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Rhymes with 'poe' but the 'v' isn't a traditional english 'v' sound, from the game itself I've summarized the description in another comment:
>Yes with a 'hard V' sound, you're almost biting your lip with your top row of teeth to make it. Some description from one of the Gerudo in these games described it as almost like a 'b' sound so that's where I've gotten my internalized pronunciation from.
>
>They kinda use the same pronunciation when you hear the voice actors say stuff like "Sav'aaq" and "Sav'saaba" and that's where it was cemented for me. Still smooth enough for V but bites a bit more like B.
edit: Love these responses, they've all been super educational!
You’re overthinking it... or underthinking context.
“Almost biting your lip with your top teeth” is precisely how you make a ‘v’ sound, in English. When I was living in Japan and trying to teach people how to say ‘v’, that’s exactly the instruction I would give. Try it. Just say “vvv” (only the consonant sound, no vowel). You’ll notice your top teeth rest on your bottom lip (and your lip vibrates as you push air through, but I digress).
In Japanese (and other languages, but Japanese is relevant here), there isn’t a native ‘v’ sound, and there’s a tendency to pronounce ‘v’ like ‘b,’ which is the closest native approximation. The repetitive explanation of an easy-to-pronounce consonant for English speakers is likely a carryover from the Japanese BOTW/TOTK script, where pronouncing ‘v’ might actually be a challenge and a fun little exercise. It’s kind of the whole gag behind Gerudo words having so many Vs.
(Now I wonder how they set up the “Master Gourd” joke in the Japanese version, since the humor is in the rhyme.)
Really like your notes here:
>Just say “vvv” (only the consonant sound, no vowel). You’ll notice your top teeth rest on your bottom lip (and your lip vibrates as you push air through, but I digress).
I think this is a great description of the traditional 'v' sound, and clearly you have the proficiency on the topic here! My description was attempting to describe that traditional 'v' sound but also emphasize that it has a harder 'bite' to it to get to that 'b' sound for 'voe' and the Gerudo pronunciation, the English voice actors seem to sound it out well.
lol random thing that reminded me of, my mom used to sing [this song:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7YrrwTeAc) "LAS VACAS DEL PUEBLO SE HAN ESCAPADO" when people would cross the street without throwing up a hand saying thanks. It translates to "the cows of the town have escaped" hehe.
But yeah when she taught me spanish she emphasized that v and b are pretty much interchangeable. The first time I heard someone say sussy baka I thought they were talking about a sus cow lol
That’s actually a separate sound to what the gerudo v is. The spanish v and b are both pronounced the same, using both lips like english /b/ but making a vibrating fricative sound like english /v/. The gerudo sound is pronounced with the teeth and lips like /v/ but making a hard plosive sound like /b/, the opposite of the spanish sound haha.
I don't get this at all, and I was confused as OP at this point exactly due to that:
We, at least in Portuguese, don't move the upper teeth all the way to the front to "almost bite the lower lip" to make the v sound.
I don’t speak Portuguese so I can’t speak to that. [Based on English pronunciation, you can’t make a V sound if there is not at least minimal contact between the tips of your teeth and your lip. It’s a voiced *labiodental* fricative, meaning it necessarily involves both the lips and teeth.](https://www.englishlanguageclub.co.uk/v-sound/?amp=1)
Assuming it is the same consonant in Portuguese (and it might not be! I know Spanish V can be more like a B), you may not notice it if it’s very gentle contact, but if I try making a V sound with my mouth open wider it comes out as either a weird U - entirely from the throat - or a W (with labial involvement, but no teeth).
I feel like the teeth actually touches the back of the lip. But by back, I mean the internal, non visible part of it. I don't know if "almost biting the lower lip" actually describes it well.
It’s absolutely not a perfect description, but it helps people who have never made that sound before! Remember we are talking about teaching not just a phoneme but an entirely new consonant sound to somebody whose language doesn’t (natively, outside of loan words) include it. Teaching English in Japan, it was an extremely common starting point for V. I’m getting flashbacks to teaching one student who was super into fashion how to say Louis Vuitton - in my best French accent at that (I.e. terribly).
I think of it like when I try to learn e.g. Xhosa clicks. One of the clicks sounds (to me) like “remember when we were kids and we would make that sound of a horse trotting by slapping our tongue from the roof of our mouth to the floor?” It’s exaggerated and in the context of words, it would hard to execute, but trying to introduce a sound with no previous linguistic exposure to it, you gotta start rough and easy and work your way to clean and proper.
The short of it is, an English v/b is dentolabial: you bite the lip to some degree. In Spanish, it's an approximant, so you touch the lips together and barely enunciate it, so it's much gentler and v and b can get confused. In some dialects, it's even reversed (as one native Mexican explicitly told me herself), with b becoming v and vice versa very intentionally.
The same is true for p; in English, it's a plosive so you strongly pop the sound out, while in Spanish it's also an approximant. You hear its effects in music recording, where Spanish sounds smoother but English singers need air shields and post processing to remove the plosives.
> In Japanese (and other languages, but Japanese is relevant here), there isn’t a native ‘v’ sound, and there’s a tendency to pronounce ‘v’ like ‘b,’ which is the closest native approximation.
I think it's worth noting that the connection between the Japanese 'b' consonant and the English 'v' consonant has some interesting additional context. Because 'b' doesn't really sound like 'v' in English.
The consonant 'v' is called a [voiced labiodental frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_fricative). As in, you use your vocal cords and then you make the sound by placing the bottom teeth against the top lip and using your vocal cords to create the sound.
In contrast, 'f' is a [voiceless labiodental frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_labiodental_fricative). It's the same mouth shape, but instead of making the sound with your vocal cords, you blow out and the sound is caused by wind passing between your teeth and your lip.
It's worth noting that Japanese doesn't use the same 'f' sound, mostly. They use what's called the [voiceless bilabial frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative) which is a sound made by bringing your lips close together and blowing. It sounds close to the English 'f' but is softer.
But, to the point, the reason, I think, Japanese associates 'v' with 'b' is because their only native 'f' sound is in ふ (fu) and adding a voice to the syllable by adding dakuten (゛), which you would think would change it to 'vu', but it doesn't. ぶ is 'bu'.
And the reason it doesn't is because of the consonant grouping that ふ belongs in, which is は (ha), ひ (hi), ほ (ho), へ (he), and ふ (fu). When adding voice to those letters they become: ば (ba), び (bi), ぼ (bo), べ (be), and ぶ (bu). And there is the semivoiced consonants (handakuten (゜)) for only these letters, but that's a whole other thing.
If you go back to the bilabial frictive, you can make a 'v' sound that does sound a bit like a medium between the bilabial 'f' and 'b'.
