Finally, someone explained what that "Seiga Nyan Nyan" is actually about. When I first saw it in a random fan manga, I thought that it was just Seiga trying to be cute or something.
I thought the same thing when i saw her for the first time in TD. Only recently i learned what it actually means through watching Koukyuu no Karasu (Raven of the inner palace), because the main character is refered to by some other characters as "Niang Niang", when i realised that i thought: "isn't that the way Seiga introduces herself?"
Honestly I find it kind of charming that Cirno has no "true" English pronunciation outside of the direct Japanese one. Starting the Sirno/Chirno/Cheerno/Searno/Churno/Chillno debate was the greatest prank she ever pulled.
There really shouldn't have been much of a debate on it, since it actually translates pretty well into English phonetically. The problem is mostly the omitted 'h', because some English speakers don't know that English phonetic rules aren't universal, and 'ci' doesn't always make an 's' sound when the language of origin is foreign.
@@GensouChronicle Very true. But I do have to admit the name wouldn't be as interesting to me if we all managed to settle on the correct (or even just one) pronunciation. The irony that pronunciation of the Nineball's name is where knowledge is lacking is not lost on me.
@@GensouChronicle Funny, how Cirno became a name for a foreign character, despite the fact, that fairies come from Celts, who populated England (and most of Western Europe) at that time.
As a french person, Flandre is very easy and natural for us to pronounce and there’s only one way to pronounce it. It’s also the name of a region here and honestly, given how smooth it sounds in our language, I could totally believe it was used as a first name for girls a few centuries ago. France and England have been fighting and invading each other for as long as I can remember, it really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Scarlet family has mixed origins. We don’t know where they come from but I doubt Zun would give them an english name if they weren’t english. Translating a name to make things "convenient" and easy to understand isn’t his thing. I still don’t have any idea how you’re supposed to pronounce Flandre in english, good thing I don’t have to deal with this headache
you do it the American/English way either butcher it and try to invoke superiority on anyone that complains or you just full on yoink the pronunciation from another language and make English even harder to understand for people lel
Japanese is best described through Max0r's words: Your character remembers squiggly lines and fridge art, created by gods for passive bonuses that work regardless weaponry. My favorites are more money, more money and more money, they stack (もっとお金).
The best part of the Flandre situation is that since Gouyoku Ibun is getting an official english translation, we'll finally have confirmation on her name.
Well, I think they're going to most like stick to Flandre. I think backlash would be far too crazy if they actually decided to change it. Part of the reason I made sure to put a disclaimer at the end was because I had a feeling a bunch of people would think I'm trying to 'officially' name her on my own when everyone is already so used to Flandre.
Since when have official translation been word of god? Publishers usually hire the cheapest translation firm that they can find, even stuff like the soulsborne games have spotty-at-best translations (and it's REALLY important on those games). I'll always go for the fan translations since they are a work of passion, and the translators have the context (because they have been fans for decades and have read every other work of the author), unlike official translators who work per hour and have not read any other work, so they don't get references or jokes.
@@devildante9 Pretty much the truth. The exact reason why very few official translations of official touhou media is because it would most likely suck.(And those few existing examples mostly point towards this theoretical prediction being true.) And that is just ZUN and everyone involved being truthful about it. As you say, other IPs have the issue that their localizations aren't always top tier and that burries the actual material written behind the language barrier. This shouldn't be an issue anymore because current hardware and software standards allow for better support, but it's barely used at all.
To add to your talk about フランドール getting turned into Flandre, my absolute favorite name issue along those lines has always been the fandom trying to figure out how to romanize Maribel's name. Considering マエリベリー・ハーン would be more literally translated as Maeriberī Hān (and I guess everyone back then took one look at "Maryberry" and felt that there was no way that could be right)
At least the 'Hearn' we have a clear confirmation given her connection with Lafcadio Hearn. But yeah, lots of... interpretation with the translations. It doesn't help that ZUN has historically been bad with English.
@@GensouChronicle Yeah, ZUN's english is definitely its own thing. I'm glad it got fixed in the full release, but it always amused me how in the demo of HSiFS, ZUN managed to write Eternity, Etanity and Eternity in three different places. Though thinking about it, even official English translations have had their issues there. "Kokoro Hatano" in FS for example. Hell, you could probably even do an entire video on stuff like that, cause I remember AoCF was lousy with mistranslations here and there. Like at one point with Tenshi, translating "cinnabar" into "beef tongue"
@@MegamanOmega184 I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure there's actually a page on the wiki that looks at all the alternate spellings different characters have had over the years. There's a ton. And most of them stem from ZUN lol. Edit: Characters/Alternative spellings on the wiki. I found it.
