Anyone who doesn't pronounce the 'nova' part as 'no'-'vah' is wrong, anyway - seriously, that's just failing at English right there.
Which would be the majority of the anime voice actors..? Because I heard "
nih" with each pronunciation, not "no"... :cer_laugh:
After seeing it for myself in the the first B&W episode that aired in the US, Unova is pronounced: "You-Nih-Va". I guess I can work with that, but I was so used to pronouncing the "Nih" as "No". u_u It's like saying the first part of Universe with an A at the end, "Univa".
Where the heck did they get "
Nih" from? I could understand if the region was spelled U
niva, U
nihva, or U
nyhva, but come on! There is clearly a '
nOv' right there; how could they possibly get a low-I sound from that? I know Unova is a fantasy word, but we have to follow
some sort of language convention, and since this is the English dub, I would assume the dubbers/localizers would be following English conventions for the most part unless otherwise specified. Unless Unova's vocal rendering is derived from a foreign language other than English, they're setting things up so that children viewing will have their vowel sounds possibly botched. >_> Vowels sound certain ways
for a reason; they can't just go attributing the "
ni" sound to the spelling "
nova". Otherwise, I can equally start using
pfjgqwww as a textual rendering for the letter A (pronounced "
ay").
Ugh...this is why linguistics annoy me, especially the English language which is chock full of words devised by people who don't know their vowel and consonant sounds.
As I believe I said before, Oo-NO-va is the closest to where it came from. Assuming it really is from Spanish and not Latin, there's some confusion. Also, no va means "doesn't go" in Spanish.
Anyway...the three immediate language derivations I can apply to the portmanteau
Unova are English (
united and
nova), Spanish (
uno and
no va;
uno and the English/Latin word
nova), and Latin (unum and nova); or a combination of any of those italicized words:
-Provided the origin is English, "
You-No-Vuh" would be a valid pronunciation, as the word "united" also begins with the pronunciation of "You".
-Provided the origin is Spanish, "
Ooh-No-Va" is more fitting, as the Spanish word
uno is pronounced OOH-no,
not YOU-no.
-Provided the origin is Latin, "
Ooh-No-Vuh" fits again, as the Latin word
unum is pronounced OOH-num, not YOU-num.
Anyway, I'm not a language expert, and until we get an actual linguistic origin, pretty much any pronunciation is correct for Unova. And until then, we won't know which language rules the commercial announcer and voice actors are actually violating. if any. IMO, the voice actors definitely are by pronouncing "NO" as "NIH" (language fail T_T). Ugh...this is why I dislike linguistics.
Anyway, I pronounce it
Ooh-NO-Va, as in my experience it's rare nowadays to hear a word that starts its spelling with "U" and is pronounced "Ooh". With
Ulgamoth, I do a similar thing by leaving out the "Y" from the "U":
UHL-ga-moth (
uhl rhymes with
null).
That poll really needs to be amended, due to the numerous pronunciation possibilities of Unova...
