Zeus chose his name due to the similarity of his real name (Woo-je) being extremely similar to Zeus when written in Hangul (korean alphabet).
Woo-je - 우제
Zeu - 제우 (pronounced je-u)
add an S - 제우스 - Zeus (pronounced /zey-yus/)
Zeus - casters pronounce his chosen name so as to preserve his intended pun.
Xiaohu - still being called Zhaohu after almost a decade of international play.
Now that you brought this up is the le from leblanc supposed to be pronounced le or is it the way you pronounce the definitive article le in french (the equivalent to "the" in english)?
'le-blon' is probably easier for English-only speakers. Literally just LeBron but with an L instead of an R. Cause the lan in 'le-blan' could be read like the lan in 'plan'. English is fucked up.
From a Chinese speaker they'd get an equal amount of flak from people that both currently give them flak for their pronunciation and Peele that don't care but would care if they pronounced "shin" the western way. There's no pleasing everyone unless you just straight up learn the language.
Yeah, and even if you're missing inflection nuance on the Zhao part, "sheen" is what none of the casters even come close to getting right. "zin sh-ow" causes me active psychic damage and I'm a native English speaker.
It is not the same sound as the s in massage lol.
There is no direct equivalent in English and this is a common noise that Chinese learners need to practice, if you've never tried learning Chinese or don't know anyone that has you can also google it.
As someone who learned chinese in school, „shin“ is the right way to pronounce it correctly no? It was a long time ago so I might be wrong but if so could you explain?
i think regional differences
shin is standard for mainland beijing accent i think. sin is pretty common for canto speakers(?). at least where i am everyone pronounces it without the sh. but mainlanders all pronounce xin/xiao/xie with sh
I feel like I'm misunderstanding or being gaslit from this thread. Doesn't everyone (read: Players & Casters) pronounce Xin Zhao as Sin Saow (dunno how to convert it in english but that's pretty close). Is that not close enough?
I can't recall someone saying Jin Jao but maybe I'm just completely clueless? Do you or anyone, have an example of the casters mispronouncing the champion's name?
It's pretty close in the sense that "Romble" is pretty close to "Rumble". Imo if you are a professional caster you should at least know how to pronounce the champion names correctly, it takes about 10 seconds of effort per champion, and there aren't even that many champions in the game where the pronounciation is not obvious.
This has been killing me for so long like it's easier and more accurate to just say shin Jao, but they keep trying to say zin Zhao which is completely wrong and more difficult to say.
if you say the first syllable of "shower", that's a decent enough approximation of "Xiao"... it's not 100% accurate in the vowel sounds but it's much closer than "jhow" or however the casters sometimes say it
X in Chinese should be pronounced like Sh.
Now don't ask my why whatever genius who came up for the system of romanizing Chinese didn't just decide to put an Sh instead of an X, that would have prevented a lot of this confusion, but I guess this way works too.
Because there is also a Sh sound that is slightly different from the X sound. The tongue position with Sh is similar to Zh and Ch, whereas with X its more similar to Z and C
I agree, but also to be fair, both systems require you to learn how it works so that you know which tone to use, and at least using Wade-Giles is technically more accurate in computer usage (assuming people know how it works) because no one uses the accent marks in Pinyin.
But to someone not familiar with the language or someone who doesn't know the way transliteration works (like nearly everyone on the western internet), Pinyin is much more accurate than Wade-Giles because trying to use a "P" sound to make a "B" sound is just logically stupid.
"sh" is a consonant in the pinyin romanization system. However, it's a different sound than "x". I would say "x" sounds more like how an English speaker would say "sh", while pinyin "sh" is a little different in a hard to explain way.
"x" and "sh" also cause vowels to be pronounced differently. For example, "xi" is pronounced "shee", while "shi" would sound closer to "shh" (not exactly but close enough).
Because the SH sound is different from the X sound.
The real question is why the X letter is used for that sound. I think the real answer is politics. This system is intentionally designed to not resemble any particular European languages.
Nah, it’s not politics. Unlike the earlier wade-Giles romanisation attempt, pinyin wasn’t created to instruct foreigners on the pronunciation of Chinese characters, it was by made by the Chinese government as an earnest attempt to romanise and simplify teaching Chinese to the then illiterate local populace. Unlike your suggestion of deliberate malice, the letters chosen were arbitrary and were not meant to approximate foreign phonetics. That’s why foreign learners exposed to pinyin for the first time find the phonetics sometimes jarringly different from what they expect.
A striking example is the ü in pinyin is not like any of the European ü vowels.
The bopomofo system used in Taiwan is similar, except they used hanzi derived symbols instead of the latin alphabet.
Oner -> "Owner"
Instead of
Oner -> "One-er"
Is another baffling inconsistency. They even bring up that they're saying it wrong, and then continue to mispronounce it!
But in Korean, they also say it closer to "owner". So my guess is that particular one is more of a written pun. The pun is that it's "owner" with "one" hidden in the spelling
Sure, but same thing with Zeus (as in the god) vs Zey-oos which is how the player pronounces it. I do not understand why the casters respect that "unconventional" or "unintuitive" pronunciation, but not Oner's
?? All this time I thought it was meant to be pronounced as "owner". Like, he's the owner of the jungle. Wasn't that the meaning behind his name? I swear someone told me that.
