN” is. I’ve learned to abandon that battle as unwinnable, especially since the owners of the property don’t agree with the creator’s thoughts on it, but there are still certain things I will automatically correct people on. Barry Allan, for instance, is NOT known as the superhero “Flash Gordon,” nor is Monkee Mike actually named “Wool Hat,” which leads us to today’s erroneous query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) reminds comics fans that Frank Miller and Mark Millar have surnames pronounced exactly the same way, asking: What misconceptions about your favorite pop culture do you still feel the urge to correct?
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Speaking of name pronunciations… Ra’s Al Ghul: Head Of The Demon.
The word “head” is to my knowledge NEVER pronounced “Raysh” in Arabic.
“Ras” or “Raz” is much closer. The animated series got it wrong. Nolan got it right.
Gosh darn it.
I’m hard of hearing, legally deaf, so I’m not that picky about pronunciation most of the time. I’d be a bit of a hypocrite since I can’t actually pronounce a lot of things correctly (although for some odd reason, most people think my speech impediment is a “sexy accent”, with many people assuming I’m British).
But I do get a bit hung up on technicalities of facts, particularly facts of various franchises that I’m a fan of, be it from within the setting or real world information.
For instance, it drives me crazy every time someone says Digimon is a ripoff of Pokemon or that it otherwise came out after Pokemon. While it is true the anime came out after Pokemon, the original Digimon, the Tamogatchi-like devices where you raised a Digimon and it became a different Digimon depending on how you cared for it, came out several years before the first Pokemon anything came out.
I also twitch when anyone calls The Doctor “Doctor Who” as if it were his name, or uses “Dr. Who” when referring to the British series (although I’m fine if they are referencing the old American remakes since in that setting he WAS called Dr. Who).
And there are far, far too many instances with “Transformers”, “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, “Super Sentai” series and “Green Lantern” to list.
Other countries are not allowed to use a different pronunciation than american english in naming their kids? Wow that’s incredibly racist!!! Really? Does everyone get renamed if they step into the US???
Stop looking for conflict where it doesn’t exist. Ignorance of how to pronounce something is hardly racist.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to, to be honest.
Ryu from Street Fighter. Its not “Rie you” but Ry-u. This seems to be mostly english speakers’ problem, since they dont pronounce as written.
Good thing none of the Street Fighter characters (as far as I know) are named Paczki. I live in the midwest US and around my area hardly anyone knows how to actually pronounce it (I only know thanks to some other kids when I was in the hospital).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%85czki#Etymology_and_pronunciation
Contantine bugs me because when you say it right to someone, they look as if you’ve said it wrong. It makes me want to track down the issue where someone sings a “song” about Constantine and rhymes it the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.
The ‘song’ in question I think is Hellblazer Annual #1, but I think (part of) the point of the song was to demonstrate how pronunciations shift over the centuries. (If you are thinking about the “one-eyed king” song). I’m partial to closing the name with “teen”, mostly because of the vernacular with which I was raised but partially because ending it with a long-I sound forces an extra emphasis on the final syllable that makes it *too* sing-songy for my taste.
Other popular comics (mis)pronunciations are Cerebus and Darkseid; neither of which contains a long-E sound.
See, I actually say “Sair-EE-bus” out of habit, but I fill physically fight a “Darkseed” or “Mag-NETT-oh” person…
I actually did get into a minor bar fight over “Darkseed”. They were playing Justice League Unlimited on the TV and they even had the captions turned on for me, and despite the fact the show had JUST used his name, some show-off jerk kept trying to claim it was supposed to be “Darkseed” and tried to hit me when I kept telling him he was wrong (not a good idea to attack someone who has trained in multiple forms of martial arts for most of their life).
http://majorspoilers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Constantine.jpg
I always remember this…
There it is. Another piece of evidence/proof! Way to go Matthew!
For some reason, the term Psynergy in the Golden Sun series seems impossible for people to say correctly. It’s a combination of the words Psychic and Energy, blatantly stated to be so in the games themselves. So let’s say it together, people Psy(chic), (e)nergy. Psy Nergy. Psynergy.
And then the guy who does the trailer and stuff for the third game gets it freaking wrong and begins the whole thing over again. This is the basics of english, people. How do you screw something this simple up so badly? I mean hell, this one isn’t even tricky!
The persistent and unfounded assumption that the 2012 Dredd movie is a rip off of The Raid.
I actually know someone who said something like that, but I just laughed so hard I couldn’t reply because he was the same person who said Star Trek (the franchise as a whole) was just a ripoff of Star Wars.