It's also pronunciations of some characters. Ou is linguistically a long O in japanese. Everytime someone says “Moku“ I wanna bash their face into a sink. That's mostly because I am an insane Mokou fan and the german word for 'cow' is 'Kuh', so whenever someone says “Mo-kuh“ I'm just imagining a cow with white hair and ribbons.
Glad I could help! I know most people know about the Kurenai Misuzu situation at least, but since I was taking a bit of a dive into Chinese I figured I'd go all out with these explanations.
I was reading some japanese fics and used a shoddy japanese translator and Mokou's name, interestingly, was often translated as “Kurenai“ or sometimes even “Hong“, if I remember correvtly.
I guess we are stuck with "Flandre" since she originated from an era where we took any translation that came to us to heart and "Flandre" does sound more European, than "Frandol" which also sounds like a male name. Could've been artistic liberty by the translator. By the time anyone could object and ask to change it, it was too late. At least we did manage to correct "Eternany Larva" back to "Eternity Larva".
The romanization "Flandre" comes from an old diary blog Zun used to hold, and Cirno's name has been romanized as such multiple times in official material. There's really not many of these cases. Eternity being romanized as "Etarnity" comes from the trial version of Hidden Star in Four Seasons itself, same case with Eika being called "Youka" in the trial. Zun just seems to make a lot of typos and doesn't seem to understand foreign languages much at all
UPDATED (8/6/23) We have confirmation Cirno's name was originally 'Chirudo' (which could be from Chilled) until ZUN changed the 'do' into a 'no'. So it's most likely a mutation of 'Chilled'. Back again with some more lore content. I had some things I wanted to add as some additional information to the video. -The 'he' character へ also changes to an 'e' sound exactly like え when used as a particle. Just like how' wo' を is always pronounced 'o'. I say this because in my the video I had said that only the 'ha' character changes sounds, but this is incorrect. -My pronunciation of Měilíng in Chinese is a bit awkward, but the Měi character should have had a lower than neutral starting pitch before rising. -My pronunciation of Seiga's Chinese name is VERY wrong. If you're curious enough, I encourage you to look up how it is pronounced on your own. I would have edited the audio in post if I was allowed. -Likewise, I tried saying Patchouli's name slowly for viewers, and pronounced the 'chu' with a skip by accident, which is wrong. Incorrect: Pacchurii Correct: Pachurii -I didn't mention that Maribel Hearn is also slightly awkward to translation from マエリベリー ハーン (Maeriberii Haan). Hearn is 100% correct given the naming references, but arguments can be made for the name to be modified slightly. Personally, I think it's fine such that I didn't bother including it in the video. But I felt it warranted mention at least. -Also important to note is that Chinese and Japanese have different computer fonts for Kanji, so the exact 'writing' of it may differ slightly depending on which font I use at a given moment inn the video. Such as at 2:03. I try to use whichever one relevant, but for any viewers that are versed in either Chinese or Japanese, this may turn a head or two. Just throwing that out there. In any case, I hoped you enjoyed. The next video may be in more of a 'Video Essay' format such that it'll more focus on personal interpretations and conclusions drawn rather than presenting proven facts. Probably. Or I might change my mind again.
I know there's pretty much no controversy about it and that's probably why you didn't bring it up, but I've always been a bit mystified about where the long u sound in Nazūrin went when our favorite mouse arrived from overseas. Cutting a short u sound out when transliterating names is understandable, since loan words and foreign names entering japanese usually add a u at the end of non-vowel ended consonants (except for plain t [ト], plain d [ド], plain n [ン], and sometimes ch(?) [either チ or ﾁｭ (I always have to look it up for each instance orz]) but a whole pronounced long u? That kinda stuff makes my skin feel a little inside out, but it is what it is: Nazūrin or Nazrin, mouse is as mouse does; The greatest of all time
@@cornbeverly So correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting what you're saying, but ト is not a plain t, it's 'to'. Likewise ド is 'do'. The only plain consonant in their syllabary is the n (ン) character that you mentioned. As for the Nazrin bit, yeah... that is a bit odd. I would have translated her name as Nazurin as well given that elongated u sound. I'm not sure if there's a reason it was translated that, but I'm seeing plenty of reasons it should have been Nazurin. (historical/religious references, and the closeness to Nezumi which means mouse).
I’m pretty sure I’ve also seen Meiling written as Meirin instead sometimes but I’m pretty sure this must be an error since Japanese doesn’t have any L syllables in their alphabet, anyway cool video, I learnt a lot from it.
