Is it just me or...

[Christopher]

Hell, I still pronounce Si Cwan as "sigh swan" despite all of the arguments in the past to the contrary.

I always pronounced it as "Sigh kwan."

Hmm, I guess neither of you took Spanish in high school. ¿Sí?

 

[mattburgess]

I doubt Si Cwan took Spanish in high school either.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I always thought it was "See kwan".

 

[Elias Vaughn]

I always pronounced it See Swan.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Somebody call Peter David!

 

[Sci]

Hell, I still pronounce Si Cwan as "sigh swan" despite all of the arguments in the past to the contrary.

I always pronounced it as "Sigh kwan."

Hmm, I guess neither of you took Spanish in high school. ¿Sí?

I took four years of Español, but there's no accent mark in "Si."

 

[JD]

Don't feel bad, JD, I thought it was "glue," too. Hell, I still pronounce Si Cwan as "sigh swan" despite all of the arguments in the past to the contrary.

I always pronounced it as "Sigh kwan."

(BTW, my username is pronounced "Sigh." )

Me too. I tend to just go phonetically unless there is some sort of indication that you shouldn't. Like if the character is from another country, or it says in the story how it is pronounced.

 

[Christopher]

The thing is, the vowels of American English are pretty unusual. It seems that in foreign languages (or English transliterations thereof), the usual vowel values are most commonly:

A = ah
E = eh
I = ee
O = oh
U = oo

This is the case in languages as diverse as Spanish and Japanese. And I think those are usually the defaults used by SF writers coining alien names as well, since those names are meant to sound "foreign." For instance, Sirna Kolrami's surname is pronounced kohl-RAH-mee, not kohl-RAY-mye. So if I see an alien name with "Si" in it, I'm going to read it as "see."

And there is indeed an accent mark in "sí" when it means "yes." "Si" without an accent means "if."

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I knew this was going to happen.

 

[Sci]

The thing is, the vowels of American English are pretty unusual. It seems that in foreign languages (or English transliterations thereof), the usual vowel values are most commonly:

A = ah
E = eh
I = ee
O = oh
U = oo

This is the case in languages as diverse as Spanish and Japanese. And I think those are usually the defaults used by SF writers coining alien names as well, since those names are meant to sound "foreign." For instance, Sirna Kolrami's surname is pronounced kohl-RAH-mee, not kohl-RAY-mye. So if I see an alien name with "Si" in it, I'm going to read it as "see."

And there is indeed an accent mark in "sí" when it means "yes." "Si" without an accent means "if."

Sí, yo sé que «si» significa «if» cuando lo carezca un acento y significa «yes» cuando lo tenga un acento.

 

[tenmei]

On the other hand, I ended up pronouncing it like szechuan, but with an i instead of an e. So, Szichuan.

Now, with Cwansi's arrival, I'm pronouncing THAT as Kwan-see.

I actually got Gleau's name pronounciation right - guess the eau ending and several years of French at that point pushed me in the correct direction with regards to the pronounciation.