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How do you pronounce Ninja Gaiden?


docile tapeworm

How do you pronounce Ninja Gaiden?  

45 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you pronounce Ninja Gaiden?



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More interesting would be if the same voter did the opposing way of sounding it out.  As a kid I would have.  Gradius (grah-dee-us or gray-dee-us) I think would tilt far more one way than the other, but as a kid I imagine most here would have said gay-den for Gaiden.

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Movies in Japanese #01: The Wizard « Legends of Localization

Same way I pronounce Iron Maiden.  I'm not Japanese native so in English it's Gayden haha.

Spoiler

 My analysis: GA-I-DE-N, translates phonetically to hiragana/katakana (JP alphabet).  The I makes an EE sound.  Simple as that.  Really though I probably go between both pronunciations these days.

Granted, gaiden might be a JP word, it might make sense to use the origin country's pronunciation, as many do with a word like tortilla for instance.  Being fancy, one could say Guyden as that's the Japanese pronunciation.  Then again I don't typically say Meh-he-co, I say Mexico.

But, if one wants to be so fancy and only say Ninja Guyden, just call it Ninja Ryukenden as it's called in Japan 😛

 

 

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Before about 2002-ish:  Gayden

2002 to present: Guyden

Same with "Taito" and a whole wack of other Japanese words that have "ai" in the middle.

Another one that really got me was Legend of Kage - it only took me like thirty years to learn that it was supposed to be pronounced Ka-gee, as in two syllables with a hard "G."  Go figure...

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It is pronounced guyden if you're sticking to the Japanese pronunciation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be pronounced that way.

Pronunciation of foreign words don't always end up having the same pronunciation as their mother tongue. Also, regional differences can play a part. For example, how you pronounce 'A'. Americans pronounce the letter 'A' differently in a lot of words from English/Aus/NZ. So I could definitely see gayden being a common pronunciation of the word in the US.

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For those that pronounce it "guyden", how do you pronounce the word "tofu" ? Unless you pronounce "tofu" like my colleague does when speaking English (which is Dòufu, or for the uninitiated would be akin to saying "fettuccine" with an accent or toneage), then I think really there should be no argument about this.

As many said, growing up I am sure the majority said "gayden", similarly "Tayto", "Cage", etc. Foreign words are often altered in pronunciation when coming into a foreign language. So next time you smugly correct someone about the pronunciation of Ninja Gaiden and Taito, I'll likely do the same about the Dòufu that you're eating. 😉

 

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4 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I've never heard anyone say "gayden" or "tayto" in real life. I don't really care if you say it that way, but actively arguing that you "should" do it is pretty nuts, why intentionally pronounce something wrong?

Exactly, so how do you say "tofu" again? 99.9% chance you say it wrong 

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Administrator · Posted
26 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Exactly, so how do you say "tofu" again? 99.9% chance you say it wrong 

You like to play these language "gotcha" games, but it's totally irrelevant. How the rest of the world pronounces any given word is very much on a case by case basis. 

The beauty of language is that it's always evolving, such as literally becoming a synonym for figuratively, given context and/or tone. Even if people originally thought gaiden was pronounced "gay-den", doesn't mean the popular opinion on that can't change over time to align more closely to the Japanese pronunciation. And flip side of the coin is that just because native speaking Japanese might pronounce it "dou-fu" doesn't mean we have to. 

The funny thing is, if there's a "99.99% chance" of saying it "wrong", then guess what that means - you're the one who's wrong. 

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15 minutes ago, Gloves said:

You like to play these language "gotcha" games, but it's totally irrelevant. How the rest of the world pronounces any given word is very much on a case by case basis. 

The beauty of language is that it's always evolving, such as literally becoming a synonym for figuratively, given context and/or tone. Even if people originally thought gaiden was pronounced "gay-den", doesn't mean the popular opinion on that can't change over time to align more closely to the Japanese pronunciation. And flip side of the coin is that just because native speaking Japanese might pronounce it "dou-fu" doesn't mean we have to. 

The funny thing is, if there's a "99.99% chance" of saying it "wrong", then guess what that means - you're the one who's wrong. 

Yeah man, I totally agree...aside from the fact that who is actually playing these "gotcha" games? This shouldn't even be a topic if folks weren't playing these "gotcha" games, as you put it...

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