40K Players: We Don’t Know What We’re Saying
Pimpcron explains why you’re probably wrong and need a FAQ.
The Pimpcron is back this week, and you know you missed me. I miss me whenever I’m away from a mirror. I want to explain something to you that just might blow your mind: whatever your background, and however educated you are is irrelevant. You are probably mispronouncing at least one 40k word.
What am I talking about? When people read words without hearing them spoken, we often mispronounce them. I was always a huge a reader and luckily I have passed that on my children. You’ll probably think I’m lying but my wife and kids check out about 100 books from the library every other week. My son and I especially have this problem because we see new words written and have to guess how they’re spoken. Most of my vocabulary has been gleaned from written word, and that really messes with you. My son was talking about the human colon the other day (don’t ask) and he pronounced it more like “collin”.
“And now we make a small incision in the Collin.” [nurses suddenly question his abilities.]
I used to pronounce the word paradigm as “para-dij-m”. For years before the movies I used to mispronounce Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. These type of things can be embarrassing when you say them in front of someone and look like a fool because you never really stopped to think if you were saying it correctly. You just come across a word you don’t know and do your best, then move on until you’re called out on it, and it happens all the time in 40k too.
Here’s What I’ve Heard Debate Over
When we’re talking about Necrons, we all know they have Gauss technology. People like me pronounce it “gawss” while I’ve heard other people call it “gouse”. The ancient broken shards of gods they field on the table (C’Tan) can be pronounced “suh-tan” or “kuh-tan”.
Thems C’tan sure do like they wheat tho.
When talking about Imperial Guard, I’ve heard some weird pronunciations as well. I have a friend who calls Imperial Guard Heavy Stubbers “heavy stoobers”. Another person I’ve call the infamous death world Catachans as “katch-a-cans”. And probably everyone has heard someone call the tank a “lemon russ” at some point when they first start the hobby. And what about the ever present debate of “lazz-gun” versus “laze-gun”? I feel like Europeans would pronounce it Laze-gun, because I’m ‘Murican and we’ve always called a lazz-gun. But that’s just a hunch I pulled out of nowhere. What about every time someone mentioned an “A-quill-a” or an “a-kill-a”?
I have another friend who calls his Tau Ethereal an “ether-real”. He’s not like all of you uptight Ethereals; he keepin’ it real.
My friend Alex loves his “bail” predators for his Blood Angels, while I don’t really care for his “ball” predators. And I’m pretty sure nobody knows how to say Roboute Guilliman; Games Workshop just threw too many letters into that name for it to be spoken with a human tongue.
It used to really get under my skin when my friend would pronounce daemons as “day-mons” and not “dee-mons”, but I’m not sure that I’m saying it correctly. This isn’t a 40k specific problem, but we all got a laugh when a younger player said he was going to shoot his Soul Grinder’s “Phlej-um” Bombardment at me (phlegm).
Every had a new player comment on your “tie-ra-nids”? And I may be pronouncing this wrong, but I have always called Zoanthropes “zo-an-thropes” while I’ve heard some people pronounce them “zone-thropes”. I have always pronounced Ymgarl Genestealers as “ya-marl”, assuming the g is silent. But I’ve heard other people say “im-garl” genestealers.
I picture them talking like Zoidberg.
I have another idiot friend who pronounces the White Dwarf magazine as the White Duardin magazine. I’m kidding. Just a poke at Sigmar.
The funny thing is that when you get a certain pronunciation in your head that is “correct”, it becomes really irritating to hear someone say it another way which is what is “correct” in their head.
We Need An FAQ
Those are the ones I’ve heard of in my life as a gamer, and I’m sure there’s a million more. We really need Games Workshop to hand down a pronunciation sheet for all of these words. They’ve been so FAQ-happy lately, this is what the community so desperately needs. This is my plead to you GW: Players who don’t spend time arguing or confusing each other over mispronouncing your words will spend more time buying stuff from you.
I can’t back up that statement, but I figured if they heard that it might affect their pocketbook they’d do something about it.
Anyway, it’s just another funny aspect of our strange hobby.
So what have you guys heard pronounced in a funny way? What do you get wrong?