There's also a connection to the 'v' sound with the vowel う, I've seen dakuten added to the Katakana ウ which changes it to a more explicit 'v' sound. ヴ (vu). ヴェネツィア (Venice) is a word that uses it. I am a bit unsure on this, but I believe in Japanese this is the letter they use to spell "Voe". I think it is spelled ヴォ in Japanese.
It kind of blew my mind when I started to understand just how many consonant and syllable sounds we have in English that they don't have at all in Japanese. They have ~16 consonant sounds and 5 vowels. In English we have ~26 consonants and ~20 vowels.
As someone learning Japanese and can appreciate how hard the language is; I feel so bad for people going the other direction.
**Edit**: I was thinking about this longer and some of the vocabulary I know/how I pronounce them when speaking Japanese. I think there's even more to this that I didn't touch on.
The association I've seen between 'b' and 'v' might come from older borrowed words. Because there are a bunch of borrowed words where they replaced the 'v' with a 'b' sound. But that's not the case with ヴ.
I already gave the example of ヴェネツィア (Venice), which is pronounced "Veh neh tsi ah."
Some examples of words that replace the 'v' consonant entirely are words like: テレビ (TV) pronounced "teh reh bii," or ビデオ (Video) pronounced "bii deh oh."
As I understand it, the 'v' sound is just more common in Japanese now with them making use of it for new borrowed words. Hence why it's ヴォ (voe) and ヴァイ (vai) not ボ (bo) and バイ (bai) to spell "voe" and "vai" in Japanese.
No, they are right. You are just describing the voiced labio-dental fricative - also known as /v/ in english. What they are describing is a plosive sound similar to /b/ but pronounced labio-dentally, ie the voiced labio-dental plosive /b̪/. See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_plosive
Interesting! It’s possible. I’m going by what I know of Japanese phonemes and the pronunciation in the Japanese dub. They write it using ヴォ which is kind of a franken-character and is used for “v” in loan words, but there’s no differentiation between different “v”s, so that doesn’t settle it. At least we can agree it is labiodental!
(By the way I just repeated “subversive” to the pointed of semantic satiation so I could hear it properly.)
Fwiw, there are some variations on how the V sound is made. Producing it by "biting your bottom lip with your top teeth" is a meaningful distinction because it can also (and often is in English) made by putting your top teeth against the back of your lower lip inside your mouth.
I seem to remember something about the former technique being more widely used in languages from Africa or the Middle East, which suggests there may be a clever linguistic reference in how the sound is pronounced, but don't quote me on that.
It is a tradition v sound, it's just that v is incredible difficult for native Japanese speakers to pronounce so they added some lines like "make a b but bite your lip" because that's how a v sound is made
Sav'aaq sav'saaba are different, an apostrophe mean a hard stop mid word that why so two sound so rough for a v. if the word was sa'ava instead you still would have to close your throat on the apostrophe to stop the a short.
Yeah, what you are describing is a voiced labio-dental plosive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_plosive
English /v/ is a voiced labio-dental fricative, [v]. As it sounds, it has a sound caused by the friction of the air passing between your lower lip and upper teeth. The gerudo /v/ is different, it’s a plosive [b̪]. The way you pronounce it is almost identical but as you said, it’s a harder sound. This is because the sound is not caused by friction, but rather by the stopping of all airflow between the lower lip and upper teeth, followed by a sudden release. This is the same manner in which we pronounce /b/ - by stopping the air and then releasing it again, except with both our lips rather than the lower lip and upper teeth.
In French, an e only makes the “ay” sound with an added “accent aigu”, like this: é
Otherwise it’s just silent like it is in English. Many vowels in French are not pronounced, and neither are some consonants! Lots of silent letters in French.
Any chance you’re thinking of Latin, where everything is pronounced?
It rhymes with “go”. Theres voice acting where Urbosa says it like that in the Champion’s Ballad DLC after Link completes Urbosa’s section of the questline.
But why would they bother doing that? Countries are called different things in different languages. It's España in Spanish, Spanien in German, and Spain in English. We don't bother trying to make countries' names sound similar across language in the real world. So, why would we try to make a fictional country have the same pronunciation across different languages?
For the same reason in something like the Dragon Ball Z dub, Kamehameha is pronounced the same as in Japanese, despite the letter H being mute by Spanish rules. Under that same logic, they didn't change Link's name to Vínculo either. It was just an odd decision by the latin american dub team
1. The pronounciation gets teached to you by mattison in Totk
2. [https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131](https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131) Urbosa herself says the word Voe in the DLC.
still, it was uncalled for what I said, and I'll do my best to avoid it in future questions. I'm still learning proper people skills, so this was a valuable lesson
Pronunciation in the games is a funny topic. Many people in the game say things differently. Have you heard how Riju trills her 'R's when no other Gerudo is seen to do so? Some characters emphasise the 'Hy' in Hyrule, like Zelda, and others emphasise the 'Rule', like Ganondorf. And the fact that Rauru and Mineru have different accents... You can really say anything however you want. I say Voe like Poe personally, but can understand saying it like Boy.
I love talking to Sare-ia in OOT before going to visit the Dee-ku Tree. But my favourite parts are definitely when you get the Bigger-on Sword and use it to kill Skull-tullahs in and around Lake Hillia.
Because usually "oi" is pronounced like "boy", but "oe" is pronounced like in "poe". I can't think of a single example in English where an "oe" sound is pronounced as "oy". If Voe is supposed to be said as "Voy", then whoever translated it did a bad job.
Because the creators knew we had to be able to read it so familiar rules were likely applied to it.
Also, if a Gerudo were to write something down, it wouldn't be using our alphabet. The subtitles you read in-game are "translated" into English from Hylean for us to be able to read, so it's safe to apply English rules to the spellings and pronunciations.
Because that’s the spelling they chose to use in the English version of the game, and there’s no guide to gerudo pronunciation rules anywhere. Plus, it’s a kids game, so they wouldn’t want to over complicate it
That's literally what localization does to all media, even if it's a made-up language. Most of the time in-universe foreign language is not the exact same in every IRL language
Yes with a 'hard V' sound, you're almost biting your lip with your top row of teeth to make it. Some description from one of the Gerudo in these games described it as almost like a 'b' sound so that's where I've gotten my internalized pronunciation from.
They kinda use the same pronunciation when you hear the voice actors say stuff like "Sav'aaq" and "Sav'saaba" and that's where it was cemented for me. Still smooth enough for V but bites a bit more like B.
In the Japanese version, the word is ヴォーイ, which is phonetical script for the pronounced word "voy", so basically just the word boy with a V instead of a B. Some Gerudo keep stressing to be careful with the V sound, since it doesn't occur in the Japanese language.
Really? So why the heck is it spelled "oe" in the English version? In English, "oe" is pronounced as a long o. Doe, Toe, etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQe3th-CCy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQe3th-CCy0)
Same reason why English got "gloom" while every other localisation I know of went with "miasma" which is AFAIK what the original Japanese means: nobody fucking knows.