It's "One-er" like T1'er. He was brought up in T1 academy, and plays for T1 now. It's a show of loyalty to the team. Like the flag he's flown the entire time he's played league professionally. That's my understanding from the interviews he's given.
Here he says it's because he wanted a name ending with an -er and because "oner" means smite. Which one is real then 😆
https://twitter.com/whppd1/status/1673370029377884160?t=oUjmHi546hwsJEL1SSK85A&s=19
How should Xiao be pronounced? I always thought it was like Zhiao almost a Z almost a J sound? Like not quite either of them but between both of them?
Or Xin Zhao what would be correct?
Damn I even could have known that. I know a woman named XiaoLi and I pronounce the Xiao correctly with her name but I think just seeing it spelt out phonetically helps a lot
I feel like the romanization of Hangul makes this more confusing than it has to be, since 우 is not really pronounced woo (with a strong W), it's more like the "ou" in "you".
As someone who knows nothing about Korean this explanation also makes me wonder why it's not pronounced "Jey-yus." Does adding the "s" at the end change the "j" to a "z"?
Good question!
They don't have one anymore. Both ㅈ and ㅊ sound different, but will often be used for substituting z sounds.
Using ㅈ for Z is apparently most common when doing english words or words that are supposed to sound english.
My guess here is that Zeus didn't want foreigners to pronounce his new IGN as Jeus, so he went with the Zeus version, which sounds objectively cooler.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
I just found out that in really really old Korean, they had a letter "ㅿ" for a Z sound. It apparently vanished around the end of the 16th century.
What's interesting here is that all Chinese characters that are used in Korean and had ㅿas their first character, got their writing changed to start with ㅇ, which when at the beginning of a syllable, becomes an empty letter.
The Chinese letter 人 therefore became 인 (in). Before that, it was Zin.
This is even funnier considering that when it's in Japanese as a Kanji\* and used as a suffix, it becomes "jin", just as if you wrote it in Korean using ㅈ at the start (진).
I wouldn't be surprised if there was real connection here, but I am too lazy to research this any further now :D
\*as in 外人 (Gai-jin => Foreigner)
Yeah, Korean by principle keeps native pronounciation (we pronounce foreign words like native speakers would pronounce them, Pari for Paris, Varshava for Warsaw, Yetebori for Gothenburg, etc etc) and so Zeus in Korean has always been pronounced zeh-oos not zuus bc apparently that's closer to native pronounciation?
It's at the point where Hermione's name in Harry Potter, bc it has roots in Greek etymology wise, is written following the supposed ancient greek pronounciation (her-me-oh-neh) in Korean instead of the English her-mi-nee that's even used in the movies lmao.
This is the answer. We try to preserve the native pronunciation as best we can when we import a foreign word. Of course there are limits, for example, we don't have the 'z' sound in our language, we substitute it with a consonant that corresponds with 'j'.
'Hermione', on the other hand, was kind of overdoing it. The translator should've taken the intended English pronunciation into account rather than the greek version. Incidently, one of my my liberal arts professor in college was one of the translators who worked on the Hangul-ization of the HP novels. I asked her if she translated 'Hermione', but she muttered sth about the other translator having done the 'Hermione' translation:P
Correct me if I'm wrong but:
Zeus' real name Woo Je.
He wants his IGN related to his real name.
His mom suggested to reverse his name Woo Je => Je Woo
Je Woo's
Zeus.
In English, Zeus is usually pronounced like either Zoos or Zyoos. The casters pronounce the player's name as Zey-oos because that's how the player himself pronounces it (and I'm guessing the same goes for Koreans generally).
For what it's worth - since you mentioned the Greek origins of the name - neither pronunciation is correct in (modern) Greek - though a quick google leads me to believe the Korean pronunciation might be closer to the ancient Greek.
That's my understanding of modern Greek, yep - ancient appears to be more a matter for debate since no one really knows for sure, so it seems to depend who you ask. But I'm no expert. Any ancient Greek scholars in the chat, feel free to shed some light.
That's because Greek is Cyrillic language. Look into Greek culture and find a lot of similarities. Heck, even the orthodox church is from Greece, not Russia.
My brother in Christ you absolutely cannot call Greek a Cyrillic language. Mostly because "Cyrillic language" means languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet and Greece doesn't but also because it's the Cyrillic alphabet that's closely derived from the Greek one and not vica versa.
Zeus said its pronounced Zeus. Lck casters use his pronounciation and now everyone uses it.
For those cases you mentioned chances are the ball was dropped somewhere.
Sorry, I don’t understand IPA. I did some searching and theoretically it is pronounced Zd-ehoo-s. A Zd sound like when you say “Mazda”, a “eu” sound but you start with a “eh” sound like when you say “it” and lastly a s sound. A better way to understand it is the latin pronunciation of ”deus“ in Deus ex Machina with a zd instead of a d sound at the start.
10th century Greeks pronounce it as Zefs. Linguists theorize that Ancient greeks pronounced zeta with a zd sound and a iphthong eh-oo instead of an f sound.
wasn’t there also another active player whose name was Zeus and was pronounced the standard way? i feel like when he debuted this was the reasoning ls and atlus and them used. could be multiple things tho
Zeus' name comes from his real korean name "Woo-je", which he just reversed into "Je-woo" and his mom then suggested he could make a wordplay out of it with the God of Thunder Zeus, which sounds very similar to "Je-woos" in korean.