So in Japanese, Meiling is more or less equivalent to Meirin because r and l are kind of smooshed together in Japanese. However, because the name originates from Chinese, instead of doing a Chinese to Japanese to English translation to get an ambiguous l/r, we can do a direct Chinese to English translation to get Meiling for sure. Hope that helps!
I never got used to fully naming Flandre, so I just call her Flan. So, seeing how "Frandol" would be a more accurate translation, I think I would have liked it that way.
Frandol would not be a more accurate translation. It was likely meant to be Flander, based on the French region, but with slightly different spelling. Based on the katakana, it's likely meant to be pronounced that way as well ("flan-der", and "dre" being pronounced that way is acceptable when you look at words like "spectre" and "theatre"), and the English-speaking community just says it wrong. Really, the way the English-speaking community says it makes no sense when regarding its Japanese pronunciation, nor its likely origin.
@@2712animefreak The historic territory of Flanders is split between modern day France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I'm referring to French Flanders, which is part of modern-day France. Why the French Flanders specifically? Flanders is known as "Flandre" in French, which is why it's thought to be the origin of the Touhou character's name.
I got into Touhou when I was a lot younger, and I remember mispronouncing the characters’ names a lot from reading mistake habits. -Touhou was "Toe-hoo" (Probably from "tofu" or "2hu") -Hakurei was “Ha-ku-rye” -Flandre was “Flán-dare” (not even close to any of the suggested pronunciations) -Yakumo was “Ya-mu-ko” (a lot of these are involving mixing up the letters) -Yamaxanadu was “Ya-max-on-a-doo” -Byakuren was “Byu-kah-ren” (I thought her name was supposed to be spun off “Karen” I guess?) -Seiga was “Say-ja” (I remember it was from people comparing her name to Seija, so I assumed her name had a soft g like in ‘giraffe’) -Sake was "Sey'k" (Obvious)
@@TheSteam02 Yes, and I don't have it. I was just a stupid kid who used to skim-read everything and almost never heard any audio of people saying their names out loud for years. Since, after all, there wasn't a lot of content for Touhou with vocal English audio(and, even out of that sort, not many of them pronounced names correctly themselves) back then. And, even then for the syllable mix up ones, the human brain only really detects the first and last letter of each word to read in-head, you know. That's a normal thing.
Hearing Cirno's name is "Chirno" super reminds me of the nightmare that is "Simon"->"Seemon" in Gurren Lagann because APPARENTLY Japanese just doesn't know how the long i sound works. Except when it does. Which is never when actually using it with non Japanese names and words.
His name is Shimon in Japanese, if it was meant to be the English name "Simon" it would instead be written in Japanese as "Saimon". It's not that long vowel sounds don't exist, that's just not what they used because his name isn't an English name. Same with Cirno. If you wanted "Serno" as some people mispronounce it then the closest you get for a Japanese name would be "Seeruno" and uh... that's *not* her name.
@@QuakeGamerROTMG Simon Belmont's (Belmondo if we wanna be persnickity for the sake of this argument) name is spelled literally with the same Japanese characters as Simon in TTGL, it's absolutely not supposed to be Shimon. I know that if they want to use the long I sound they would use the "Ai" character, but because of the correlation with that and other cultural contexts they usually don't. It's the same reason they use characters to pronounce "Pisces" as "Pisskess". I have been down this rabbit hole for years dog.
Thanks for this video, it was really instructing about the Japanese language as a whole even if I had most names right from the start, well exept for Flandre or Frandol well Furandouru but the name "Flandre" never felt weird to me, maybe because I'm a natif romance language speaker and it kinda sound close to home in some ways or because it has been adopt by the werstern fandom since so long. Anyway great video as always, It's really cool to get info, facts, lore talking and point of view of persons that are in the fandom since so long. Still hope you'll get more views in the future but in fact I'm not worrying about that. Keep up the great work. Oh and the "Believe me, I'm just getting warmed up" at the end of the video, freaked me up in the greatest way possible.
Then there is Mike Goutokuji, I know it's pronounced as "Meh Keh" but still i can´t be helped to call her as M I K E lol. Some others call her as Michael for the funies.
Love this analysis, I appreciate that you made a video about the names because there's so much lore behind them. The etymology of the names and the ways the Japanese interpret them is so interesting. Thanks for making a great video on this and hope you make more Touhou content
oooh so That's where the whole Kurenai Misuzu (and china too i guess) thing started, interesting, same for Seiga now i finally know why the Lost word event is called that
i came expecting common misconceptions in pronunciations such as "sirno" but this genuinely taught me a lot more than i expected. i love your content a lot, i hope to see more! good work!