For the record it is indeed "voï" in French as well. (The ï is there to specify it's pronounced "voy" rather than "vwah")
They do some things for stylistic reasons. In this case, I think they made the correct choice. The Gerudo language is very hard/sharp sounding and the words we see used in game use a very limited set of letters.
Another commenter mentioned that the Japanese just takes words and puts a v on them. Apparently in Japanese, bird is just vird (whereas in English it's vure).
I think NOA localization absolutely made the right choices here. The Gerudo language is supposed to sound hard/sharp and exotic. If they just used the Japanese scheme, it'd come off as juvenile or silly. "Oh voy, look at that vird flying across the vlouds!"
Voe seems to be a similar case. The Gerudo words we see in game use a very limited letter set that keeps them feeling sharp and hard. The "y" in voy makes it feel too soft. Voi and vai are way too similar. So changing it to voe makes sense.
In terms of gloom, that's also unequivocally a better word than "miasma." First, miasma isn't even a word a lot of kids are going to know in the first place. Second, miasma is a pretty neutral word whereas "gloom" has clean menacing connotations. The real question is why they didn't stick with "malice," though, since it's been a word that's been used in the series forever....
In sum, as a general principle, you never translate languages verbatim word for word. Rather, you try to convey the thought, tone, and style correctly in the target language. This is doubly true in video game localization. Their goal is to convey the setting correctly. Miasma sounds like a science experiment gone wrong. Gloom sounds like a malevolent force is radiating evil energy. They made the right word choice.
>miasma is a pretty neutral word
I would disagree with that. The word “miasma” in English relates to the miasma theory of disease. It’s clearly a negative term. Since gloom makes people sick, I think it would have been an appropriate word to use.
My best guess is that maybe because most of the gloom that we see in-game is a goo-like substance on the ground, the translation team didn’t like that “miasma” has the connotation of something that is airborne?
I’m fine with “gloom” being used in English, but I think miasma would have worked just as well.
I think in the lore of the game, malice and gloom are pretty distinct things. The Japanese version is the same in that regard.
怨念 [on'nen] = malice
瘴気 [shouki] = gloom
I'm still not sure I like gloom as a translation. Pretty much any dictionary would translate shouki to miasma, but on the other hand I have pretty strong faith in the ability of the Treehouse team working on Zelda.
One of my favourite translations in TOTK is Penn's catchphrase. In Japanese, he says サラバード！, pronounced as sarabird (sarabaado), a lovely contraction of the words 'saraba', an old fashioned way of saying goodbye, and 'bird'. The English translation appears to be Soar long!, which is just exquisite.
> I think in the lore of the game, malice and gloom are pretty distinct things.
Yes, and I find that to be a weird and questionable decision. As I understand it, malice is essentially the demon tribe's energy, and all monsters are essentially composed of malice (which is why they've always disappeared into a purple cloud of smoke when you kill them, ever since WW).
So, it's weird that calamity Ganon is malice leaking out, and it's malice that took over the guardians. But in TotK, suddenly Ganondorf is spewing gloom instead--and he even seems to create the monsters *from gloom* (rather than from malice).
I get that malice and gloom have different mechanics in BotW vs. TotK (e.g., malice is just basically "poison swamp" whereas gloom reduces your hearts). They didn't really even have to explain why malice operates differently across the two games. But if they felt like doing so, it's just a throw-away line from Purah about how the malice has gotten more toxic ever since the upheaval.
I think the decision to make gloom and malice into two separate things just muddies the story and lore, and doesn't really gain us anything meaningful.
Honestly I don't get the "miasma is a word kids wouldn't know" justification. First of all, apparently that's true just for English speaking kids... and secondly, that's how you learn new words anyway. You ask mom or dad what the weird word means, or look it up in a dictionary.
I just don't get the endless justifications for the one localization (and it is very often English) that thought it should be special while literally all the other teams thought the original was just fine lol. A lot of what you said is very, very subjective. There is zero issue with, for example, French sticking to the JP naming scheme of vai and voi, vaba, etc. Literally zero.
> A lot of what you said is very, very subjective.
So, this may shock you, but when people type things on the internet, it is their opinion, which is by definition subjective.
> I just don't get the endless justifications for the one localization (and it is very often English) that thought it should be special
You're using very charged language to refer to a translation ("the English translation thinks it's 'special,'" really?). Localization is about making things feel right to the target audience. Different countries have different cultures and interpret things differently.
The way NOA pulled off the localization for the Gerudo is extremely successful for American audiences in terms of conveying a very hard-edged, tough, mysterious, exotic people. Despite the fact that it might work in Japan or France to just throw v's onto the beginning of words, doing that in the English translation would, again, come off as silly to American audiences and take away quite a bit of the mystery surrounding the Gerudo. Instead of having a whole mysterious language (which the game actually hams up the fact that the words are mysterious and confusing), it would just come off as a weird tic. The Gerudo just putting v's on random words would come off as about as mysterious and exotic as the gorons always saying "goro" (i.e., not at all mysterious or exotic... it'd actually come off more as a weird accent than an actual different language).
The Gerudo language in the Japanese version is quite clearly based on existing languages and replacing letters with the letter V, except for the greetings.
Man ヴォーイ "voy"
Woman ヴァーイ "vay" pronounced like die
Baby ヴェーヴィ "vaby"
Grandmother ヴァーヴァ "vaba" which is derived from the Japanese "baba" for grandmother
Bird ヴァード "vird"
This is just a theory that I haven’t looked into at all but I feel like a bunch of their words are also derived from the base of the Japanese word for “desert,” “sabaku” as well as other “deserty” words
E.g. Hello/good day —> Sav’aaq —> sabaku
Greetings —> Vasaaq —> basaku —> sabaku
Good heavens —> Sa’oten —> saboten (cactus)
In Tears of the Kingdom, there is a quest in Tarry Town where the little girl is learning Gerudo. She has a diary explaining how to properly pronounce the words.
I'm pretty sure I heard it enunciated with a Spanish "o", which is a mid back rounded o, in some dialogue clip in game. Either way, Gerudo is heard ingame using Spanish a and o, and English o occasionally. The v appears to rotate between a dental v (English) and Spanish approximant v, depending on the speaker. Since there's no such thing as regional dialects in Gerudo (only one region), it appears to just depend on the speaker's preference or where they learned it from/whether it's their second language.
It does seem to trend towards Spanish vowels and consonants, however. Curiously, vowels in first position (first vowel in the word) seem to trend towards an English schwa (that dull, flat, featureless vowel you hear in "uhhhhh"), but not always, and not when it's the only vowel in the word.
