Topic: Shadow World names pronunciations

[tbigness]

Please help, is there a Wiki or something that phonetically pronounces the names of lands, countries and characters? It is getting very hard to imagine the pronunciation of these words and to explain these to other players.

[Terry K. Amthor]

Long ago I tried to do one for Cloudlords, but all the diacritical marks made me crazy. ANy in particular giving you trouble?

I remember long ago in Pete's Middle-earth campaign, when the Silmarilion came out, we learned that 'Quenya' was really pronounced with the 'kw' as opposed to 'kenya.' And in the first Hobbit movie, you can hear Saruman say 'Istari' with the emphasis on that first syllable, not the second  (IS-tari). Mind blown!

[tbigness]

Most of the words on the map give me difficulty. I understand that it makes it foreign and exotic but gives me a headache trying to find a pronunciation for the words. The name of the seas and lakes, Regional areas and such. The Continents are the easy part.

[Tommi]

Tolkien was knowledgeable in several languages. One was Finnish  . Those words are pronounced quite like Finnish - emphasis always on first syllable. IIRC Tolkien mentioned that Finnish was one of the influences for Quenya...

[Guillaume]

I remember long ago in Pete's Middle-earth campaign, when the Silmarilion came out, we learned that 'Quenya' was really pronounced with the 'kw' as opposed to 'kenya.' And in the first Hobbit movie, you can hear Saruman say 'Istari' with the emphasis on that first syllable, not the second  (IS-tari). Mind blown!

Well that's how I've always heard both pronounced here...
But it's probably a language thing, because a French would put emphasis on the IS naturally for Istari.
It's almost the same for Quenya... We have a lot of 'qu' words  : quelconque ( kelkonke ) , qui ( ki ) , quoi ( kwoi ), quelque ( kelke )... ( and many more ) and some of them ( as I wrote phonetically behind ) are pronounced K others are pronounced 'kw'... and well Quenya pronounced Kwenya makes it so outlandish while understandable.