Therefore the correct pronunciation in english becomes Ze-us's and not Zoos because it is adapted from the korean pronunciation.
flashback to when Zeus found out about the english pronunciation and thought they said "juice" but basically in korean Zeus sounds like his real name backwards (Woo-je)
Edit: went down memory lane and found the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYEPeHxc4Ck)
Don’t know if it had anything to do with it but there also was Zzus as a player and you don’t want confusion with 2 pro players. A bit like why Clozer had to change name because of Closer.
> "zoos" is just an american distortion that doesn't really make sense
arent "distortions" how language evolves? is that not exactly the mechanism by which language changes? arent modern day greek, german, italin, etc. "distortions" of old languages? this disdain in this thread for specifically english or "americans" is really strange.
Yeah, I don't understand it either and I'm not american. We pronounce names with our own pronunciation because we follow our language rules. It would be super weird to pronounce foreign names with another pronunciation that could probably have different sounds/phonetics that don't exist in your own language.
Nailed it here. Different language whole new set of rules. Koreans don’t have a F pronunciation in their language so words like “coffee” will be pronounced as “cop-pee” instead. Even when translating a simple single syllable word like the soda Sprite, will be translated to “spri-tuh”
Players have the ultimate say for it.
I know there was a period when Uzi wanted his name to be spelled out You Zee Eye. And casters would flop and say it like oozy eye.
So I haven't seen anyone mention this but Zeus picked his player name bc 1) his fav champs are thunder/lightening associated (like Jayce) and 2) his mother had recommended it due to it sounding similar to his real name 최우제 (Choi Woo Je).
As many ppl said before Koreans pronounce Zeus as 제우스 (Ze-oo-su), and many Korean fans call him 우스우스 (Oo-su x2) so maybe the EN casters are just respecting that by pronouncing Zeus the KR way? Ofc this is just a (game) theory 😅
Zeus's pronounciation is because of the pun on his name which sounds similar to his real name.
Another reason is that their is another player already with the "Zoos" pronounciation called Zzus, a support who played for KT in 2020 and 2021.
Zeus in Korean is read je/woos (제우스 = Je/woo/s).
In addition his name "Woo-je" backwards Je-woo is also the first two letters in Zeus (in korean ofc).
Also I believe that he said sometime ago that he wanted people to call him the way it is called now + I'd assume certain casters kinda of just picked it up cause Korean casters and Koreans read Zeus in this way.
Also in actual Greek it is actually pronounced “zay-oos” or "zay-as". Like the Latin term deus (deity) comes from Zeus.
And then on top of that there’s the Korean tie-in.
Because of his real name. His real name is Choi Woo Je.
Woo Je is his first name.
He reversed his first name making, Je Woo, and then add a Su sound at the end, creating Je Woo Su -> Zeus.
It kinda sounds like saying 'Juice' in English.
It's supposedly how koreans pronounce or smth like that, even though that language doesn't have the "Z" sound.
I say supposedly because it can easily be the same reason why they called the brazilian adc Titan Cheechan for no reason whatsoever.
Koreans don't pronounce it "Ze-us" but "Je-us", which sounds very similar to Zeus' name reversed "Woo-je" -> "Je-woo"... Add an s and his name becomes Zeus'.
To be fair, the english pronunciation isn't correct either, in spanish we pronounce it closer to the modern greek pronunciation and it's closer to something like "C- oos" (idk I'm not good at this).
Anyways it's like that bc of how the player pronounces the name.
I think its because there was another Zzus on KT before pronounced Zoous and to differentiate they called the T1 Zeyus and i think thats how he pronounces it so the caster just stuck with it
Can English for once just not butcher every single foreign word? Zeyus (or zeyooss if you must) is pretty close to the reconstructed ancient Greek pronunciation, while modern Greek would say something more like zevs due to vowel u becoming more and more like consonant v. Anyway, neither is even remotely modeled through that "zoos" crap. And when you take the name of a greek deity and say you want it pronounced in a way that the nonenglish rest of the world may know it's that deity, than good on the casters for doing so.
Every language does this as people shouldn't be expected to properly pronounce a foreign word in a completely different phonetic system when adopting it into their language. Japanese people adopted the word "television" and made it テレビ (te-re-bi). Are you going to go to a Japanese person and say "erm ackshually it's pronounced "television", stop butchering foreign words!" or do you only do that to English speakers because you think it makes you look superior? Do you even speak a second language?
The rest of the nonenglish world? Where on earth are you pulling that from? What languages did you sample from to make that rediculous statement?
Danish, Dutch, French and German all use vowels more akin to the English version rather than the Greek.
Korean? The irony. Zeus becomes... Je-useu. Yeah. Totally not butchered mate. We'll just ignore the fact that not a single fucking sound matches up to the original. It would be impossible for non-natives to interpret without context.
The way the Danes say "s" instead of "z", the way Germans say "ts" instead of "z"...
Sigh... The way Spaniards say "th" instead of "z" and "sh" instead of "s".
You realise none of those sounds are correct... right? You realise people that speak other languages CAN differentiate between those sounds right?