Flandre makes sense. Pronounced as Flander. Flander is an actual family among Anglo-Saxons, and before English had a definite system of spelling rules some spelling variations on the name included Flandres. Plus Remilia and Flandre are both old, so just like the other examples given, it would make sense that her name doesn't necessarily follow the modern spelling rules of English, and the Scarlet Family very clearly shows that they're supposed to be a representation of 'English' culture. L's and R's are often both made as 'ru' sounds in Katakana, like Buruma, who was named after bloomers.
Flandray always gets me because there is no "Rei" at the end of her name. It feels like trying too hard to make it sound exotic when there's no indication that it's pronounced that way. If he wanted the name to end with that sound it would have been written that way in Japanese. Furandoorei instead of Furandooru. Really Flandoor is closest but also most cursed, shorten the end you get Flander.
i gotta say as a touhou fan who main language is french well saying the characters name is more easy to say in a way (at least to me it is ) because in japanese their syllable or the way they are prononced are very similar in french too so i guess it can make a diffrence....? i dunno but thats all i wanted to say xD gotta keep the good work dude cant wait to see more gg !
I've heard many of these before but it was nice getting a thorough explanation for why each one is the case it is. Didn't know about Seiga so that was interesting learning about her Nyan Nyans. Got a related question which I'm wondering if you could provide any insight into: how do you think Tewi currently pronounces her name? I've seen it argued that us the fanbase should pronounce Tewi as "Te-wee" because that's how she would have pronounced it herself back hundreds of years ago. Personally I think this could potentially hold weight if Tewi has an archaic style of speaking in general, but I have no clue if this is the case. I don't recall seeing this reflected in the TL to Th9, but of course translations often lose nuances. So if you do happen to know more about her lore or dialogue, do you think Tewi might speak like a boomer or is Tei more hip and kept up with the times? Thanks
This is honestly something I wondered as well. We see lots of instances of characters that were from very archaic origins just operating as modern people (to some comedic effect) and then you have... Futo. Precious Futo. Going by the original Japanese text, Tewi doesn't speak with old words and such that used wi and we. There are many words that changed during language reform (not in 1946, much earlier) and before then, they used those characters. Tewi doesn't use those older verbs and such from what I've seen. That said, a name is different and more personal, so, it could really be up to ZUN. I'm not sure if he's made an official statement on it. I know the Japanese fans call her 'Tei' though. Very good question. Thanks!
@@GensouChronicle Now that you mention it, yeah Futo does seem to be one of the only characters to speak in such an old fashioned way. Interesting to know that the fans go with Tei. Suppose however ZUN pronounces it would be the most accurate, being the word of god. Thanks for the reply. On a different note, I did some more thinking about another character here, Flandre. Has there ever been an official spelling of her name in romaji before? If not, I wonder how the translation of 17.5 for the Switch is going to handle it. Guess we'll see soon. And to ramble a little bit, I remember chuckling at seeing her name spelt as 'Frandle' before just from how odd it sounded. Ironic that it was actually more accurate. Though it did get me thinking, what if Flandre's current name spelling was due to a novice error and/or misunderstanding? As in, it originally was translated as 'Frandle' to be accurate to Japanese, but someone saw this thought that sounded awkward and tried to change it some. Perhaps thinking that L and R are interchangeable in Japanese, they turned the Frandle into Flandre, not realizing that the pronunciation would be messed up. Who knows, just a theory that popped in my head.
@@matt7399 I can't say off the top of my head, but there is more than likely romanized 'reference' to her by ZUN in game files at least. But they generally aren't given too much weight because sometimes he would put random stuff in there. Other than that, I can't say for sure. Unfortunately, Flandre is one of the characters that isn't from the manga Remilia, Patchouli, Cirno, and not!Sakuya are from.
@@GensouChronicle Ah, suppose it's hard to rely upon ZUN's drunken filenames haha. Still an interesting case about her name all around. Definitely curious about the manga you've mentioned now, looking forward to when you may cover it.
Even though ゐ is spelled "wi", Japanese people back then pronounced it as うぃ(wi) but the "w" sound is pronounced extremely lightly so that it sounded almost like an "i" sound. Combine that with て(te) and it would be pronounced as "tei" so Tewi would still be calling herself tei hundreds of years ago.
As Person who RP as Hieda no Akyuu Backthen when G+ was still a thing... i learn so much about Touhou world , and their youkai, and so many thing.... the fact that i still create and draw Touhou World is prove...