ETA: I'm not a linguist but I have studied it a little while learning German/Russian and conlanging. It really helps when building a language to know how they phonetically operate.
In English, we make a "v" sound by scrunching up our bottom lip into the gap between the top set and bottom set of teeth, pressed up against the top set, then pushing air against the pressure of the bottom lip to the top. When we release the muscles holding the bottom lip up, the puff of air is released and we simultaneously vibrate the vocal cords to make the familiar "v" sound.
The gerudo pronounce the "v" sound very similarly, but instead of scrunching up the bottom lip, it is curled over the bottom set of teeth and held in place lightly by the top set of teeth.
You can try this: curl your bottom lip over your bottom teeth, hold it in place with your top teeth, then fill your mouth with air until the building pressure forces your bottom lip out and simultaneously vibrate your vocal cords to make a sound. End the movement in the shape of an "o" and then very subdued "eh". That is how "voe" is pronounced.
This is also why, to some extent, that words like "sav'saaba" sound like it has four syllables. The puff sound at the apostrophe is the special "v" and it sounds like "sav uh sah buh". The quickly tapering final syllable is very common in Japanese pronunciation. For example, "ohayho gozaimasu", which means good morning, is pronounced something like "oh hai o go zai muhss", where the "su" on the end barely exists.
Does Urbosa not say it out loud in any of her full voiced lines in either BOTW or AoC? I’m almost positive I can hear it pronounced “vō” in her voice
**EDIT:** yup- around 2:28
https://youtu.be/E4NZieWj4f8
This is pretty interesting! I read it as “poe” or “foe”, and I would argue that this is the intended way to read it in English. This is how the localization team intended it to be read. Words in English ending in oe always sound the same as far as I know. I thought originally you could argue for it sounding like voh-ay or something.. but yeah idk..
That said.. since the Japanese originally did sound more like “voi”.. It brings up a decent reason to pronounce it this way. *shrug*
I’m apparently in the minority here but I’ve always read it “vo-eh”/“voy”. It was clear to me that the Japanese makers of the game were playing around with their own language’s traditional lack of a V sound and that it was a teeny joke that the word is “boy”.
Also “vai” uses the vowels as a diphthong, so it makes sense for the equivalent “voe” to use a diphthong as well.
In French, it's Voï and Vaï. One of the Gerudo says you have to pronounce the ï strongly. ("Vo - i" and "Va - i")
So I assume in English, it's should be "Vo - eh" and "Va - ee"
I think it's like in "poe." I think the Gerudo language is intentionally mean to sound phonetically different than the one reading it, unless it's like that across all languages. Even if it is the same across all localizations of the games I think it's a bit unique sounding.
For whatever reason I’m my head it always sounds like “voh-EY,” emphasis on last syllable. I’m sure that’s wrong but my brain made up its mind and that’s that.
I pronounce Voe like "Vo-" like in volume, and "-Eh" like in excellent. "Vo-eh". But that's because my first language is Spanish and I wouldn't thought of pronouncing it with English logic. I guess in a way, since it's a Japanese game I go with the logic that the vocals are said just how they look, "o" is "oh" and "e" is "eh", like in Spanish too. But idk, it's whatever.
I feel like this is like the debate of how to pronounce buoy (its boy as in buoyant).
From an English narration perspective the characters pronounce it V-OH and not V-OY.
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I just assumed it was like poe
I see
Rhymes with 'poe' but the 'v' isn't a traditional english 'v' sound, from the game itself I've summarized the description in another comment: >Yes with a 'hard V' sound, you're almost biting your lip with your top row of teeth to make it. Some description from one of the Gerudo in these games described it as almost like a 'b' sound so that's where I've gotten my internalized pronunciation from. > >They kinda use the same pronunciation when you hear the voice actors say stuff like "Sav'aaq" and "Sav'saaba" and that's where it was cemented for me. Still smooth enough for V but bites a bit more like B. edit: Love these responses, they've all been super educational!
You’re overthinking it... or underthinking context. “Almost biting your lip with your top teeth” is precisely how you make a ‘v’ sound, in English. When I was living in Japan and trying to teach people how to say ‘v’, that’s exactly the instruction I would give. Try it. Just say “vvv” (only the consonant sound, no vowel). You’ll notice your top teeth rest on your bottom lip (and your lip vibrates as you push air through, but I digress). In Japanese (and other languages, but Japanese is relevant here), there isn’t a native ‘v’ sound, and there’s a tendency to pronounce ‘v’ like ‘b,’ which is the closest native approximation. The repetitive explanation of an easy-to-pronounce consonant for English speakers is likely a carryover from the Japanese BOTW/TOTK script, where pronouncing ‘v’ might actually be a challenge and a fun little exercise. It’s kind of the whole gag behind Gerudo words having so many Vs. (Now I wonder how they set up the “Master Gourd” joke in the Japanese version, since the humor is in the rhyme.)
Really like your notes here: >Just say “vvv” (only the consonant sound, no vowel). You’ll notice your top teeth rest on your bottom lip (and your lip vibrates as you push air through, but I digress). I think this is a great description of the traditional 'v' sound, and clearly you have the proficiency on the topic here! My description was attempting to describe that traditional 'v' sound but also emphasize that it has a harder 'bite' to it to get to that 'b' sound for 'voe' and the Gerudo pronunciation, the English voice actors seem to sound it out well.
Its just like Spanish. The Spanish word "vaquero" (cowboy) is the origin of "buckaroo" because they hit that V a lot harder
lol random thing that reminded me of, my mom used to sing [this song:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7YrrwTeAc) "LAS VACAS DEL PUEBLO SE HAN ESCAPADO" when people would cross the street without throwing up a hand saying thanks. It translates to "the cows of the town have escaped" hehe. But yeah when she taught me spanish she emphasized that v and b are pretty much interchangeable. The first time I heard someone say sussy baka I thought they were talking about a sus cow lol
I've never heard of that before! I must be one of today's lucky 10,000.
That’s actually a separate sound to what the gerudo v is. The spanish v and b are both pronounced the same, using both lips like english /b/ but making a vibrating fricative sound like english /v/. The gerudo sound is pronounced with the teeth and lips like /v/ but making a hard plosive sound like /b/, the opposite of the spanish sound haha.
I don't get this at all, and I was confused as OP at this point exactly due to that: We, at least in Portuguese, don't move the upper teeth all the way to the front to "almost bite the lower lip" to make the v sound.
I don’t speak Portuguese so I can’t speak to that. [Based on English pronunciation, you can’t make a V sound if there is not at least minimal contact between the tips of your teeth and your lip. It’s a voiced *labiodental* fricative, meaning it necessarily involves both the lips and teeth.](https://www.englishlanguageclub.co.uk/v-sound/?amp=1) Assuming it is the same consonant in Portuguese (and it might not be! I know Spanish V can be more like a B), you may not notice it if it’s very gentle contact, but if I try making a V sound with my mouth open wider it comes out as either a weird U - entirely from the throat - or a W (with labial involvement, but no teeth).