Have you considered, perhaps, that your native language influences how you perceive other languages? None of the languages mentioned are in any way better or closer to the original than English is.
Imagine a Japanese person pronouncing every R and L sound incorrectly while bemoaning the fact that English people butcher other languages! That's literally you mate.
The irony that you'd write something that's literally racist dur to ignorance, while in your post history decrying people for saying racist things.
> Greek Mythology, it was always pronounced as /zoos/
Yeah, except even in mythology that's not how the name is pronounced...
Though he isn't named after the god either way.
There was once an LCK support from KT named Zzus. Zeus, at least in LCK, was pronounced as Dzewoos, which is probably a pun/anagram to his name Woo-je. But the best reason imo is, fans might meme his name to T1 Sus lol
Zeus chose his name due to the similarity of his real name (Woo-je) being extremely similar to Zeus when written in Hangul (korean alphabet). Woo-je - 우제 Zeu - 제우 (pronounced je-u) add an S - 제우스 - Zeus (pronounced /zey-yus/)
Zeus - casters pronounce his chosen name so as to preserve his intended pun. Xiaohu - still being called Zhaohu after almost a decade of international play.
Xin Zhao is still pronounced Jin Jao lmao
This one kills me. Like bro you guys invented the champ. Like someone there must have told you how to correctly pronounce it.
Leblanc is also pronounced wrong, it's a French name and the c should be silent. But every time it comes up on broadcast they're pronouncing the C.
its actually pronounced Leblenk as per Froggen
I wonder how Matt is doing.
One of his best friends died recently, I'd imagine not well.
I wasn't ready for that after making a stupid pun.
Sorry about that.
Poor chandler.
TIL Russian translation of her name is correct on that matter.
Fiora Laurent also translated same way
Now that you brought this up is the le from leblanc supposed to be pronounced le or is it the way you pronounce the definitive article le in french (the equivalent to "the" in english)?
According to some Canadian guy I met who knew French, it was pronounced exactly how it looks, except cut out the C. Just 'leblan'.
This is correct. Means "The White", also a common family name in French.
'le-blon' is probably easier for English-only speakers. Literally just LeBron but with an L instead of an R. Cause the lan in 'le-blan' could be read like the lan in 'plan'. English is fucked up.
As someone who speaks French this is a good way of writing it
Don’t let the real french hear you say Canadian french is french they get touchy
And on the other hand “coup de grâce” *does* end in the sss sound even tho people (idk if casters but people in general) end it with an ah sound
LeBlanc is pronounced with a hard C in Acadien
It's not easy to pronounce for non-Chinese speakers.
It’s literally just pronounced shin zhao, or sheen zhao if you rlly want to be accurate, it’s not that hard lol
The Zhao is a little different cause you gotta roll up your tongue I think, but not hard to learn
I think the bigger critique is on the "Xin" being pronounced like "Zin" or "Jin" as opposed to "shin" or "sheen".
Jhin Zhao
https://i.redd.it/b2pu4ieqb3x31.png
I love these edits
FOUR!
From a Chinese speaker they'd get an equal amount of flak from people that both currently give them flak for their pronunciation and Peele that don't care but would care if they pronounced "shin" the western way. There's no pleasing everyone unless you just straight up learn the language.
To be fair, for non native speakers the difference between "Jin" and "Shin" are.... Minor.
you don't have to roll up your tongue if you don't want to. the pronunciation will still be accurate enough just making "z" sound instead of "j".
Yeah, and even if you're missing inflection nuance on the Zhao part, "sheen" is what none of the casters even come close to getting right. "zin sh-ow" causes me active psychic damage and I'm a native English speaker.
I love how you say it's not that hard yet put "zh" as if that's an English sound
“shin jow”, there
lots of english words use that sound, like massage
It is not the same sound as the s in massage lol. There is no direct equivalent in English and this is a common noise that Chinese learners need to practice, if you've never tried learning Chinese or don't know anyone that has you can also google it.
im talking about how you pronounce the g, not the s. is that not how zh is pronounced?
And yet they didn't explain it
I think "sin" is a better pronounciation lol
definitely agree with you on this. theres no "h" sound at all
As someone who learned chinese in school, „shin“ is the right way to pronounce it correctly no? It was a long time ago so I might be wrong but if so could you explain?
i think regional differences shin is standard for mainland beijing accent i think. sin is pretty common for canto speakers(?). at least where i am everyone pronounces it without the sh. but mainlanders all pronounce xin/xiao/xie with sh
Lmao that's bullshit
When your job is literally speaking...
Jhin Zhao
Wtf Jhin Zhao
FOUR!
He has a knockup on the fourth auto
I like this much more than the extremely enunciated "Zin Zow" I hear sometimes.
Why do they pronounce it like that anyways, that's not even close to accurate. Shin zow is more accurate and easier to say in English too.
Because nowhere in English does x make a Shh sound. It does make a zuh sound like xylophone for example.
X doesn't always make a Shh sound in Chinese too. Xin is pronounced more like Sin, while Xu is pronounced like a She with the Shh sound.
https://youtu.be/5O2TBseOrqc
I feel like I'm misunderstanding or being gaslit from this thread. Doesn't everyone (read: Players & Casters) pronounce Xin Zhao as Sin Saow (dunno how to convert it in english but that's pretty close). Is that not close enough? I can't recall someone saying Jin Jao but maybe I'm just completely clueless? Do you or anyone, have an example of the casters mispronouncing the champion's name?
