28 minutes ago, DOMSWAT911 said:

For me, it's not the way people pronounce Arquitens, it's more the ''kittens'' reference that I dislike.

This is maybe not a strong ship if we look for it's structure value but it can bring some good dammage at long distance and I think it diserved a little more respect

If you don't think kittens can bring good damage at long distance....you clearly aren't a cat owner. Or been on the receiving end of ten pointy needles attached to a pouncing floof of doom.

I'm just amazed that my tongue in cheek comment turned into a pretty awesome discussion of pronunciation and Latin root words.

And kittens.

See, FFG? This is what happens when we get no news!

58 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

There is absolutely not a W sound, despite how it appears when written. It is one of those foibles of pronunciation that requires looking past the word as written to the Latin roots of words as the fundamentals of forming language. You are looking at the word and forming syllabic breaks where they should not be, and again, it is important that it is a 3 syllable word, and you only have one break. You can not separate the U from Q, because it is fundamental in forming the word Arc(u), but you can separate the I from U and T, and this is correct. The I here is similar to the bridge "y" in Spanish, another Latin based language. It is a bridge between arco and tenens formed by the assimilation of the two into a single word, nothing more. It should not interfere with someone who knew the individual Latin roots of this word from understanding it's meaning based on how it was said, which happens if you throw a W in there or contract it to two syllables.

I know I am nothing but an internet poster, but I do know pronunciation, and I can guarantee to you that I am not just speaking out my butt here. It is pronounced as I have explained above.

I don't know Latin at all, but you clearly know your stuff and I believe you. On the other hand, pronunciations change over time, and it's not uncommon for the original morphology to disappear in the process. Arquitens hasn't of course gone through the natural development in active use, but I still think it might be a bit unfair to completely dismiss an otherwise quite sensible pronunciation based on the morphosyntax of a dead language.

Edit: I was trying to be concise and may have sounded more argumentative than I meant. Not trying to pick a fight, just wanted to share my thoughts.

10 minutes ago, Villakarvarousku said:

I don't know Latin at all, but you clearly know your stuff and I believe you. On the other hand, pronunciations change over time, and it's not uncommon for the original morphology to disappear in the process. Arquitens hasn't of course gone through the natural development in active use, but I still think it might be a bit unfair to completely dismiss an otherwise quite sensible pronunciation based on the morphosyntax of a dead language.

Edit: I was trying to be concise and may have sounded more argumentative than I meant. Not trying to pick a fight, just wanted to share my thoughts.

Generally speaking, if it is pronounced a particular way on Star Wars Rebels, I'd go with that even if it was against language instinct. After all, not everyone who writes a novel or produces a particular work is an expert linguist, like Tolkien inventing several languages before ever penning a story in Middle Earth. Still, if a name does have an historical origin, I'd tend to run with that background first. I've been corrected on plenty of names that derived from languages from which I'm not familiar, so it should be a familiar kind of thing to anyone with sci-fi or fantasy interests.

10 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

Generally speaking, if it is pronounced a particular way on Star Wars Rebels, I'd go with that even if it was against language instinct. After all, not everyone who writes a novel or produces a particular work is an expert linguist, like Tolkien inventing several languages before ever penning a story in Middle Earth. Still, if a name does have an historical origin, I'd tend to run with that background first. I've been corrected on plenty of names that derived from languages from which I'm not familiar, so it should be a familiar kind of thing to anyone with sci-fi or fantasy interests.

Yeah, that's fair. I'd probably lean towards the more etymological pronunciation too, my main point was just that I don't think there's necessarily a wrong and a right here.

Does the Arquitens actually get named in Rebels by the way? I can't remember hearing it, but then again I started watching Rebels before I played Armada so it may have just not caught my attention. I feel like they'd just generally call it a light cruiser or something though.

True, pronunciations change and language is evolutionary, but as far as saying there isn't necessarily a wrong or right in this instance I would disagree with. I think that all to often we take for granted the heritage and underpinning of our linguistic past and allow ourselves to blur the line between the evolution of language and the importance of keeping some phonemes (the little pieces of sound that make up a word) intact because they are integral to the word they represent.

For instance, if you have a word like "trashcan" that describes a noun. I can decide that I want to start pronouncing it "Trah-san" just because language is evolving, and maybe I decide the first A is a long a like in "Paul" and the C is silent like in "Transcend" and this is how I want to pronounce it. But now suddenly we have an issue, because you have lost the root words that integrated to create a hybrid word that is both a title and a description in one, saving someone already familiar with the base language from having to ask, "So what is the purpose of this 'Trah-san' you speak of."

When someone says trashcan, you know what trash is, you know what a can is, and the item title and its purpose become self evident. This is what you are doing to the word Arquitens when you pronounce it incorrectly.