I died a little inside when you said Flandre's name was inaccurate. As a French person, it's childishly easy to pronounce, it sounds very soft and sweet, and I've always loved it for that. Also, Flandre is the actual name of a region in Europe, which might be why it was interpreted like that. It's actually more authentically European than "Remilia".
It's less a matter of how it's pronounced, and more the fact that ZUN emphasized to 'o' sound in her name. 'Furandooru'. If someone is looking at it purely from the romanization of 'Flandre' then yeah, sure you can easily say it's French. But in the first place, 'Flandre' wouldn't be an accurate romanization. So either ZUN made some mistakes with her name and intended Flandre, or he didn't make mistakes and it was intended as he wrote.
@@GensouChronicle I...didn't say it was French. I said that I had attachment to the pronunciation, and that I like its sound in my language. The region of Flanders (or Flandre in French) is not French-speaking either, so that really was not my argument. As someone who's been studying Japanese for a while, it is true that "Flandre" would more likely be フランドル. So it might be that ZUN intended something else. I think it'd be interesting to ask.
@@blara2401 That's fair. I brought it up because this is the most common comparison I get. The region, the origin, everything. I'm not trying to misrepresent your comment. Apologies if you interpreted it as such. As for your katakana there, it's inaccurate. It's actually フランドール. ド is elongated. And while that might seem innocuous or nitpicky, it's actually really important. It means that there is an emphasis on pronouncing it, which goes against the French pronunciation of Flandre. I personally kind of like the French pronunciation as well. But I am not speaking from a point of preference. I'm speaking from a point of whatever ZUN intended 20 years ago. But yes, I think it would be good to ask and see at some point.
@@GensouChronicle Again, I think you misunderstood my comment. I know that her name is spelled フランドール. What I was saying was precisely that "Flandre" would more likely rendered as フランドル and that that supports the idea that ZUN's intention was something else.
@@blara2401 Understood. The first sentence in the second paragraph of your second comment can be ambiguously interpreted either way, leading to the confusion. In short: Yeah, I agree. 100%
I remember confusing Letty's last name as Winterlock, instead of Whiterock and man... I understimated Tewi's age by a long shot, I really belived she was at minimun, 300 y/o
The topic of Flan's name really is an interesting one. Flan's name could have roots in the French spelling and pronunciation of Flandres, also spelled Flandre and pronounced with a silent "e". I'm no expert on neither the French language nor katakana conversion, but the ending of フランドール seems like a close enough approximation of a slightly elongated "r" consonant ending with no clear vowel before it. But who knows, ZUN was probably just winging it. On another note, English speakers do have a tendency to call her Flan-"dray" as that probably seems more logical and sounds more natural. But using French pronunciation logic instead, maybe ending with a "durr" sound would be more accurate and slightly closer to the katakana spelling. The Merlin/Merlan mix-up could also be a French thing, I don't really know. What we can take from this is that Tewi is definitely pronounced Chewy.
Since you brought it up, an elongated 'r' would actually look more like フランドッル. The small 'tsu' character indicatees the elongation of the following consonant sound. Romanized, this would be Furandorru. Instead in the actual spelling, the elongation is on the 'o' sound, emphasizing it.
@@GensouChronicle As a french native speaker, 'r' is not actually elongated in "Flandre". We just not pronounce the "e" at the end. Here the phonetic of Flandre in french : "flɑ̃dʁ". So, the correct katakana transcription is still フランドル.
Only now I noticed the reference to the opening skit was already on the thumbnail....great job! Not only on the intro, on the rest of the video as well obviously
I'm glad we got a mistranslation of Flandre because it sounds cool and mystical I'm I'm sure the japanese see her name as cool and mystical aswell with how foreign sounding it is, so in a way we're sharing an experience there Tho it only works Cause her name was weird to begin with
First, I know nothing about linguistics, but in fact, Chinese also use 々 (maybe not officially but my high school teachers do use it a lot) in writing. As far as I know, 々 was transformed from 仝, a different shape of 同(which means 'the same'). And what's interesting is, after watching your video I tried to find the second repetition mark you mentioned but failed. Maybe I'm reading too few book to recognize it😂
Just discovered your channel with the Obscure Touhou Facts video and gotta say, you're pretty good ! I like your videos, great quality keep it up :D Oh also I love your use of LoLK Marisa/Kanmarisa
Another thing I sometimes see on Pixiv is a tendency to romanize "Aya Shameimaru/Shameimaru" as "Syameimaru". This is the correct way to romanize her name in Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki romanization. As these systems were developed in Japan, they reflect the actual Japanese writing (that is, しゃ) more accurately than Hepburn romanization, which romanizes "しゃ" as "sha" to more accurately reflect the actual pronunciation.