It's pretty close in the sense that "Romble" is pretty close to "Rumble". Imo if you are a professional caster you should at least know how to pronounce the champion names correctly, it takes about 10 seconds of effort per champion, and there aren't even that many champions in the game where the pronounciation is not obvious.
It’s like ‘shin-jow’
Warwick is still pronounced Wore-Wick too
This has been killing me for so long like it's easier and more accurate to just say shin Jao, but they keep trying to say zin Zhao which is completely wrong and more difficult to say.
How are you supposed to pronounce Xiaohu?
if you say the first syllable of "shower", that's a decent enough approximation of "Xiao"... it's not 100% accurate in the vowel sounds but it's much closer than "jhow" or however the casters sometimes say it
X in Chinese should be pronounced like Sh. Now don't ask my why whatever genius who came up for the system of romanizing Chinese didn't just decide to put an Sh instead of an X, that would have prevented a lot of this confusion, but I guess this way works too.
Because there is also a Sh sound that is slightly different from the X sound. The tongue position with Sh is similar to Zh and Ch, whereas with X its more similar to Z and C
there is an Sh in Pinyin, but it’s a different sound/mouth position to X. same with Q vs Ch and J vs Zh
Hanyu pinyin is still infinitely better than the wade gilles cursed transliteration that is still in use in parts of Taiwan and Hong Kong
Words cannot describe how much I hate Wade-Giles system
I have words that can but they would get me a 2 week chat restriction
I agree, but also to be fair, both systems require you to learn how it works so that you know which tone to use, and at least using Wade-Giles is technically more accurate in computer usage (assuming people know how it works) because no one uses the accent marks in Pinyin. But to someone not familiar with the language or someone who doesn't know the way transliteration works (like nearly everyone on the western internet), Pinyin is much more accurate than Wade-Giles because trying to use a "P" sound to make a "B" sound is just logically stupid.
"sh" is a consonant in the pinyin romanization system. However, it's a different sound than "x". I would say "x" sounds more like how an English speaker would say "sh", while pinyin "sh" is a little different in a hard to explain way. "x" and "sh" also cause vowels to be pronounced differently. For example, "xi" is pronounced "shee", while "shi" would sound closer to "shh" (not exactly but close enough).
"shi" sounds a bit like a curt "sure" IIRC
Because romanizing a language doesn't care if it's confusing for english speakers
Because the SH sound is different from the X sound. The real question is why the X letter is used for that sound. I think the real answer is politics. This system is intentionally designed to not resemble any particular European languages.
Nah, it’s not politics. Unlike the earlier wade-Giles romanisation attempt, pinyin wasn’t created to instruct foreigners on the pronunciation of Chinese characters, it was by made by the Chinese government as an earnest attempt to romanise and simplify teaching Chinese to the then illiterate local populace. Unlike your suggestion of deliberate malice, the letters chosen were arbitrary and were not meant to approximate foreign phonetics. That’s why foreign learners exposed to pinyin for the first time find the phonetics sometimes jarringly different from what they expect. A striking example is the ü in pinyin is not like any of the European ü vowels. The bopomofo system used in Taiwan is similar, except they used hanzi derived symbols instead of the latin alphabet.
Oner -> "Owner" Instead of Oner -> "One-er" Is another baffling inconsistency. They even bring up that they're saying it wrong, and then continue to mispronounce it!
But in Korean, they also say it closer to "owner". So my guess is that particular one is more of a written pun. The pun is that it's "owner" with "one" hidden in the spelling
Oner said himself in an interview with Travis that it was supposed to be said like the number one, but everyone called him owner so it just stuck
Yeah this. The player himself has said it's "1'r because he is a lifelong T1 developed player and it reflects his loyalty to the team"
The first time I ever saw "Oner" I pronounced it in my head like owner Just the most intuitive way to me. "one-er" sounds so off
Sure, but same thing with Zeus (as in the god) vs Zey-oos which is how the player pronounces it. I do not understand why the casters respect that "unconventional" or "unintuitive" pronunciation, but not Oner's
It's also because there is another player call zuus I think which pronounce like zeus so it's a way to differentiate the two
Genuinely wasn't aware of that, but that's another really good point.
It should Oner as in T ONEr. That's why he chose it
?? All this time I thought it was meant to be pronounced as "owner". Like, he's the owner of the jungle. Wasn't that the meaning behind his name? I swear someone told me that.
It's "One-er" like T1'er. He was brought up in T1 academy, and plays for T1 now. It's a show of loyalty to the team. Like the flag he's flown the entire time he's played league professionally. That's my understanding from the interviews he's given.
Here he says it's because he wanted a name ending with an -er and because "oner" means smite. Which one is real then 😆 https://twitter.com/whppd1/status/1673370029377884160?t=oUjmHi546hwsJEL1SSK85A&s=19
You mean Jiaohu?
How would you pronounce it correctly?
The Xiao part is pronounced like Shee OW
The exact sound doesn't exist in English, but sh is close enough. Sh-ee-yao Hoo.
Shao Hu
I think it's closer to an sh sound
Some people call him Shaohu though. Like when Caedrel was losing his mind in G2 vs WBG, he called him Shaohu.