The English word for Arquitens is Archer, but Lucas decided not to use the English translation of this word to name the ship. Therefore the word has taken on an additional layer of meaning on top of just translation. Just like the English word for 'salsa' is 'sauce', but calling 'salsa' 'sauce' fails to convey the true essence of the subject because the English translation has a unique meaning in addition to its direct translation. It is at this point, the intersection of languages from multiple sources converging in meanings that things become incredibly complex. This is where the word Arquitens sits. In my opinion this makes it more important to be accurate with the pronunciation to remove at least THAT layer of difficulty from the equation. You may disagree, I give you permission, fellow internet poster, but I just to make sure you know that it is a decision to be wrong (hope the humor isn't lost here!)

In the end, an opinion on the subject was shared and I figured that I could be both helpful to people playing the game (now you can say the name correctly without doubt!) but also informative to people who maybe didn't know previously that there was a method to the madness behind why words are said as they are.

You make some excellent points. One thing I would disagree with is the trashcan example, since this isn't just arbitrarily deciding on a new pronunciation but in fact how many people would intuitively pronounce it, and I think that has some validity. As much as I personally cringe every time I hear someone say nucular , a lot of people use it and therefore it's one of the pronunciations. I admit I tend to be a bit of a fence sitter in these things though, and maybe I just (perhaps unfairly) saw my prescriptivism alarm light up and had to jump in since I don't really know enough about Armada yet to have anything to say in most other threads.

But etymology is super interesting, and losing that link is of course always a shame, so I do understand your point of view. And I'm very glad you shared that background – I had no idea where it came from! Now I can do Legolas quotes every time I fire some arrow-lasers out of the side of my ark-WHY-tens .

(One more quick side note before someone comes and puts a stop to this: One of my favourite cases of this loanwords-losing-their-morphology phenomenon [I think this specific type is called back-formation] is how the Old French cerise (singular) was borrowed into English, but they thought it was plural because of the ending, hence we have cherries (plural) and cherry (singular). Pretty cool!)

Good points as well, @Villakarvarousku

As a language expect, one of the things we look at in figuring out what counts is standard is how large groups of people pronounce things. Given enough time, something can become standard. We've certainly got plenty of instances of that in linguistic history. Gamers are full of that. This is how we end up with shrimp, whales, guppies, and kitties. That's gamer slang, and as far as the game goes, its perfectly fine. There's also the question of what the group recognizes as non-standard, for which people can acknowledge that a particular mis-pronunication (say nucular) is common, but would also recognize it as non-standard.

I'd personally start with @BrobaFett 's pronunciation because it represents the most natural pronunciation that we'd expect out of the word. The word has an origin, and even within the confines of English, has a pronunciation that would be expected. How people take that pronunciation, twist, slangify it, mispronounce it, and other linguistic phenomenon is beyond our control.

The thing is, this isn't a real world with real Latin roots that follows Latin pronunciation. It's the name of an imaginary space ship.

We don't say 'kite' for quiet or 'kik' for quick or 'kit' for quit.

The deliberate choice by the designers to add the QU letters to the name of the ship implies the use of those letters as understood in common english pronunciation. Which includes the 'w' sound.

26 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

The thing is, this isn't a real world with real Latin roots that follows Latin pronunciation. It's the name of an imaginary space ship.

We don't say 'kite' for quiet or 'kik' for quick or 'kit' for quit.

The deliberate choice by the designers to add the QU letters to the name of the ship implies the use of those letters as understood in common english pronunciation. Which includes the 'w' sound.

Because antique is such an unusual non-standard English word?

11 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

Because antique is such an unusual non-standard English word?

It's very unusual. Practically every word incorporating the letters 'qu' includes the 'w' sound.

Just now, Chucknuckle said:

It's very unusual. Practically every word incorporating the letters 'qu' includes the 'w' sound.

I'll be sure to let everyone know they are destroying our beautiful language the next time we all go out for barbeque, or I order a nice bisque, or I need to put more torque on something. You can be its wonderful savior!

6 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

It's very unusual. Practically every word incorporating the letters 'qu' includes the 'w' sound.

I'm not sure if you missed it between the linguistics pontification earlier in the thread, but "Arquitens" is an actual Latin word with an established pronunciation. It's not just a made-up Star Wars word. So the spelling and pronunciation as not exactly arbitrary.

Vergilius has like a doctorate in classics or something. I tend to trust him on matters of Latin pronunciation.

2 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

I'll be sure to let everyone know they are destroying our beautiful language the next time we all go out for barbeque, or I order a nice bisque, or I need to put more torque on something. You can be its wonderful savior!

I'll give you bisque and torque, but I think the 'u' sound in BBQ is on my side. Of course you can get the 'que' suffix without the 'w' sound but it's much more rare for 'qu' to appear in the middle of a word like 'arquitens' without the attendant 'w' sound. It'd be like pronouncing aquaduct with as akiduct or arquebus as arkabus.

10 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

I'll give you bisque and torque, but I think the 'u' sound in BBQ is on my side. Of course you can get the 'que' suffix without the 'w' sound but it's much more rare for 'qu' to appear in the middle of a word like 'arquitens' without the attendant 'w' sound. It'd be like pronouncing aquaduct with as akiduct or arquebus as arkabus.

