Question about Mizhena's name

sersafir

Syllables do not come from language. Languages comes from syllables.

My name came from syllables from different languages? What does that mean? All of those syllables are perfectly pronounceable in English.

Diogenes42

Maybe its because they are actually speaking Common(?) or something and the in game text is translated for us humble players.

sersafir

Diogenes42 said:

Maybe its because they are actually speaking Common(?) or something and the in game text is translated for us humble players.

What syllables in the name don't exist in common? If there's a syllable out there it should be speak-able in any language.

Languages can't have a monopoly/control/intolerance on a syllable or else it wouldn't even be possible to pronounce the name in common.

Diogenes42

There are sounds in some languages that don't have an equivalent in English. Maybe not syllables exactly but definitely phonemes. Ask a Dutch person how to pronounce Van Gogh for example, they will make a terrifying sound that doesn't exist in English.

helmo1977

Not to talk about Edinbourgh. It took me several moments to guess where the person I was talking with wanted to go. In her language Edinbourgh sounded so much different

sersafir

Diogenes42 said:

There are sounds in some languages that don't have an equivalent in English. Maybe not syllables exactly but definitely phonemes. Ask a Dutch person how to pronounce Van Gogh for example, they will make a terrifying sound that doesn't exist in English.

They might be unique to languages, but Miz didn't say phonemes, the individual said syllables.

Also what ur saying might be saying something offensive about Dutch people, please try to be respectful on my thread.

Diogenes42

Just a friendly joke, I hope my Dutch friends on these forums were not upset. If so I apologise. It's possible the character simply misspoke or maybe the writer just got mixed up. I think the explanation still comes across though.

Azzara

sersafir said:

My name came from syllables from different languages? What does that mean? All of those syllables are perfectly pronounceable in English.

My theory is that they added "me" to the slavic "zhеna" (woman) and got mizhena. Something like "me woman" or "milady". Just a guess.

AmpZine

I'm also not exactly sure what Mizhena is saying here, but I will say that you absolutely can have syllables that can't exist in a language even if the language has all the phonemes that occur in that syllable. For example in English "sing" is a perfectly valid syllable. But if we reverse the two consonant sounds and put the "ng" at the beginning and the "s" at the end ("ngis") the result is not a valid syllable in English. This is because even though the "ng" sound is a valid English phoneme there is a rule in English which says it can only occur at the end of a syllable, not at the beginning. Not all languages have this rule - ngis is a valid syllable in Aleut (a native language of Alaska) for example.

This rule is why the common Vietnamese name Nguyen is usually pronounced by English speakers as "win". We can't pronounce the "ng" at the beginning so we drop it.

sersafir

AmpZine said:

I'm also not exactly sure what Mizhena is saying here, but I will say that you absolutely can have syllables that can't exist in a language even if the language has all the phonemes that occur in that syllable. For example in English "sing" is a perfectly valid syllable. But if we reverse the two consonant sounds and put the "ng" at the beginning and the "s" at the end ("ngis") the result is not a valid syllable in English. This is because even though the "ng" sound is a valid English phoneme there is a rule in English which says it can only occur at the end of a syllable, not at the beginning. Not all languages have this rule - ngis is a valid syllable in Aleut (a native language of Alaska) for example.

This rule is why the common Vietnamese name Nguyen is usually pronounced by English speakers as "win". We can't pronounce the "ng" at the beginning so we drop it.

Even if that's the case, how would he be pronouncing his own name if there's a rule in common that such syllables can't exist in common?

AmpZine

sersafir said:

Even if that's the case, how would she be pronouncing her own name if there's a rule in common that such syllables can't exist in common?

Yeah, I agree that part doesn't make much sense. Maybe she makes a point of pronouncing it in a way that isn't native to Common. Or she converted the syllables to a Common form, like the real world example of Nguyen -> Win in English.

Honestly as a linguist I try to ignore things like this in RPG settings or come up with head canon solutions for what they "really" meant. It's very rare that writers get language stuff 100% right. I mean, maybe Mizhena herself doesn't really know what she means either. She could have just heard some sounds and thought "sounds good to me". It's as good a way of coming up with a name as any I suppose. I think the important part is that she came up with her own name, not the technical details about how languages work.