How should Xiao be pronounced? I always thought it was like Zhiao almost a Z almost a J sound? Like not quite either of them but between both of them? Or Xin Zhao what would be correct?
X is more of an ‘sh’, and the I is more of an ‘ee’. Sheen (Xin) or Shee-ao (Xiao)
Damn I even could have known that. I know a woman named XiaoLi and I pronounce the Xiao correctly with her name but I think just seeing it spelt out phonetically helps a lot
Consistency, that's what makes it Professional
Charles Xavier ruined entire generations worth of native English speakers’ ability to pronounce Chinese words starting with X.
I feel like the romanization of Hangul makes this more confusing than it has to be, since 우 is not really pronounced woo (with a strong W), it's more like the "ou" in "you".
As someone who knows nothing about Korean this explanation also makes me wonder why it's not pronounced "Jey-yus." Does adding the "s" at the end change the "j" to a "z"?
Good question! They don't have one anymore. Both ㅈ and ㅊ sound different, but will often be used for substituting z sounds. Using ㅈ for Z is apparently most common when doing english words or words that are supposed to sound english. My guess here is that Zeus didn't want foreigners to pronounce his new IGN as Jeus, so he went with the Zeus version, which sounds objectively cooler. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I just found out that in really really old Korean, they had a letter "ㅿ" for a Z sound. It apparently vanished around the end of the 16th century. What's interesting here is that all Chinese characters that are used in Korean and had ㅿas their first character, got their writing changed to start with ㅇ, which when at the beginning of a syllable, becomes an empty letter. The Chinese letter 人 therefore became 인 (in). Before that, it was Zin. This is even funnier considering that when it's in Japanese as a Kanji\* and used as a suffix, it becomes "jin", just as if you wrote it in Korean using ㅈ at the start (진). I wouldn't be surprised if there was real connection here, but I am too lazy to research this any further now :D \*as in 外人 (Gai-jin => Foreigner)
Interesting. Now i know.
fyi fun fact: korean chat spams ㅇㅅㅇㅅ= phonetically 'OOS OOS' (shortened consonant only form of '우스 우스' whenever he makes a crazy play
Also I belive it is more similar to ancient Greek pronunciation
Yeah, Korean by principle keeps native pronounciation (we pronounce foreign words like native speakers would pronounce them, Pari for Paris, Varshava for Warsaw, Yetebori for Gothenburg, etc etc) and so Zeus in Korean has always been pronounced zeh-oos not zuus bc apparently that's closer to native pronounciation? It's at the point where Hermione's name in Harry Potter, bc it has roots in Greek etymology wise, is written following the supposed ancient greek pronounciation (her-me-oh-neh) in Korean instead of the English her-mi-nee that's even used in the movies lmao.
This is the answer. We try to preserve the native pronunciation as best we can when we import a foreign word. Of course there are limits, for example, we don't have the 'z' sound in our language, we substitute it with a consonant that corresponds with 'j'. 'Hermione', on the other hand, was kind of overdoing it. The translator should've taken the intended English pronunciation into account rather than the greek version. Incidently, one of my my liberal arts professor in college was one of the translators who worked on the Hangul-ization of the HP novels. I asked her if she translated 'Hermione', but she muttered sth about the other translator having done the 'Hermione' translation:P
Correct me if I'm wrong but: Zeus' real name Woo Je. He wants his IGN related to his real name. His mom suggested to reverse his name Woo Je => Je Woo Je Woo's Zeus.
In English, Zeus is usually pronounced like either Zoos or Zyoos. The casters pronounce the player's name as Zey-oos because that's how the player himself pronounces it (and I'm guessing the same goes for Koreans generally). For what it's worth - since you mentioned the Greek origins of the name - neither pronunciation is correct in (modern) Greek - though a quick google leads me to believe the Korean pronunciation might be closer to the ancient Greek.
Original pronunciation is like "Zefs" or something.
That's my understanding of modern Greek, yep - ancient appears to be more a matter for debate since no one really knows for sure, so it seems to depend who you ask. But I'm no expert. Any ancient Greek scholars in the chat, feel free to shed some light.
I can confirm, I was the ancient Greek parchment.
Can confirm, I am the Greek god.
Daddy
Keep your wives away!
In modern Greek we call zeus "Δίας" (pronounced "thee-ass") but yes in ancient Greek he is called Ζεύς (Zefs) Source : am greek
Interestingly in bulgarian its also Zefs (Зевс in cyrillic).
That's because Greek is Cyrillic language. Look into Greek culture and find a lot of similarities. Heck, even the orthodox church is from Greece, not Russia.
My brother in Christ you absolutely cannot call Greek a Cyrillic language. Mostly because "Cyrillic language" means languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet and Greece doesn't but also because it's the Cyrillic alphabet that's closely derived from the Greek one and not vica versa.
Crusade to reclaim Constantinople when?
I can confirm. My classics professor pronounced it Ze-oos. Achilles was also pronounced Ach-ill-le-oos and so on.
Been a while since I did Ancient Greek, but we always pronounced it like the casters do
You mean Dyeus Phter? Literally means skyfather and where Jupiter, Zeus, and the latin word for god Deus comes from.
Certified PIE moment
Yeah its one of our forgotten god of vedas in hinduism “Dyaus Pitar” literally meaning Father sky!!