BBQ has a slightly different pronunciation. Really its just the letter itself, which is why we can abbreviate it to BBQ and feel like we've done the word justice and expect everyone to get it. The very definition of a consonant is a letter that requires at least some other letter to pronounce it. Minimally. It is curious that for the letter itself, we don't choose qwe, or something else, and I think that's the key point there.

A long-standing feature of the English language is that we rather inconsistently borrow words from other languages. Sometimes we import them wholesale without making any changes from the source language. Sometimes they end up regularlized into English pronunciation of other words. That means any time you get an odd word like Arquittens that by all appearances does not look like a naturally occurring English word, it is fitting to look at source languages, linguistic changes over time, and other such stuff. From what I can tell, it is only named on the box in Star Wars Armada. A google search pulls up ONLY Star Wars Armada references.

Granted, maybe they name it on the show, and again, as I pointed out earlier, sci-fi writers everywhere have been setting pronunciations however they want. That's fine. In the absence of that, AR-kit-tens is the most reasonable pronunciation, for the reasons Broba pointed earlier.

3 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Generally speaking, if it is pronounced a particular way on Star Wars Rebels, I'd go with that even if it was against language instinct. After all, not everyone who writes a novel or produces a particular work is an expert linguist, like Tolkien inventing several languages before ever penning a story in Middle Earth. Still, if a name does have an historical origin, I'd tend to run with that background first. I've been corrected on plenty of names that derived from languages from which I'm not familiar, so it should be a familiar kind of thing to anyone with sci-fi or fantasy interests.

Ever heard somebody pronounce "chimera" wrong? I don't think anything in this world pushes me as close to a life-sentance.

1 hour ago, Chucknuckle said:

...or arquebus as arkabus.

Eh...more specifically, AR-ke-bus, but that's how it is pronounced. (This one is a weird word, in that both AR-ke-bus and AR-kwe-bus are considered valid pronunciations of it. I've only ever heard AR-ke-bus said, myself, but apparently the one you refer to is also acceptable)

30 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Eh...more specifically, AR-ke-bus, but that's how it is pronounced. (This one is a weird word, in that both AR-ke-bus and AR-kwe-bus are considered valid pronunciations of it. I've only ever heard AR-ke-bus said, myself, but apparently the one you refer to is also acceptable)

It's not a word you hear in conversation often, but I've never heard the arkebus pronunciation, only arkwebus.

5 hours ago, Vergilius said:

Generally speaking, if it is pronounced a particular way on Star Wars Rebels, I'd go with that even if it was against language instinct. After all, not everyone who writes a novel or produces a particular work is an expert linguist, like Tolkien inventing several languages before ever penning a story in Middle Earth.

Tolkien may have invented several languages, but then he went and named the two bad guys Sauron and Sauroman like a doofus. You spend years inventing languages and maybe 10 seconds on coming up with character names?! Ya jackass!

47 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

It's not a word you hear in conversation often, but I've never heard the arkebus pronunciation, only arkwebus.

I don't think I'll say any more here since there is pretty much an 80% chance I've already been told I'm pontificating (thanks @Ardaedhel ) I would say your pronunciation for Arquebus is valid, through probably minority. But you can't apply that to the pronunciation of Arquitens because Arquebus and Arquitens do not share a common.... well anything really. Arque is an English transliteration of a French transliteration of the middle German word for hook.

4 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

Of course you can get the 'que' suffix without the 'w' sound but it's much more rare for 'qu' to appear in the middle of a word like 'arquitens' without the attendant 'w' sound. It'd be like pronouncing aquaduct with as akiduct or arquebus as arkabus.

How about mosquito or mannequin? English really isn't the best language for trying to make hard-and-fast rules about how to pronounce certain letter combinations.

I'm guessing what happened is they looked up the Latin for archer/Sagittarius, found 'arquitenens', chopped off a syllable to make it sound cooler and didn't even think twice about the pronunciation. It is a name, after all. That's why I'm inclined to say both are OK, at least in the absence of a confirmation from the author, but I'll be going with the 'no /w/' option if I ever happen to talk about it in English.

I call it Hand of Justice.

To be honest the thought of pronouncing it quit instead kit have never crossed my mind before reading this thread.

In any case the more important one I'm worried about is Tagge.

Tag

Tag-e

Tag-ee

Taj

Taj-e

Taj-ee

It being a person's name, it just depend on how he pronounces it.

A quick google suggests his first name is Cassio, which is italian.

Does that make it Taj-e?

5 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

I don't think I'll say any more here since there is pretty much an 80% chance I've already been told I'm pontificating (thanks @Ardaedhel ) I would say your pronunciation for Arquebus is valid, through probably minority. But you can't apply that to the pronunciation of Arquitens because Arquebus and Arquitens do not share a common.... well anything really. Arque is an English transliteration of a French transliteration of the middle German word for hook.

Just ribbing you. I actually think etymology is super interesting.

It is pronounced:

OMG WE NEED SOME ******* NEWS!

I'm pretty sure that's it.