Pronunciation and how to do it.

DRAGØN·Jul 18, 2019·6 votes·6,312 views

Hello all, I have for a long time been a fan of LOL's Lore and love to hear about the champions and what they're up to. In general discussion with people in various discord groups i often run into different pronunciations of various characters, regions, item, etc... So im here today to maybe make a proposal to riot or maybe just crowd source for information. Can Riot start adding, at least somewhere, the Phonetic spelling for the various champions, regions, etc.. ? I'd be interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on this/ GLHF see you on the rift.

10 Comments

EdgeLadyJul 18, 20193 votes

To note:

X in the Ixtal language is used how it is in some Native American languages, to represent the "-sh-" sound (used with a long S in the IPA). However, as one can hear in Qiyana's voicelines, it's pronounced a bit differently than the typically-seen English, French and Italian pronunciations of the sound. I'm not an expert phonologist, but I believe the tongue is a bit flatter when pronouncing the sound, and I think it's pronounced more similarly to how the sound is pronounced in some Slavic or East Asian languages.

I've already seen people instantly claiming it's "Ikstal" and "Iksaokan" or "Iztal" and "Izaokan" instead of the former (which shows pronunciation as "Ishtal" and "Ishaokan").

Also, I fully support this idea. I'm a linguist and I'd love to see Runeterra's fictional languages get fully developed and shown to players.

AbiwonKenabiJul 18, 20191 votes

I always thought it was supposed to be pronounced "sh" since that's how Mesoamerican languages like the Maya language pronounce 'x', and Ixtal is very obviously based on Mesoamerican cultures.

The Mayan word "xoc" eventually became the modern English word "shark", so you can kind of see the pronunciation there.

EdgeLadyJul 18, 20192 votes

{quoted}

I always thought it was supposed to be pronounced "sh" since that's how Mesoamerican languages like the Maya language pronounce 'x', and Ixtal is very obviously based on Mesoamerican cultures.

The Mayan word "xoc" eventually became the modern English word "shark", so you can kind of see the pronunciation there.

There's also a secondary theory that shark is from a Germanic word for "scoundrel" (thus a shark being a scoundrel-fish) but good point.

A lot of people seem to be confusing Ixtal for being based off of Wakanda though. Which is funny because Ixtal seems to be more clearly based on the El Dorado legends, and Klaue in the movie says that El Dorado "was in Africa the whole time". So Runeterra's version is closer to the original myths, to be fair.

AbiwonKenabiJul 18, 20193 votes

These days, it feels like they have Champions say place names and proper names more often, which helps a lot. These days, we have a firm pronunciation for most Champions, if you know where to look.

Xayah and Rakan say each others' names a lot. Rakan is pretty much how you'd expect (Ra-kan, emphasis on the 'kan') and Xayah is pronounced with a 'z' sound (Zai-uh). They are one obvious example.

Another interesting example is in story form. Veigar is pretty much the only pronunciation I know from his color story The True and Ghastly Tale of the Beast of Boleham Tower. In it, he corrects someone saying his name (“It’s Vay-gar! Veigar!”) which is both very in-character for the indignant little guy and also very helpful for us, since I've heard people pronounce it "Va-gar".

It would be nice if we had a pronunciation guide, but Riot has been better about including pronunciations in the Champion VOs.

DRAGØNJul 18, 20192 votes

They're getting better about having the champions use certain words in their voice lines but to this day im not sure how to pronounce Shaco's Shaco name.

PlacentasJul 18, 20191 votes

I believe it's SH-AY-KOE although I always used to say SH-ACK-O

DRAGØNJul 19, 20191 votes

{quoted}

I believe it's SH-AY-KOE although I always used to say SH-ACK-O

So I used to say it "shaw-co" until a friend put it to me that the skin nutcracko provides insight on how to pronounce his name. so now I say "shack-o" to match nut-crack-o

PlacentasJul 18, 20192 votes

I logged in to upvote this. It seems like an obvious thing when they are giving us languages that don't even exist. A lot of fantasy books do this.