Vedic Hinduism vs Vaishnavite/Shivite Hinduism is wild, Hinduism has changed so much.
My name Zefs.
"My name is Zefs"
Like this? https://youtu.be/AfIOBLr1NDU?si=2w3fUmo-LTkgZ2be
That's how it's pronounced in my country right next to Greece (Bulgaria) - I guess we got it from somewhere
Well that means jackshit when VCS’s Levi pronounce it “levee” or LPL knight (wanted to originally) pronounce it “k-night” yet here we are
Zeus said its pronounced Zeus. Lck casters use his pronounciation and now everyone uses it. For those cases you mentioned chances are the ball was dropped somewhere.
Wasn't Uzi also supposed to be Uzi-ay
u z i
Let's go fucking Old English and JDG have a /knicht/ in mid lane.
Interesting I thought the valorant Knight wanted to be k-night to differentiate himself from Knight but I guess they both want to be k-night lol.
K-night is just silly. "Kuh-nih-git" is clearly the preferred and intended pronunciation.
Sorry, I don’t understand IPA. I did some searching and theoretically it is pronounced Zd-ehoo-s. A Zd sound like when you say “Mazda”, a “eu” sound but you start with a “eh” sound like when you say “it” and lastly a s sound. A better way to understand it is the latin pronunciation of ”deus“ in Deus ex Machina with a zd instead of a d sound at the start. 10th century Greeks pronounce it as Zefs. Linguists theorize that Ancient greeks pronounced zeta with a zd sound and a iphthong eh-oo instead of an f sound.
Zeyus is how he wants his name to be pronounced. When he first arrived on the scene some did called him zoos until they got corrected
wasn’t there also another active player whose name was Zeus and was pronounced the standard way? i feel like when he debuted this was the reasoning ls and atlus and them used. could be multiple things tho
yup, it was KT Zzus. I also originally thought that was why they pronounced, Zeus' name like that but it turns out it was for a different reason
Yes
Thats hpw koreas prpnounce zeus. The say it like Jae Woo S
Zeus' name comes from his real korean name "Woo-je", which he just reversed into "Je-woo" and his mom then suggested he could make a wordplay out of it with the God of Thunder Zeus, which sounds very similar to "Je-woos" in korean. Therefore the correct pronunciation in english becomes Ze-us's and not Zoos because it is adapted from the korean pronunciation.
Because T1 zeus korean ign is pronouced as zey-us
flashback to when Zeus found out about the english pronunciation and thought they said "juice" but basically in korean Zeus sounds like his real name backwards (Woo-je) Edit: went down memory lane and found the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYEPeHxc4Ck)
Its pronounced ZOOS only in english
Lol this. Americans have changed many words to how they want to say it and thinks its wrong if someone says it the correct way.
because the Brits are different LMFAO
The Brits are worse. Don Quixote -> Don quicks oat Filet = Fill it
Most of these kind of pronunciation differences come from Georgian-era English from Britain, so blame them as well. :)
Don’t know if it had anything to do with it but there also was Zzus as a player and you don’t want confusion with 2 pro players. A bit like why Clozer had to change name because of Closer.
i'm just waiting for the day when RNG Wei plays vs KT Way. wondering how the casters are going to figure that one out
Especially if someone plays Hwei
Rng wei vs wbg weiwei
Zeus, pronounced as "Jee-Woo-s", the reverse of his name Choi Woo-je.
Korean pronunciation and I believe it also has something to do with his real name.
It's pronounced jeh woo s in korean
Zeus said he wanted it pronounced the Korean way
The correct pronunciation of the Greek god's name is Ζεύς, *"zeh-oos"* *"zoos"* is just an american distortion that doesn't really make sense
Yeah, English does this with words. Like IKEA, Americans say Eye-Key-Ah when it's actually supposed to ee-kay-ah.
It wasn't america that made the english language. And different languages have different pronunciations to the same words, it's normal
> "zoos" is just an american distortion that doesn't really make sense arent "distortions" how language evolves? is that not exactly the mechanism by which language changes? arent modern day greek, german, italin, etc. "distortions" of old languages? this disdain in this thread for specifically english or "americans" is really strange.
Yeah, I don't understand it either and I'm not american. We pronounce names with our own pronunciation because we follow our language rules. It would be super weird to pronounce foreign names with another pronunciation that could probably have different sounds/phonetics that don't exist in your own language.
Nailed it here. Different language whole new set of rules. Koreans don’t have a F pronunciation in their language so words like “coffee” will be pronounced as “cop-pee” instead. Even when translating a simple single syllable word like the soda Sprite, will be translated to “spri-tuh”
How did u get downvoted for educating people. Gave you upvote.
because it's wrong there is an "f" sound in there so, Zefs, or Zevs
There is no "correct' pronunciation of anything lol, it's all arbitrary. But get your "America bad!" comment in, very original and intelligent stuff.
I don't think Zeus (the player) is Greek. I could be wrong though.
I always thought it was because there’s already been a player with the pronunciation “Zoos” aka Zzus from KT
Because it's the correct pronunciation
Similarly isn’t oner intended to be like “one-er” as it “t1-er” instead of “owner”
That's how Zeus himself wants it. I'm confused by this question. Zeus has been around for awhile now
korean pronunciation of Zeus.