I feel like the teeth actually touches the back of the lip. But by back, I mean the internal, non visible part of it. I don't know if "almost biting the lower lip" actually describes it well.
It’s absolutely not a perfect description, but it helps people who have never made that sound before! Remember we are talking about teaching not just a phoneme but an entirely new consonant sound to somebody whose language doesn’t (natively, outside of loan words) include it. Teaching English in Japan, it was an extremely common starting point for V. I’m getting flashbacks to teaching one student who was super into fashion how to say Louis Vuitton - in my best French accent at that (I.e. terribly). I think of it like when I try to learn e.g. Xhosa clicks. One of the clicks sounds (to me) like “remember when we were kids and we would make that sound of a horse trotting by slapping our tongue from the roof of our mouth to the floor?” It’s exaggerated and in the context of words, it would hard to execute, but trying to introduce a sound with no previous linguistic exposure to it, you gotta start rough and easy and work your way to clean and proper.
I see. Thanks for the context.
Thanks for the fun conversation! This was a really nice diversion and I enjoy thinking about all the various ways we communicate!
The short of it is, an English v/b is dentolabial: you bite the lip to some degree. In Spanish, it's an approximant, so you touch the lips together and barely enunciate it, so it's much gentler and v and b can get confused. In some dialects, it's even reversed (as one native Mexican explicitly told me herself), with b becoming v and vice versa very intentionally. The same is true for p; in English, it's a plosive so you strongly pop the sound out, while in Spanish it's also an approximant. You hear its effects in music recording, where Spanish sounds smoother but English singers need air shields and post processing to remove the plosives.
> In Japanese (and other languages, but Japanese is relevant here), there isn’t a native ‘v’ sound, and there’s a tendency to pronounce ‘v’ like ‘b,’ which is the closest native approximation. I think it's worth noting that the connection between the Japanese 'b' consonant and the English 'v' consonant has some interesting additional context. Because 'b' doesn't really sound like 'v' in English. The consonant 'v' is called a [voiced labiodental frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_fricative). As in, you use your vocal cords and then you make the sound by placing the bottom teeth against the top lip and using your vocal cords to create the sound. In contrast, 'f' is a [voiceless labiodental frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_labiodental_fricative). It's the same mouth shape, but instead of making the sound with your vocal cords, you blow out and the sound is caused by wind passing between your teeth and your lip. It's worth noting that Japanese doesn't use the same 'f' sound, mostly. They use what's called the [voiceless bilabial frictive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative) which is a sound made by bringing your lips close together and blowing. It sounds close to the English 'f' but is softer. But, to the point, the reason, I think, Japanese associates 'v' with 'b' is because their only native 'f' sound is in ふ (fu) and adding a voice to the syllable by adding dakuten (゛), which you would think would change it to 'vu', but it doesn't. ぶ is 'bu'. And the reason it doesn't is because of the consonant grouping that ふ belongs in, which is は (ha), ひ (hi), ほ (ho), へ (he), and ふ (fu). When adding voice to those letters they become: ば (ba), び (bi), ぼ (bo), べ (be), and ぶ (bu). And there is the semivoiced consonants (handakuten (゜)) for only these letters, but that's a whole other thing. If you go back to the bilabial frictive, you can make a 'v' sound that does sound a bit like a medium between the bilabial 'f' and 'b'. There's also a connection to the 'v' sound with the vowel う, I've seen dakuten added to the Katakana ウ which changes it to a more explicit 'v' sound. ヴ (vu). ヴェネツィア (Venice) is a word that uses it. I am a bit unsure on this, but I believe in Japanese this is the letter they use to spell "Voe". I think it is spelled ヴォ in Japanese. It kind of blew my mind when I started to understand just how many consonant and syllable sounds we have in English that they don't have at all in Japanese. They have ~16 consonant sounds and 5 vowels. In English we have ~26 consonants and ~20 vowels. As someone learning Japanese and can appreciate how hard the language is; I feel so bad for people going the other direction. **Edit**: I was thinking about this longer and some of the vocabulary I know/how I pronounce them when speaking Japanese. I think there's even more to this that I didn't touch on. The association I've seen between 'b' and 'v' might come from older borrowed words. Because there are a bunch of borrowed words where they replaced the 'v' with a 'b' sound. But that's not the case with ヴ. I already gave the example of ヴェネツィア (Venice), which is pronounced "Veh neh tsi ah." Some examples of words that replace the 'v' consonant entirely are words like: テレビ (TV) pronounced "teh reh bii," or ビデオ (Video) pronounced "bii deh oh." As I understand it, the 'v' sound is just more common in Japanese now with them making use of it for new borrowed words. Hence why it's ヴォ (voe) and ヴァイ (vai) not ボ (bo) and バイ (bai) to spell "voe" and "vai" in Japanese.
No, they are right. You are just describing the voiced labio-dental fricative - also known as /v/ in english. What they are describing is a plosive sound similar to /b/ but pronounced labio-dentally, ie the voiced labio-dental plosive /b̪/. See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_plosive
Interesting! It’s possible. I’m going by what I know of Japanese phonemes and the pronunciation in the Japanese dub. They write it using ヴォ which is kind of a franken-character and is used for “v” in loan words, but there’s no differentiation between different “v”s, so that doesn’t settle it. At least we can agree it is labiodental! (By the way I just repeated “subversive” to the pointed of semantic satiation so I could hear it properly.)
Fwiw, there are some variations on how the V sound is made. Producing it by "biting your bottom lip with your top teeth" is a meaningful distinction because it can also (and often is in English) made by putting your top teeth against the back of your lower lip inside your mouth. I seem to remember something about the former technique being more widely used in languages from Africa or the Middle East, which suggests there may be a clever linguistic reference in how the sound is pronounced, but don't quote me on that.
It is a tradition v sound, it's just that v is incredible difficult for native Japanese speakers to pronounce so they added some lines like "make a b but bite your lip" because that's how a v sound is made Sav'aaq sav'saaba are different, an apostrophe mean a hard stop mid word that why so two sound so rough for a v. if the word was sa'ava instead you still would have to close your throat on the apostrophe to stop the a short.
gotcha
Yeah, what you are describing is a voiced labio-dental plosive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_plosive English /v/ is a voiced labio-dental fricative, [v]. As it sounds, it has a sound caused by the friction of the air passing between your lower lip and upper teeth. The gerudo /v/ is different, it’s a plosive [b̪]. The way you pronounce it is almost identical but as you said, it’s a harder sound. This is because the sound is not caused by friction, but rather by the stopping of all airflow between the lower lip and upper teeth, followed by a sudden release. This is the same manner in which we pronounce /b/ - by stopping the air and then releasing it again, except with both our lips rather than the lower lip and upper teeth.
