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How do you pronounce these BIONICLE names?


jed1ndy

How do you pronounce these BIONICLE names?  

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I know for a fact that this has been asked before, but I would like to know myself: How do you pronounce these names from BIONICLE? I personally (try to) pronounce the names in as close proximity to their language of origin. So, I pronounce "Lewa" as "LEH-wah" and "Onewa" as "OH-neh-wah". I actually don't know what language Jaller's original name was derived from, so while I generally pronounce it "DZAH-lah", I will occasionally switch to "YAH-lah".

 

I also want to know if there are any other names that you pronounce differently from the norm. For example, I pronounce Whenua's name as "ɸEH-noo-wah" rather than "WEH-noo-wah", since that is the original Māori pronunciation.

 

EDIT: The "dz" is supposed to represent the standard pronunciation of the letter "j" in English.

Edited by jed1ndy
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Answered 2 (Lay), 1 (Oh-neh), 5.

 

For a time I used Oh-nee-wa to help clarify the distinction between Onua and a slurred Onewa. I tend to emphasize the second syllable in oNUa now instead.

 

For Jaller (5/Other), I did a quick search for phonetics of DZ, and it sounds basically like it looks, which seems very different from the run-of-the-mill J sound I use. J as in Jam. Also see Mask of Light--same sound there.

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I should have clarified this earlier, but the "dz" is supposed to represent the standard English pronunciation of the letter "j", [dʒ], not the actual phonetic [dz]. I should have used either "dg" or "zh," that was my mistake, but I hope that clarifies that last choice.

 

Sorry about the confusion.

Edited by jed1ndy
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I should have clarified this earlier, but the "dz" is supposed to represent the standard English pronunciation of the letter "j", [dʒ], not the actual phonetic [dz]. I should have used either "dg" or "zh," that was my mistake, but I hope that clarifies that last choice.

 

Sorry about the confusion.

Ah I see! Yeah, "dg" is the sound I'm going for.

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For the longest time, I don't even remember when I realised I was wrong, I pronounced Lewa as "Lawa". Don't ask me why.

I voted "LEH-wah", but I'm not sure myself. I think I catch myself pronouncing it either like that or like "LEE-Wah"

 

As for Jaller, I never even thought of pronouncing the J in his name as "Y". That is totally cool.

As for the whole "ler" or "lah", I think that boils down to accent.

 

As a sidenote, "Yallah" is a Hebrew/Arab slang world meaning "come on", "lets go" and such.

On a completely unrelated note. I am allways slightly cautious with BZP polls. It happened to me a couple of times where I take my time filling out the poll, only to press on the neutral vote by accident. ouch. 

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Lewa - "Lee-wuh"

Onewa - "Ah-nuh-wuh"

Jaller - "Jah-luh"

 

I used to pronounce the Matoran Jaller as above due to the Mask of Light movie, but it wasn't until a few years ago did I adopt the pronunciation for his Toa form. Don't ask why, it just happened that way.

I understand the one about Lewa being up to debate, but I've never met anyone who pronounced Onewa as any of the ones mentioned besides the one I voted for. That's really interesting. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

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I once pronounced Lewa as 'Leh-wuh', but hearing 'Lee-wuh' in the first movie made me switch to that.

 

Onewa was always 'Oh-noo-uh' with emphasis on the middle part. The similarity with Onua's name has always been a little annoying (I pronounce that name the same way, only emphasising the first part).

 

Jaller has always been 'Jar-luh', and I doubt most others pronounce it any differently. 'Yar-luh' sounds like a non-European/American version, as in some Middle Eastern languages 'j' and 'y' are similar or interchangeable (Jacob becomes Yakob, for example).

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I actually pronounce the gen 1 Lewa different than the gen 2 Lewa. For gen 1 I always said LOO-ah, but after finding out I was wrong I started calling the gen 2 Lee-wuh. However, when talking about the gen 1 Lewa, I still find myself going back to my old habbit of LOO-ah.

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Used to go with "Loo-wah" (I did a massive double take when I heard about a Cyclone Lua), but now I think of it as Lay-wa, even in G2.

 

Side note: This name gets even more complicated when you consider that in some parts of the world, "w" sounds like /v/, as we saw in the videos of the Danish creators. With the first vowel sound in the name now being "ee", this means some people pronounce it "Lee-vah", which is phonetically identical to how I say the word "lever"

 

Consider how confused these people must have been when Onua proudly announced "I hit the lever" in the animations...

 

"Jaller" is an interesting one because there's absolutely nothing remarkable about it to those of us who already have non-rhotic accents (meaning we don't do the /r/ sound in words like "garden" or "teacher"), but it completely throws most Americans and others who typically do rhotic prounciation. 

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First choice for all of them.  As a kid, I figured, that's how they said them in the movies, so I'll call them that.

 

Though before the movies came out I called Lewa "Leh-WAH" and Onewa "oh-NAY-wah".

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Loo-wah, Oh-noo-wuh, Dzah-luh. (Assuming the "Dz" is like the "J" sound in "Jug".)

I don't take the "canonical" pronunciations too seriously, since I'm pretty sure I've heard Greg say them one way and say they should be said another. Also think I heard that the creative team pronounced names differently as well at some point.

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Pretty much the first option for all the choices. Though even today I still hear new ways of pronouncing Bionicle names


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Jaller has always been 'Jar-luh', and I doubt most others pronounce it any differently. 'Yar-luh' sounds like a non-European/American version, as in some Middle Eastern languages 'j' and 'y' are similar or interchangeable (Jacob becomes Yakob, for example).

Well, that's not entirely true. Most Germanic languages, including (you guessed it) German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish (the language of Lego's founder) all usually pronounce Js similar to English Ys. As you most likely know, all of those languages are predominantly spoken in Europe. 

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I've always pronounced Lewa's as "Lay-wah" because that's the pronunciation given on the informational mini-cd that the original Toa sets had.

 

As for Jaller's name.. I definitely go with "Dzah-ler". Yes, in MoL it's pronounced "Dzah-lah"/Dzah-luh"... but if you listen to how "Hewkii" and "Pewku" are also pronounced in the movie it seems highly likely that the people writing the dialogue hadn't got the memo about the characters' namechanges and were using the 2001 spellings.

In any case the J being pronounced as "Dz" instead of "Y" would fit with how Pacific Islander languages like Maori are transcribed, and considering that TLG was cribbing off Maori to the point that they appropriated words from it (and subsequently got sued, hence the altered spellings and "Matoran" replacing "Tohunga", etc) I think that's what they were going for.

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