Correct pronunciation - where to find the information?

[neilwilkes]

This is a definite issue for me, as I am absolutely certain that incorrect or bad pronunciation will cause any invocation to fail and will absolutely make an evocation fail and possibly even seriously backfire in a potentially catastrophic manner too, so where is the best resource for getting the correct pronunciations of various names/phrases/words etc please?
After all, sound is vibration (or creates a vibration that sets up various resonances) and by definition incorrect pronunciation sets up the wrong vibrations.

 

[Xenophon]

Which language(s) are you trying to pronounce? Or which grimoires (&c) are you using? A good many online resources have audio as well as IPA phonetics written. A surprising amount of stuff is available on You Tube too. But you'll need to tell us what rite/language you're trying to pronounce.

 

[neilwilkes]

Good points - nothing specifically though.
The problem that I keep seeing is that no 2 of any of these 'resources' can seem to agree with themselves, never mind each other, so how can anybody know what or who is actually correct? As for YT, please! There is so much nonsensical garbage on there it's just not even funny any more.

 

[pixel_fortune]

The problem that I keep seeing is that no 2 of any of these 'resources' can seem to agree with themselves, never mind each other

You could say the same about English - the same word is pronounced many different ways in many different places, and was pronounced differently in Shakespeare's time etc

I was looking at Ancient Greek pronunciation and watched a three-hour video by an expert who drilled down into how one vowel was pronounced in 5 different ways in the Greek spoken just in Ancient Egypt within a 200-year window.

(People didn't used to travel as much, so accents developed without as much cross-pollination)

So, you have to give up on correct and not contradictory. That said, there is still INCORRECT.

There is a basic set of pronunciation that will see you very very far, which involves removing all the quirks of English and adopting a baseline that is more likely to be correct than your own accent (because they often have their own lettering that is being translated into English letters, it's more consistent than you might think). Eg the transliteration of German is more like Ancient Greek than English is. If you learn the pronunciation of any contemporary European language, you will be starting from a good place

So: no silent letters. An e at the end of a word is pronounced out loud, and doesn't change the preceding vowel (eg "Selene" is not suh-leen).

G is like gap, not like gee

The letter E is probably eh, might be ay, but very unlikely to be ee (the letter i would do that)

The letter i is probably "ee" not "eye"

Etc etc. Outside of English, languages usually have pretty consistent orthography (relationship between spelling and sound) - the same letter will be pronounced the same way every time

In English, we drop a lot of vowels. A "schwa" is that little "uh" sound in a de-emphasized syllable (eg the first and last "a" in "banana". Most languages don't use them constantly like English does. Every vowel should be said properly

American really struggle with vowels because they don't have an "ah in father" (they make it sound the same as their o or aw). That is a key one to work on if you have an American accent. You also need to work on making your O shorter and sharper (hott, not hawt).

Conversely, if you're not American, be careful of online pronunciation guides, because they're usually written for people with American accents. So it'll tell you to pronounce "father" as "fawe-ther" because it thinks you don't naturally make an "ah" sound. But if you have a non-US accent, you'd end up pronouncing it "fore-ther" if you read a US-assuming guide

Always check what diphthongs a language has. A diphthong is a pair of letters that functions as a single letter. So "ph" = f. A lot of languages don't have diphthongs like that, so for example the German word "Rathaus" (town Hall) is "rat-haus" not "ra-thaus". Knowing what diphthongs a language has helps you to know where to split the syllables

Idk bunch of random tips

 

[Xenophon]

Good points - nothing specifically though.
The problem that I keep seeing is that no 2 of any of these 'resources' can seem to agree with themselves, never mind each other, so how can anybody know what or who is actually correct? As for YT, please! There is so much nonsensical garbage on there it's just not even funny any more.

Give us a language, and we'll see what there is. As a rule of thumb, go with the authorities with academic credentials. University of Southern North Dakota trumps Mage Deeveeno who channels the Kaberioi Chorus directly from the astral plane. Oxford trumps U. of So. No. Dak, and so on. Besides, as pixel hints, in ancient times there was a good deal of variation in pronunciation. Heck, even today. An Aussie-Arab colleague complained his daddy's Arabic from Saudi left him ill-equipped to talk to Mom's kin from Morocco.

So, all that said, get a reputable grammar for the tongue in question (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit &c &c). The guide to pronunciation therein is reliable enough. I don't recall any huge contradictions in academic approaches to the various tongues. True, if you latch onto certain tomes with "barbaric words of evocation" (their parlance, not mine) follow such hints as they give. And as a default, the post above this one from pixel-fortune should keep you in the right ballpark.