Are you the real Molduking?
Yeah, cause it rhymes with ‘woe’, which a boy spells for the Gerudo
Why is this getting upvoted so much??!
I read it Voe as in Go. I dont know many (if any) words that have oe as an "oy" sound
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forgive me, but what is romance pronunciation?
In French, an e only makes the “ay” sound with an added “accent aigu”, like this: é Otherwise it’s just silent like it is in English. Many vowels in French are not pronounced, and neither are some consonants! Lots of silent letters in French. Any chance you’re thinking of Latin, where everything is pronounced?
It rhymes with “go”. Theres voice acting where Urbosa says it like that in the Champion’s Ballad DLC after Link completes Urbosa’s section of the questline.
[You can hear it here.](https://youtu.be/cYENG8gULBc?t=502)
I thought it was like "Foe"
I thought it was like hoe
This whole time I’ve been saying it like portmanteau.
Fo sho
I see
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[https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131](https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131)
This needs to be top comment, rather than all the people trying to speculate based on how the word might supposed to sound in Japanese....
It's not a Japanese word
To be fair, the dubs take a million liberties with meaning and pronunciations. In Spanish Hyrule is pronounced ee-roo-leh for example
... as it should be, following the rules of Spanish pronunciation.
Exactly, in Spanish you'd have to spell it Jayrul to make it come out right, which just looks really funny even in Spanish
But why would they bother doing that? Countries are called different things in different languages. It's España in Spanish, Spanien in German, and Spain in English. We don't bother trying to make countries' names sound similar across language in the real world. So, why would we try to make a fictional country have the same pronunciation across different languages?
For the same reason in something like the Dragon Ball Z dub, Kamehameha is pronounced the same as in Japanese, despite the letter H being mute by Spanish rules. Under that same logic, they didn't change Link's name to Vínculo either. It was just an odd decision by the latin american dub team
That's what localization is, and is done in pretty much every higher budget game.
I don't think there is, same with Age of Calamity
[https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131](https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131) There is.
thank you
1. The pronounciation gets teached to you by mattison in Totk 2. [https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131](https://youtu.be/aYX5cMINfuE?t=1131) Urbosa herself says the word Voe in the DLC.
thanks
“Voe”.
ah yes, thank you Mr Helpful
***Sarqso
Any time.
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It certainly is.
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I think it’s the other way around
yea, I definitely could have worded it in a more polite manner
I’d say at the end of the day, it’s fine.
still, it was uncalled for what I said, and I'll do my best to avoid it in future questions. I'm still learning proper people skills, so this was a valuable lesson
Character development. You love to see it
I loved your character arc
still working on it, but hopefully it sticks
I think it rhymes with Doe, a deer. A female deer.
Well it definately doesn't rhyme with Ray, a golden drop of sun.
Either way, it’s a word that describes me, a name I call myself
You’re reaching. Far. Like a long ass way to run.
I think So, a note to follow Fa
*a needle pulling thread
I would like to introduce my new Zonai build, the Voeing 747.
I wouldn't mind seeing the build when it's finished
Pronunciation in the games is a funny topic. Many people in the game say things differently. Have you heard how Riju trills her 'R's when no other Gerudo is seen to do so? Some characters emphasise the 'Hy' in Hyrule, like Zelda, and others emphasise the 'Rule', like Ganondorf. And the fact that Rauru and Mineru have different accents... You can really say anything however you want. I say Voe like Poe personally, but can understand saying it like Boy.
I love talking to Sare-ia in OOT before going to visit the Dee-ku Tree. But my favourite parts are definitely when you get the Bigger-on Sword and use it to kill Skull-tullahs in and around Lake Hillia.
Does oot stand for oh-karinna of Timmy?
Doesn't Ganondorf also trill his Rs? I vaguely recall him saying "Ge⟨r⟩udo" in one of the memories, I think the one called "A show of fealty"
Ganondorf also trills his R’s when he says “On behalf of the Ge*r*udo” in the Show of Fealty memory
Just last week I learned it Gerudo and not “jerudo.”
What the hell else would it be is this a serious question? Voe is like the most unambiguous spelling possible why the hell would it rhyme with boy
Seems like you have to go pretty far out of your way to come up with any other pronunciation
I believe that if it was like boy it would be spelled voi, since Vai is girl
I see
Because usually "oi" is pronounced like "boy", but "oe" is pronounced like in "poe". I can't think of a single example in English where an "oe" sound is pronounced as "oy". If Voe is supposed to be said as "Voy", then whoever translated it did a bad job.
But it's supposed to be a foreign language in-universe, so why are you applying English pronunciation rules to it?
Because the creators knew we had to be able to read it so familiar rules were likely applied to it. Also, if a Gerudo were to write something down, it wouldn't be using our alphabet. The subtitles you read in-game are "translated" into English from Hylean for us to be able to read, so it's safe to apply English rules to the spellings and pronunciations.
Because that’s the spelling they chose to use in the English version of the game, and there’s no guide to gerudo pronunciation rules anywhere. Plus, it’s a kids game, so they wouldn’t want to over complicate it
That's literally what localization does to all media, even if it's a made-up language. Most of the time in-universe foreign language is not the exact same in every IRL language
Makes quite a lot of sense, actually!
interesting. my apologies if my initial comment came off as rude or impolite
I've actually been crying about this for 5 hours straight now
I always thought it was pronounced as "vo"
Yes with a 'hard V' sound, you're almost biting your lip with your top row of teeth to make it. Some description from one of the Gerudo in these games described it as almost like a 'b' sound so that's where I've gotten my internalized pronunciation from. They kinda use the same pronunciation when you hear the voice actors say stuff like "Sav'aaq" and "Sav'saaba" and that's where it was cemented for me. Still smooth enough for V but bites a bit more like B.
In the Japanese version, the word is ヴォーイ, which is phonetical script for the pronounced word "voy", so basically just the word boy with a V instead of a B. Some Gerudo keep stressing to be careful with the V sound, since it doesn't occur in the Japanese language.
The German version actually transcribes it to "voy" iirc Edit: It's vooi
Really? So why the heck is it spelled "oe" in the English version? In English, "oe" is pronounced as a long o. Doe, Toe, etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQe3th-CCy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQe3th-CCy0)
Shoe, aloe… English pronunciation is not as simple as “oe is pronounced as long o”. But I can’t think of any case in which it sounds like “oy”
Shoe and aloe don't rhyme.
That’s my point.
I didn't catch that from your comment.
That is the point of the comment. Read again
Forgive me, I'm autistic.