It was absolutely the correct choice to subscribe to you, since this is really damn interesting! ...even though a lot of the video flew over my head. But hey, now I know why Tewi and Hinanawi are usually pronounced as "tei" and "hinanai" respectively now!
Glad you enjoyed it. If you want anything clarified, I can do my best to try of course. I make these specifically to give people a wider perspective on the series for greater enjoyment.
In brazil we call her Sirno No h, no fancy stuff, we read it and say it, mostly like that, some fancy pants probably doesn't to make himself feel different tho. But its weird that, portuguese, at least the brazilian one...is, weirdly related to japanese and chinese because we even share words, like chá, which is also tea. And we can even pronounce a lot of words perfectly because of japanese and chinese immigration made us really good at those two languagues :)
Almost all spoken language uses some variation of 'cha' or 'tea'. Just a little fun fact. So it's not that weird they share the word. As for using a 'ch' sound for cirno, I'm not really sure what makes it 'fancy stuff'. Especially seeing as the languages you brought up have the 'ch' sound as a part of the language. If anything, it feels like people take it as a personal attack when they find out they are saying a name wrong, when all I intend is for people to gain a greater understanding and enjoyment of the content through learning.
Thank ya for the context! It’s always important to know how it comes to be similar to looking at food recipes. I want to know the right way prior to altering it to suit my tastes. All that said, from a hearing perspective, I still prefer Flandre over Flandol. For me, Flandre sounds like a fancier name for a “noble vampire” and is more pleasant to the ears. Ah, “naming wars”. They’re always fun to see when more than one fan translator group translates a manga, so I’ll end up seeing character names bounce around until only one sticks with it.
When it is multiple groups translating it, then an inconsistency at least makes sense. I have seen far too often that names or terms or whatever just sorta...change midway and the audience is supposed to fill in the blanks on how we got there. What people are missing in regards to that is that a mid-translation namechange means one has to retroactively apply it to the prior material, which means re-editing and rereleasing all those manga pages.
Didn't know that Flandre's name was from the translation. Always liked how her and Cirno's names had this psuedo-western sound to them and assumed it was a creative liberty from ZUN. I usually call Flandre "flan" and Cirno "Chillno" (usually as a joke)
3:11 Silly Misuzu, can't guard the gate. 9:37 Name-renderings are arbitrary by default when the actual origin is lost entirely. L and R can both be inserted due to how that whole thing works, so we are left with Fran or Flan on that part of the name. I'd personally side with the localization on this one out of personal preference because there are a lot of potential parallels and puns to be made between the dessert and the character. For reference to how the first part may factor into the full name, Frandol seems to be a very rarely used name(I could only find a random drug as reference, lol) so it is about as likely as everything else, with Frandoll being more common, but also straight up being a rejected romanization because it was used once on accident and then "corrected" to the more recognized Flandre, unless the internet is giving me a tall tale here. So it seems as though a straight shot to a direct real name cannot be made. Then there is the second part, which...er, I guess douru can be rendered as door, dor, dol or dool. Everyone decide for themself if they prefer Flandoor or Flandol. I'm personally happy enough with just everyone picking their favorite and assuming ZUN partially just made the name up on the spot. Afterall, one could argue the name is simply rendered as foreign because the character is, with no actual guarantee it actually is a foreign name or word. (That theoretical point would be easier to illustrate if there ever happens to be a fictional character who has a japanese name, but is still rendered as foreign because they come from the west. But alas, such a thing does not exist yet as far as I am aware. Maybe in the following decades, with more real kids in the west getting japanese names these days due to the weebstorm.) 10:03 Yeah, that's where I'm personally at, I really wish the h was there. Pronouncing Cirno as Chirno is not particularly intuitive at all, so the only reason I remember is the "Chirno-chan no baka" moment from a fandub of an unofficial anime. For a pronounciation of the localized h-lacking name, I personally adopted the Shirno-pronounciation I heared in a random TH-cam video. This technically does not adhere to language-rules because C is never usually pronounced as Sh in such a context as far as I can tell, but I just source it as a reference to the concept of a [Sheer] cold, which seems context-appropriate enough with one of her special moves being Perfect Freeze and all.