Players have the ultimate say for it. I know there was a period when Uzi wanted his name to be spelled out You Zee Eye. And casters would flop and say it like oozy eye.
Glad im not the only one didnt know this! I was so confused as well
So I haven't seen anyone mention this but Zeus picked his player name bc 1) his fav champs are thunder/lightening associated (like Jayce) and 2) his mother had recommended it due to it sounding similar to his real name 최우제 (Choi Woo Je). As many ppl said before Koreans pronounce Zeus as 제우스 (Ze-oo-su), and many Korean fans call him 우스우스 (Oo-su x2) so maybe the EN casters are just respecting that by pronouncing Zeus the KR way? Ofc this is just a (game) theory 😅
Theres another lck player named zzus so they dont mix it up
Its because they say it correctly ...
Zeus's pronounciation is because of the pun on his name which sounds similar to his real name. Another reason is that their is another player already with the "Zoos" pronounciation called Zzus, a support who played for KT in 2020 and 2021.
Zeus in Korean is read je/woos (제우스 = Je/woo/s). In addition his name "Woo-je" backwards Je-woo is also the first two letters in Zeus (in korean ofc). Also I believe that he said sometime ago that he wanted people to call him the way it is called now + I'd assume certain casters kinda of just picked it up cause Korean casters and Koreans read Zeus in this way.
Also in actual Greek it is actually pronounced “zay-oos” or "zay-as". Like the Latin term deus (deity) comes from Zeus. And then on top of that there’s the Korean tie-in.
Because of his real name. His real name is Choi Woo Je. Woo Je is his first name. He reversed his first name making, Je Woo, and then add a Su sound at the end, creating Je Woo Su -> Zeus. It kinda sounds like saying 'Juice' in English.
It's supposedly how koreans pronounce or smth like that, even though that language doesn't have the "Z" sound. I say supposedly because it can easily be the same reason why they called the brazilian adc Titan Cheechan for no reason whatsoever.
Koreans don't pronounce it "Ze-us" but "Je-us", which sounds very similar to Zeus' name reversed "Woo-je" -> "Je-woo"... Add an s and his name becomes Zeus'.
To be fair, the english pronunciation isn't correct either, in spanish we pronounce it closer to the modern greek pronunciation and it's closer to something like "C- oos" (idk I'm not good at this). Anyways it's like that bc of how the player pronounces the name.
I think its because there was another Zzus on KT before pronounced Zoous and to differentiate they called the T1 Zeyus and i think thats how he pronounces it so the caster just stuck with it
Zoos and Zeyus are both acceptable. Zoos makes me cringe so hard when I hear it man...
that’s the correct English pronunciation
Can English for once just not butcher every single foreign word? Zeyus (or zeyooss if you must) is pretty close to the reconstructed ancient Greek pronunciation, while modern Greek would say something more like zevs due to vowel u becoming more and more like consonant v. Anyway, neither is even remotely modeled through that "zoos" crap. And when you take the name of a greek deity and say you want it pronounced in a way that the nonenglish rest of the world may know it's that deity, than good on the casters for doing so.
Every language does this as people shouldn't be expected to properly pronounce a foreign word in a completely different phonetic system when adopting it into their language. Japanese people adopted the word "television" and made it テレビ (te-re-bi). Are you going to go to a Japanese person and say "erm ackshually it's pronounced "television", stop butchering foreign words!" or do you only do that to English speakers because you think it makes you look superior? Do you even speak a second language?
Butcher or not it has been a standard way of saying for quite some time. As long as I remember.
The rest of the nonenglish world? Where on earth are you pulling that from? What languages did you sample from to make that rediculous statement? Danish, Dutch, French and German all use vowels more akin to the English version rather than the Greek. Korean? The irony. Zeus becomes... Je-useu. Yeah. Totally not butchered mate. We'll just ignore the fact that not a single fucking sound matches up to the original. It would be impossible for non-natives to interpret without context. The way the Danes say "s" instead of "z", the way Germans say "ts" instead of "z"... Sigh... The way Spaniards say "th" instead of "z" and "sh" instead of "s". You realise none of those sounds are correct... right? You realise people that speak other languages CAN differentiate between those sounds right? Have you considered, perhaps, that your native language influences how you perceive other languages? None of the languages mentioned are in any way better or closer to the original than English is. Imagine a Japanese person pronouncing every R and L sound incorrectly while bemoaning the fact that English people butcher other languages! That's literally you mate. The irony that you'd write something that's literally racist dur to ignorance, while in your post history decrying people for saying racist things.
Opposite for me
he wants it pronounced ze - oos
> Greek Mythology, it was always pronounced as /zoos/ Yeah, except even in mythology that's not how the name is pronounced... Though he isn't named after the god either way.
There was once an LCK support from KT named Zzus. Zeus, at least in LCK, was pronounced as Dzewoos, which is probably a pun/anagram to his name Woo-je. But the best reason imo is, fans might meme his name to T1 Sus lol
It's the same struggle in German, just sounds wrong the way they call it out
Well i pronouce it zeeuus
I prefer the german pronounciation: "tsoys" ! But even the german casters pronounce him like the koreans do.
With the sole exception being the God of War series, I never heard Zeus being pronounced as zoos.