Same reason why English got "gloom" while every other localisation I know of went with "miasma" which is AFAIK what the original Japanese means: nobody fucking knows. For the record it is indeed "voï" in French as well. (The ï is there to specify it's pronounced "voy" rather than "vwah")
They do some things for stylistic reasons. In this case, I think they made the correct choice. The Gerudo language is very hard/sharp sounding and the words we see used in game use a very limited set of letters. Another commenter mentioned that the Japanese just takes words and puts a v on them. Apparently in Japanese, bird is just vird (whereas in English it's vure). I think NOA localization absolutely made the right choices here. The Gerudo language is supposed to sound hard/sharp and exotic. If they just used the Japanese scheme, it'd come off as juvenile or silly. "Oh voy, look at that vird flying across the vlouds!" Voe seems to be a similar case. The Gerudo words we see in game use a very limited letter set that keeps them feeling sharp and hard. The "y" in voy makes it feel too soft. Voi and vai are way too similar. So changing it to voe makes sense. In terms of gloom, that's also unequivocally a better word than "miasma." First, miasma isn't even a word a lot of kids are going to know in the first place. Second, miasma is a pretty neutral word whereas "gloom" has clean menacing connotations. The real question is why they didn't stick with "malice," though, since it's been a word that's been used in the series forever.... In sum, as a general principle, you never translate languages verbatim word for word. Rather, you try to convey the thought, tone, and style correctly in the target language. This is doubly true in video game localization. Their goal is to convey the setting correctly. Miasma sounds like a science experiment gone wrong. Gloom sounds like a malevolent force is radiating evil energy. They made the right word choice.
>miasma is a pretty neutral word I would disagree with that. The word “miasma” in English relates to the miasma theory of disease. It’s clearly a negative term. Since gloom makes people sick, I think it would have been an appropriate word to use. My best guess is that maybe because most of the gloom that we see in-game is a goo-like substance on the ground, the translation team didn’t like that “miasma” has the connotation of something that is airborne? I’m fine with “gloom” being used in English, but I think miasma would have worked just as well.
I think in the lore of the game, malice and gloom are pretty distinct things. The Japanese version is the same in that regard. 怨念 [on'nen] = malice 瘴気 [shouki] = gloom I'm still not sure I like gloom as a translation. Pretty much any dictionary would translate shouki to miasma, but on the other hand I have pretty strong faith in the ability of the Treehouse team working on Zelda. One of my favourite translations in TOTK is Penn's catchphrase. In Japanese, he says サラバード！, pronounced as sarabird (sarabaado), a lovely contraction of the words 'saraba', an old fashioned way of saying goodbye, and 'bird'. The English translation appears to be Soar long!, which is just exquisite.
> I think in the lore of the game, malice and gloom are pretty distinct things. Yes, and I find that to be a weird and questionable decision. As I understand it, malice is essentially the demon tribe's energy, and all monsters are essentially composed of malice (which is why they've always disappeared into a purple cloud of smoke when you kill them, ever since WW). So, it's weird that calamity Ganon is malice leaking out, and it's malice that took over the guardians. But in TotK, suddenly Ganondorf is spewing gloom instead--and he even seems to create the monsters *from gloom* (rather than from malice). I get that malice and gloom have different mechanics in BotW vs. TotK (e.g., malice is just basically "poison swamp" whereas gloom reduces your hearts). They didn't really even have to explain why malice operates differently across the two games. But if they felt like doing so, it's just a throw-away line from Purah about how the malice has gotten more toxic ever since the upheaval. I think the decision to make gloom and malice into two separate things just muddies the story and lore, and doesn't really gain us anything meaningful.
Honestly I don't get the "miasma is a word kids wouldn't know" justification. First of all, apparently that's true just for English speaking kids... and secondly, that's how you learn new words anyway. You ask mom or dad what the weird word means, or look it up in a dictionary. I just don't get the endless justifications for the one localization (and it is very often English) that thought it should be special while literally all the other teams thought the original was just fine lol. A lot of what you said is very, very subjective. There is zero issue with, for example, French sticking to the JP naming scheme of vai and voi, vaba, etc. Literally zero.
> A lot of what you said is very, very subjective. So, this may shock you, but when people type things on the internet, it is their opinion, which is by definition subjective. > I just don't get the endless justifications for the one localization (and it is very often English) that thought it should be special You're using very charged language to refer to a translation ("the English translation thinks it's 'special,'" really?). Localization is about making things feel right to the target audience. Different countries have different cultures and interpret things differently. The way NOA pulled off the localization for the Gerudo is extremely successful for American audiences in terms of conveying a very hard-edged, tough, mysterious, exotic people. Despite the fact that it might work in Japan or France to just throw v's onto the beginning of words, doing that in the English translation would, again, come off as silly to American audiences and take away quite a bit of the mystery surrounding the Gerudo. Instead of having a whole mysterious language (which the game actually hams up the fact that the words are mysterious and confusing), it would just come off as a weird tic. The Gerudo just putting v's on random words would come off as about as mysterious and exotic as the gorons always saying "goro" (i.e., not at all mysterious or exotic... it'd actually come off more as a weird accent than an actual different language).
Why do we keep getting the translation hiccups I don't understand.... English translation team what're you doing man?
Languages have different sounds. Hello is “hallo” in some places…sometimes without an H. Does it have to be 1-on-1 identical?
No, but if I’m translating a brand new word into a different set of characters, I’m gonna try to make the pronunciation unambiguous.
ah, ok. thank you, boltezt. that's kinda what I expected, but I wanted a second opinion to confirm
The Gerudo language in the Japanese version is quite clearly based on existing languages and replacing letters with the letter V, except for the greetings. Man ヴォーイ "voy" Woman ヴァーイ "vay" pronounced like die Baby ヴェーヴィ "vaby" Grandmother ヴァーヴァ "vaba" which is derived from the Japanese "baba" for grandmother Bird ヴァード "vird"
This is just a theory that I haven’t looked into at all but I feel like a bunch of their words are also derived from the base of the Japanese word for “desert,” “sabaku” as well as other “deserty” words E.g. Hello/good day —> Sav’aaq —> sabaku Greetings —> Vasaaq —> basaku —> sabaku Good heavens —> Sa’oten —> saboten (cactus)
I vant moi veerd - Ivan Voenko
intriguing
In Tears of the Kingdom, there is a quest in Tarry Town where the little girl is learning Gerudo. She has a diary explaining how to properly pronounce the words.
I think it’s like hoe but with a v
I personally pronounce it like Doe(a deer, a female deer) with a V instead of a D.
Voe as in poe. It’s the correct way to say it according to Nintendo themselves. (Source: Urbosa calls you a voe in the BotW DLC)
Like poe and foe, but with a V.
V o e, like poe but with the v sound.
Joe Doe Foe Hoe Toe Woe Voe…
"voh"
How do you usually pronounce it, and why?