 

[Xingtian]

This is a definite issue for me, as I am absolutely certain that incorrect or bad pronunciation will cause any invocation to fail and will absolutely make an evocation fail

Why are you certain of this? If it’s true then you’re pretty much screwed with any ancient language, as uncertainty, speculation, and debate abound for all of them.

 

[HoldAll]

I'd say what matters here is conviction. Having endured six years of Latin at school, no snotty youtuber can ever make me pronounce a Latin incantation his or her ridiculous way. Another aspect is the exoticism factor - barbarous words have an effect because they sound weird, not because they generate certain mysterious frequencies or whatever. So whenever I try my hand at the PGM, I pronounce the barbarous words however I see fit, based on my first language and occasionally on others I know, with full force & conviction. Sounds arrogant but it has worked so far for me (I think?). Maybe this is because I still operate within the psychological model where a spell mainly works on the spellcaster, not at the universe at large, so the subjective experience is what counts here for me.

However, I don't believe you'll break out in hives e.g. instead of obtaining money whenever you pronounce the barbarous words incorrectly - that's Hogwarts thinking. Do your research but like @pixel_fortune said - it's next to impossible to get it 100% right. Would the spell work for somebody with a slightly different Greek or Egyptian accent? Or a speech impediment? Or for a Roman, Phoenician, Jew, whoever? Hurl the motherfucker of a strange name at the universe as hard as you can and let it deal with it, I say!

 

[Pyrokar]

There are those in the ranks who insist on proper wording. Proper timing. Celestial movement. etc
what makes them different is that they don't joke around
if you can handle that all glory to you but i honestly doubt it.
this is old school. back in the day the practitioners were skilled in dozens of academic disciplines
in a time when most people didn't know how to read.
if so, then just hit the books, every other grimoire has proper wording included idc how one would not find them.

 

[HoldAll]

Correction, that was partly false bravado. I confess I'm not so convinced of my abilities regarding those vowel strings in the PGM, I feel I don't differentiate enough here. As far as vowels are concerned, correct pronounciation may be indeed a factor. But as I said, I think it's mainly about distinguishing between them. So one of these days I'll be bothered enough about this problem to try out this site, for example, and then arbitrarily decide it's the gold standard for all things PGM:

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[Pyrokar]

Correction, that was partly false bravado. I confess I'm not so convinced of my abilities regarding those vowel strings in the PGM, I feel I don't differentiate enough here. As far as vowels are concerned, correct pronounciation may be indeed a factor. But as I said, I think it's mainly about distinguishing between them. So one of these days I'll be bothered enough about this problem to try out this site:

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nah you good. pronouncing words and hitting the right "frequency" on a vowel is not the same

 

[Xingtian]

Some of the "Egyptian," "Hebrew", etc. words in the PGM are either words made-up to sound like they're from those languages, or are hopelessly garbled so that no one can figure out which words they were supposed to be. They use bits of Coptic Christian prayers (fun fact: the deity named most often in the PGM is Jesus). They are highly syncretic documents and it seems crazy to me to get scrupulous about pronunciation. I mean, just think about how any language works. Think of the language you speak. Does everyone speaking it today pronounce it the same way everywhere? Of course they don't, and this is an era of mass communication and mass literacy where grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc. have been well standardized for most living languages.

Let's say some of these texts were written by Hellenized Egyptian priests. Would their spoken Greek have sounded the same as someone in Athens or Byzantium? Would a learned Rabbi be impressed with their Hebrew? Would the Coptic they spoke sound right to their forebears of centuries past?

 

[Yazata]

Could also be that they were written phonetically and then rewritten phonetically and rewritten phonetically. There was a good video by Irving Finkle about the name of a powerful demon in a clay tablet. And how he later found that name to belong to a prison Warden (or the likes) in a much older tablet.

Just go with how you would pronounce other words that you never spoke before, is how I do.

 

[Pyrokar]

when an author drops things like that they always include the details
and they do it a lot to everyone has figured out some set of reality bending words
from that hack new avatar power all the way to Damon Brand.
they include the "correct" way and it's 50/50 if they got it right.
like that time it turned out half the HGA was working with gibberish hebrew
or pig latin. or the "angel language"

and they keep making us say dumb shit all the time Kakarot,
why do they keep making us say dumb shit all the time?

language changes
if op wants to do it right they can only go and get phd's in everything.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I use Google translate as I trust it's reasonably close. Other than that, I would get a dual translation pocket dictionary that tells you proper grammar structure and pronunciation.