I simply call her Flan (Furan), like the pudding. As for the katakana names in general, I usually pronounce them in japanese, so Arisu instead of Alice for example.
i love when Zun gives characters just random english words, like Patchouli Knowledge, Wriggle Nightbug, Sunny Milk, Clown-piece, Eternity Larva, its got a engrish charm to it "Sunny Milk" just sounds like spoiled milk to anyone who isnt a touhou fan
You don't need suggestions or speculation because ZUN wrote Flandre's name in English for Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, as Frandle Scarlet. (This book also writes the three fairy's names as one word rather than two, Sunnymilk, Lunarchild, and Starsaphire). Then again he did write Clownpiece's name as Crown Peace in 18.5 and I don't know what to think about that...
The Three Fairy's names, and Clownpiece, + Eternity Larva all make sense, The Three Fairy's are called the Fairies of Light as a title, and their names, and abilities are in theme with it, Star Sapphire, Sunny Milk, Luna Child their first names are the "three lights" that refer to the sun, moon, and stars, the most clearly visible lights in the sky. "It is from these lights that the fairies derive their power and after which they have been named. Many of their spell cards reflect how they derive their power. These three lights are also referred to in the name of work in which they appeared; The title of the manga, "Sangetsusei" (三月精) is a wordplay, which loosely means "sun, moon, stars" respectively based on pronunciation, whereas "三精/Sansei/Three Sprites" used to be the old name for these three heavenly bodies put together. san (三) can also mean san (サン, Katakana transliteration of English "sun"), getsu (月, "moon") stays the same and sei (精, "fairy") shares the same sound as sei (星, "star").[1]" -Touhou wiki Clownpiece is called that cause she looks like a Clown, or more accurately a Jester which is said to be a kind of Clown, like Mimes are said to be, Eternity Larva is based on a Shinto god, and may not actually be a swallowtail butterfly fairy, you can get all this about them from the Touhou wiki.
@@Kasamori She's actually a living doll, not a fairy really, so idk about that tú Japano, though the name can be both ironic, and describes Medicine Melancholy's role in Eientei in the process of making well, Medicine, and the fact her power is all the poisons in existence, would make her being pretty un-medicinal doesn't it? If it wasn't for her helping Eirin Yagokoro.
The thing that really bothers me is when Rumia is sometimes translated as Lumia, because it sounds like it comes from "luminous" and that's the exact opposite of her thing. As for Cirno, it's common for fans outside of Japan to pronounce it like it would sound phonetically in their own language. I myself often trip up and accidentally say "Thirr-noh".
After looking into it a bit more, I actually vote for Lunia as her name(M and N often have a similar relationship in japanese as R/L or B/V). It fits her like a glove with one of her motives in her few existing spellcards being the moon, what the moon can theoretically represent in the context of her powers(Being associated with the night and being able to mostly block the sun in a solar eclipse) and how the only thing linking her to the Lumia-name(The spellcard Moon Sign "Moonlight Ray") being more specifically about the moon too.
Imagine if we got Frandle Scarlet instead 💀💀 In all seriousness, I personally think Flandre makes sense. Purely because a lot of western names in Touhou are names that I could see being names of real people; "Alice", "Patchouli", or "Remilia" for example. Flandre is also a name I can see being real person's name. But I can't see a real person having the name "Frandol".
@@Mikairium You say that, but a lot of modern female names were historically male names: Lauren, Madison, Kelly, Shelly, Allison, Shannon, Ashley, Darcy, etc.
incredible video and fantastic japanese pronunciation. i have been studying japanese for multiple years now and i understand many things that you are saying. but. i am sorry. she is シルノ. ever since i have been able to read チルノ i have decided it actually means シルノ. similarly to goast or etarnity larva but for real i'll chalk it up to regional differences, maybe in the same way that in chinese, almost no touhou name or terminology is pronounced similarly to the japanese version. kinda similarly to that, we also use the chinese reading and say "chang'e" when referring to the still-faceless enemy of dear junko, whereas japanese fans (to my limited knowledge) use jouga aaaaand we also still use gensokyo instead of gensoukyou but mokou isn't moko
I can't tell if the first half of your comment is sarcasm or not, so I am not really sure how to respond properly. Apologies. If you could clarify, I would be more than willing to respond. Once again, apologies.
Regional difference don't justify that reasoning. Using your example with 嫦娥, reading in Japanese would be Jouga, whereas Chinese would be Chang'e Another example with Koumei 孔明, reading in Japanese would be Koumei, Chinese being Kongming Both of these are accurate readings for the respective language, but there is no "english reading" for them, just a romanization. An english translation for チルノ, the name being in katakana to simplify things, romanization would be as is, which is chi-ru-no.