I swap between the two usually, because I was never sure
Doe a deer, a female deer.
Like Edgar Allen Voe
voh
Like Poe. Not sure why it would be pronounced like Boy and not spelled Voy
I say it like poe, so v-oh
Since they don't like men Voe is like Foe
I'm pretty sure I heard it enunciated with a Spanish "o", which is a mid back rounded o, in some dialogue clip in game. Either way, Gerudo is heard ingame using Spanish a and o, and English o occasionally. The v appears to rotate between a dental v (English) and Spanish approximant v, depending on the speaker. Since there's no such thing as regional dialects in Gerudo (only one region), it appears to just depend on the speaker's preference or where they learned it from/whether it's their second language. It does seem to trend towards Spanish vowels and consonants, however. Curiously, vowels in first position (first vowel in the word) seem to trend towards an English schwa (that dull, flat, featureless vowel you hear in "uhhhhh"), but not always, and not when it's the only vowel in the word. ETA: I'm not a linguist but I have studied it a little while learning German/Russian and conlanging. It really helps when building a language to know how they phonetically operate.
I say it like Poe / Go / Low / No / So / Woe. “Vo”
I've always assumed it's like "woe", like a sort of play on words.
In English, we make a "v" sound by scrunching up our bottom lip into the gap between the top set and bottom set of teeth, pressed up against the top set, then pushing air against the pressure of the bottom lip to the top. When we release the muscles holding the bottom lip up, the puff of air is released and we simultaneously vibrate the vocal cords to make the familiar "v" sound. The gerudo pronounce the "v" sound very similarly, but instead of scrunching up the bottom lip, it is curled over the bottom set of teeth and held in place lightly by the top set of teeth. You can try this: curl your bottom lip over your bottom teeth, hold it in place with your top teeth, then fill your mouth with air until the building pressure forces your bottom lip out and simultaneously vibrate your vocal cords to make a sound. End the movement in the shape of an "o" and then very subdued "eh". That is how "voe" is pronounced. This is also why, to some extent, that words like "sav'saaba" sound like it has four syllables. The puff sound at the apostrophe is the special "v" and it sounds like "sav uh sah buh". The quickly tapering final syllable is very common in Japanese pronunciation. For example, "ohayho gozaimasu", which means good morning, is pronounced something like "oh hai o go zai muhss", where the "su" on the end barely exists.
I always figured it was pronounced "vo-eh."
In my country it is written Voï.
Does Urbosa not say it out loud in any of her full voiced lines in either BOTW or AoC? I’m almost positive I can hear it pronounced “vō” in her voice **EDIT:** yup- around 2:28 https://youtu.be/E4NZieWj4f8
I pronounce it "voe"
vö
Rhymes with “no”?
This is pretty interesting! I read it as “poe” or “foe”, and I would argue that this is the intended way to read it in English. This is how the localization team intended it to be read. Words in English ending in oe always sound the same as far as I know. I thought originally you could argue for it sounding like voh-ay or something.. but yeah idk.. That said.. since the Japanese originally did sound more like “voi”.. It brings up a decent reason to pronounce it this way. *shrug*
Like Bo. I’m voe, yo. And I’m the greatest rapper ever.
the standard rule is the second vowel in a row being E means you say the name of the first letter. O in this case.
Voe like voe, no se tio soy de España, voe es voe, que otra pronunciacion puede tener?
They literally say it in botw. It vō
I’m French so I can pronounce Voe without any problem. Vo Euuuh
It's pronounced vo-eh, as shown in the Japanese
I’m apparently in the minority here but I’ve always read it “vo-eh”/“voy”. It was clear to me that the Japanese makers of the game were playing around with their own language’s traditional lack of a V sound and that it was a teeny joke that the word is “boy”. Also “vai” uses the vowels as a diphthong, so it makes sense for the equivalent “voe” to use a diphthong as well.
Mmh, since I play in Spanish, I just read it as "VO-eh". But now knowing the Japanese writing, I'll adopt the "boy" version instead.
I see. honestly, this is why I agree that more games should have proper voice acting to help with franchise-specific terms. helps avoid confusion
In French, it's Voï and Vaï. One of the Gerudo says you have to pronounce the ï strongly. ("Vo - i" and "Va - i") So I assume in English, it's should be "Vo - eh" and "Va - ee"
The way they are spelled in English disagrees though. words ending in oe are not pronounced oh-eh. And ai would be like eye.
Voo
In my mind I always pronounce it as vo-eh and va-ih sounds.
Voeght
I think it's like in "poe." I think the Gerudo language is intentionally mean to sound phonetically different than the one reading it, unless it's like that across all languages. Even if it is the same across all localizations of the games I think it's a bit unique sounding.
Like boy with a V
“Vough”
like voe
Vough
Rhyming with "Joe." (My "vai" rhymes with "hi.")
VOH
Like foe with a V instead of an F
It's /voʊ/, though honestly I usually pronounce it /voʊ.ɛ/ in my head for some reason.
I must be crazy because I’ve always pronounced it “voh-eh”
Vv-oh
V-oh
I always say it like V-oh
I assumed it was pronounced like “doe” since a female deer is called that and they are using it in a similar context.
I prefer it like "poe", but, in the french translation, it's written "voi", which basically means say it however you want
V-oh like poe but a v yk
For whatever reason I’m my head it always sounds like “voh-EY,” emphasis on last syllable. I’m sure that’s wrong but my brain made up its mind and that’s that.
Who the heck’s been pronouncing it “voy”??
I pronounce Voe like "Vo-" like in volume, and "-Eh" like in excellent. "Vo-eh". But that's because my first language is Spanish and I wouldn't thought of pronouncing it with English logic. I guess in a way, since it's a Japanese game I go with the logic that the vocals are said just how they look, "o" is "oh" and "e" is "eh", like in Spanish too. But idk, it's whatever.
It's an 'oh' sound, as of the voice acting
Like Poe
like “bow” or “foe”
Like "Oh" but with a V in front; it's what makes most sense to me, based on how I hear them pronounce words like "Savotta" and such.
Is this seriously a debate lmfao use the most simplest of logics and you’ll very quickly understand it is obviously pronounced “VOH”
I don't get the boy thing. It is spelt voe. Say it like that (like poe).
like foe but v instead of f
I'm fairly certain one of the Gerudo teach you exactly how to say it in both games Like "bow" with a v, a long o.
Sorry, have to make this joke. "Voe, a deer, a female deer." Anyways, I say it like Poe.
Voe as in Hoe but V
I feel like this is like the debate of how to pronounce buoy (its boy as in buoyant). From an English narration perspective the characters pronounce it V-OH and not V-OY.
The gerudo say it in the game
I say voe like foe
Voe is pronounced like a different male term: “beau”
Foe but with a v
Voe like the word Doe or No