Comment on Today is the 40th Anniversay of Zelda!

Gork@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• aeronmelon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  They do, because the Japanese table of phonemes is very limited compared to English.

  But they will typically deemphasis the ru by making it quick and attached to ze.

  “ZEru DA”

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• captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  So, there’s a fun fact about that related to the Zelda series. You know how the Hylian language kind of sneaks out in enemy names? Like, Stal- is a prefix meaning skeletal, -fos is a suffix meaning warrior, so a stalfos is a skeletal warrior? And a lizalfos is a lizard warrior? A stalchild is a skeletal child. -orm or -arm means worm creature, like Moldorm.

  Well, in the games prior to the N64, geld- meant desert or sand. The geldarm is a sand worm creature, the geldman is a sand man like enemy from Link to the Past. Then in Ocarina of Time there’s a race of women from the desert called Gerudo. Hmm.

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  • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    What is the -o suffix used for?

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    • Uruanna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Just the end of the syllable because you can’t end a syllable with a consonant. For t/d, the vowel used “by default” is o. If they wanted to say gold, they’d write gorudo.

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    • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Nothing I’m conscious of, though a lot of the names of races or peoples end in an oh or ah sound. Zora, Rito, Gerudo, Shiekah,

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• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Yeah but their R sound sits between an R and an L sounds. They don’t have a separate L and R sound. Hence when they transliterate foreign words they use ラリルレロ both for L and R sounds. It’s why Japanese mix up their Rs and Ls when they talk or write a foreign language like English or Spanish. It’s much harder for them to hear the difference since they didn’t grow up hearing L and R as separate sounds. But also the way they learn foreign languages doesn’t help either. Since they use their kana system to learn pronunciations.

  But non native Japanese speakers also have a hard time pronouncing the R the Japanese way. It’s like a rolling R but only a single tap to the palate.

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