 

[HoldAll]

Some of the "Egyptian," "Hebrew", etc. words in the PGM are either words made-up to sound like they're from those languages, or are hopelessly garbled so that no one can figure out which words they were supposed to be. They use bits of Coptic Christian prayers (fun fact: the deity named most often in the PGM is Jesus). They are highly syncretic documents and it seems crazy to me to get scrupulous about pronunciation. I mean, just think about how any language works. Think of the language you speak. Does everyone speaking it today pronounce it the same way everywhere? Of course they don't, and this is an era of mass communication and mass literacy where grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc. have been well standardized for most living languages.

Let's say some of these texts were written by Hellenized Egyptian priests. Would their spoken Greek have sounded the same as someone in Athens or Byzantium? Would a learned Rabbi be impressed with their Hebrew? Would the Coptic they spoke sound right to their forebears of centuries past?

Yesterday I saw an old Yamaha Virago parked on my street. Who the hell thought of 'virago' as a good name for a motorcycle? But it sounds cool, I have to admit that. I entertain this theory that a lot of barbarous names in the PGM (for example 'Abrasax') have been included because of the cool factor, not because of their spiritual significance. Will there be a Kawasaki Abrasax one day? Who knows... and I'm being serious here. If a word sounds cool, it has power, IMHO.

 

[Yazata]

. If a word sounds cool, it has power, IMHO.

Abrasax was one of these words that made me look into the idea of (some of) it being Sumerian, just like Ereshkigal appearing in some of the spells.
Abarasa is "truth".

But I definitely agree about cool words having power just because of their sound / aesthetics.

 

[Pyrokar]

the base is that they unknowingly pluck cool sounding names and logoes
but i legit think there more thought out ones with occult in mind
anything with Hermes really does seem to snap for your attention don't it?

 

[Vandheer]

This is a definite issue for me, as I am absolutely certain that incorrect or bad pronunciation will cause any invocation to fail and will absolutely make an evocation fail and possibly even seriously backfire in a potentially catastrophic manner too, so where is the best resource for getting the correct pronunciations of various names/phrases/words etc please?
After all, sound is vibration (or creates a vibration that sets up various resonances) and by definition incorrect pronunciation sets up the wrong vibrations.

I think 'barbaric words' is a clue and they should be pronounced as such, not dragging them out, kind of shouting, not giving a damn thought about them.

In my opinion mispronouncing some words doesn't neccesarily mean immediate doom, if this was a mantra that you would repeat thousands of times, sure, that could be a different story.

Probably you worrying about this is a bigger setback than the miscorrect pronounciation. At least thats what I think.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

There were a couple guys on Facebook I used to talk to P J Rovelli and another dude Malrakin Myste.
There were in the OTO or AA for a good while, I was just looking around, scoping things out.
They were trying to figue out the etymology of certain barbarous words, and it turns out that they were a mixture of two to three different languages, and Sumerian was definitely one, Sanskrit another, Greek yet another, Hebrew yet another, there was no consistency except for a sort of cipher of the words.

 

[pixel_fortune]

one of the issues with the Barbarous Words is that the difference in pronunciation between many vowels is length, not sound. We don't have this in English really but the closest is, say,, the difference between the "o" in got vs gone. You extend it a little for "gone", without changing the sound. cf boot vs boon. That short vs long but SAME SOUND vowel is in a lot of languages but especially ancient greek. In most times and places, the two E vowels werent "eh" and "ay", they were "eh" and "ehh"

the problem here is that, when you're vibrating vowels at length, they're ALL "ehhhhh". So, I've kept each vowel as a distinct sounds, even though this is historically less plausible.

Another one that really threw me: in pretty much all variants of Ancient Greek, they distinguish between the letter P. We actually make both these sounds in English, but we don't write them differently or even realise we're saying it differently. It's the difference between the P in "pin" vs "spin" (say them both out loud right now - one is aspirated). Apparently, getting those mixed up to an Ancient Greek is like us mixing up S and SH. Important! But god I can't track it. So I don't make this distinction and I just say whichever P it would be in English. And so do 99.9% of native-English-speaker magicians

Post automatically merged: Mar 15, 2024

As a rule of thumb, go with the authorities with academic credentials.

There's a big problem here: most Americans in formal study were taught Erasmian pronunciation of Greek. Erasmus was explicitly NOT trying to reconstruct the original sound. We care about reconstructionism now, but they didn't back then. He was just trying to make something you could say clearly and distinguish between sounds. It served his purpose well, but not our purpose.

So a lot of people with formal study find it really hard to break out of that - even though it's dead, dead wrong. I don't know if there's a Latin equivalent of Erasmian pronunciation but I wouldn't put it past them.