I tried doing a google search on this site to see if anything came up, and nothing did, so apologies if this has been brought up before
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Your argument is correct. It would have made sense if, not only had he done it with all of the names (Yue comes to mind), but also if he kept the cultural connections to its Asian roots (instead of changing the languages and symbolism). If the Asian roots are no longer there, why would you place such a big deal on the pronunciation of the words? I've never understood that.
If the Asian roots are no longer there, why would you place such a big deal on the pronunciation of the words?
I completely agree with you*, but I'm just trying to find more ammo to counter the argument that Shyamalan's pronunciation changes make sense from a linguistic perspective, regardless of the outside context, e.g. changing established canon, the whitewashing, etc. So are you saying that Yue's name should also have been changed if Shyamalan were so bent on being ~*linguistically authentic*~?
* Yes, let's whitewash the characters and change the Chinese language to gibberish, but the Anglicized pronunciations?! HEAVENS NO!
I think that, if he was going to insist on wiping out most of the Asian elements, he should have left the names alone. It makes less sense to go back to the way they are said in their original languages if all he's going to do is erase any connection to their origins.
from what i can tell, he uses primarily japanese phonetics for most of the names, but specifically talks about using the sanskrit pronunciation for "avatar" because it is originally a sanskrit word.
my main issue with the changes is not about making them more authentic, though. primarily it's that, authentic or no, these characters already have established names with established pronunciations. complain to bryke while you're shooting if you must, but when you're adapting an existing property, it's not your place to go changing the names the audience is already familiar with. the other problem is that, while the names are now more in tune with the asian themes and setting of the story, the people themselves are not. you can't talk about changing names to be more accurately asian when 75% of the main characters are white.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your second paragraph, but yeah, what you say in your first paragraph is more of what I'm looking for. Because if Shyamalan is arguing that he's making the pronunciations more authentic, but is using Japanese phonetics for Sokka and Katara, then that just makes the whole argument look stupid. Because even if Sokka and Katara aren't real Inuit names, they're still not supposed to be freakin Japanese.
I couldn't tell you if Sokka and Katara are Inuit names, but I can say that you can pronounce both those names (mostly) as they are in Inuktitut (Sokka would be closer to Sakka - they only have three vowel sounds: i (ee) u (oo) a (aah))
... there is certainly no soak sound in Inuktitut =_=
There used to be a really good post breaking down the names as written in Chinese in the show and how they would be pronounced, but it appears to be gone now.
In any case, the ATLA wiki has a good list of character names and how they'd be pronounced in Chinese. The most blatant example is Iroh, which is Americanized from ai-luo. Ee-roh, as it's pronounced in the movie, is simply wrong. (The show's pronunciations aren't entirely true to Chinese, either, but they at least went to the trouble of finding hanzi that approximated the way the names were pronounced and were meaningful.)
They made the names up in English and then had the cultural consultant translate them to Chinese, rather than creating the names in Chinese and translating them into English. As with any name that started out in English and then is translated into Chinese, it just seems off and not right. (For example the name "Mark" in Chinese means "Horse Card" and is pronounced Mah-ker)
Yeah. And anime with Western characters often do the same thing, only in reverse (choose a name that sounds foreign in Japanese, then translate it into English/French/Spanish/what-have-you). Besides, many European medieval fantasy settings have characters with names that are unusual/nonexistent in real life.
The other part that's weird is that the pronunciation changes appear to be based on the way the names are spelled in the English script for the show, not on taking the way they're pronounced in English and adapting it into an Asian language's phonetics, which...just makes no sense, because nobody in the Avatar universe uses the Roman alphabet, either in the show or the movie.
Like, if you want to make Iroh sound more Asian (actually, "airo" already sounds more or less like it could be Japanese to me, but go with it) you could just say Ai Luo, which is how it was spelled Chinese characters on the show. "Eero" - I think that's how they said it in the movie - only makes sense if you're looking at the spelling "Iroh."
No, just no. This is something that bugs me a lot, as I have a name that most people do not pronounce right. It's essentially the same as saying to a person "Hey, I know your name is Lora, but the way it's pronounced is totally wrong, so I'm going to pronounce it as Laura instead."
When a parent names their child, (or in this case, an author names their character) there is no such thing as a name that is pronounced wrong, or spelled wrong. THEY decided how it is spelled, and how it will be pronounced.
In terms of the names being Westernize: Avatar is a series based on many countries, cultures, and religions. While predominately Chinese, there's obviously a lot more in it. Indian (as in India), Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Thai, and Inuit. The Sun Warriors are obviously inspired by the Aztecs and Mayans, and the Sandbender tribes are definitely reminiscent of the Middle East. The Boiling Rock is based off of Alcatraz, and the Great Divide is based off of the Grand Canyon. Much of the series is modeled after Hinduism and Buddhism, but
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I completely agree with you*, but I'm just trying to find more ammo to counter the argument that Shyamalan's pronunciation changes make sense from a linguistic perspective, regardless of the outside context, e.g. changing established canon, the whitewashing, etc. So are you saying that Yue's name should also have been changed if Shyamalan were so bent on being ~*linguistically authentic*~?
* Yes, let's whitewash the characters and change the Chinese language to gibberish, but the Anglicized pronunciations?! HEAVENS NO!
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my main issue with the changes is not about making them more authentic, though. primarily it's that, authentic or no, these characters already have established names with established pronunciations. complain to bryke while you're shooting if you must, but when you're adapting an existing property, it's not your place to go changing the names the audience is already familiar with. the other problem is that, while the names are now more in tune with the asian themes and setting of the story, the people themselves are not. you can't talk about changing names to be more accurately asian when 75% of the main characters are white.
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... there is certainly no soak sound in Inuktitut =_=
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In any case, the ATLA wiki has a good list of character names and how they'd be pronounced in Chinese. The most blatant example is Iroh, which is Americanized from ai-luo. Ee-roh, as it's pronounced in the movie, is simply wrong. (The show's pronunciations aren't entirely true to Chinese, either, but they at least went to the trouble of finding hanzi that approximated the way the names were pronounced and were meaningful.)
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Like, if you want to make Iroh sound more Asian (actually, "airo" already sounds more or less like it could be Japanese to me, but go with it) you could just say Ai Luo, which is how it was spelled Chinese characters on the show. "Eero" - I think that's how they said it in the movie - only makes sense if you're looking at the spelling "Iroh."
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When a parent names their child, (or in this case, an author names their character) there is no such thing as a name that is pronounced wrong, or spelled wrong. THEY decided how it is spelled, and how it will be pronounced.
In terms of the names being Westernize: Avatar is a series based on many countries, cultures, and religions. While predominately Chinese, there's obviously a lot more in it. Indian (as in India), Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Thai, and Inuit. The Sun Warriors are obviously inspired by the Aztecs and Mayans, and the Sandbender tribes are definitely reminiscent of the Middle East. The Boiling Rock is based off of Alcatraz, and the Great Divide is based off of the Grand Canyon. Much of the series is modeled after Hinduism and Buddhism, but ( ... )
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