I saw somewhere on the Touhou Wiki that Flandre 's name is supposed to be pronounced like the French word for "Flanders". Pronouncing it like th at makes it sound much more like the Katakana spelling ZUN used.
I would be inclined to agree if it was フランドルス instead of フランドール. The elongated ド tells me it would most certainly not have an 'er' ending in English. And then, of course the lack of an 's' sound ending.
@@s_pos The link you gave doesn't work for me. If it's the same one that I looked at while making the video though, it sounds like 'Furandooru'. (This might be different between the wiki language settings though) There was someone else who made a comment that I think explained what you are trying to say. Basically in French it's spelled Flandre, but the pronunciation is more like "flandurr'. Another comment actually explained that the spelling is most likely intentional and based within old Anglo-Saxon roots. And I really like this explanation because it makes a lot more sense than it simply being pronounced using modern English rules.
@@s_pos Ah right. The second pronunciation. Yeah, this is how the English community has chosen to interpret the origins of her name and goes with my previous comment. The written name is still closer to Flandol, but given her Western origin, that name of origin was chosen and the spelling was based on its language of origin rather than how it sounds.
This one is a really nice content about the strange name in Touhou. Good content as always! BTW I have a little suggestion : Can you provide the source of all media (image and music etc.) that you have used in your video please?
Frandol Scarlet mmm idk it doesn't have the same ring to it (sounds like the name of both a mediavel dragon and some high class righ kid), though i do agree that it's weird that it was translated to Flandre anohter non existing name.
Since I got into Touhou while living in Japan and started Touhou by consuming Japanese media, I always caled Flandre Furando-ru but when I started getting even more into to Touhou and saw that her name was spelled Flandre in non Japnese media, my instincts told me to call her flandre like the fish lol. Even though in English or romaji I always spell Tewi as Tewi but always called her Tei. Same thing for Cirno, I pronounce her name with a ch sound all the time.
I think part of it is the fact that so many people have 'Flandre' ingrained into their brain after so long that nothing else sounds right. In any case, that's what it'll be from now until the end.
Great video! My personal take on Flandre is that it is "Flandre", but the "dre" is pronounced "derr", as in sceptre. The reasoning behind this is that many names in Touhou 6 are French derivative (Remilia being derivative of Emilie for example). Flander is a French name, so I believe Furandouru to be some derivative of Flander. However, when written as Flandre, most English speakers read it as "Flon-dray" instead of the acceptable and more accurate pronunciation "Flan-derr".
In fact ,Inaba Tewi or Inaba Tei indirectly caused a heatedly argument in Chinese community😂. Tei homophones with 帝（means emperor），so Inaba Tei was incorrectly translated into 因幡帝，which went viral but sparked jokes in the Japanese community.After research,the correct translation is 因幡天为.天为 nearly shares the same pronunciation with Tewi.Because thbwiki changed the translation without telling community the reason,the fright began.😂
And then, there's one character so messed up with her name, *to the point that that very character always complains about the way her name is spelled or spoken* . > *_MARIBEERU HAAN_*
Funny spellings such as Furandooru and Maeriberii remind me a bit of the less relevant Meruran (Merlin). Something slighly interesting are the cases in which the 'i' in a name acts as an extension of the 'e', in the case of Eirin (Ērin?), Seija (Sēja, I've never seen this romaji spelling, always Seija) and Seiga. A problem with pronunciation that some of us might have is the dreaded question "What's the tonic syllable?" We know that the tonic syllabe in Yu*yu*ko is the second Yu, though I'm not sure if *Yu*yuko is even 'correct'. Another example is *Ni*tori. Because of the tonic syllabes paradygm, I still am not sure whether it's *Ta*kane or Ta*ka*ne (I bet it's the first, like *Ka*nako, or the language may pull a Ma*ri*sa on me). I believe that listening to a Japanese person pronounce the names is the best option for this question, even though as long as you get the name across, you won't get much other than a few glances when pronouncing *Ke*iki as Kei*ki*.
So, in Japanese, i and u elongate to another i or u. However, o elongates to u and e elongates to i because that is how the mouth naturally progresses the sound. Those elongated spellings are good for writing out a 'pronunciation' but that's about it. As for your tonic syllable question, I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking what the correct tonic syllable is for Japanese names? Because there are none. Japanese is a non-tonal language. There are no stresses placed upon any syllables naturally, and thus the same should be done even when saying the names in English.
Adding to the 'i's acting as extended 'e's, it's very common in the Japanese language for 'ou' names to be pronounced as 'o' and romanized as ō. See Mokou (Mokō, as with Seija/Seiga, I have never seen this spelling), Shinmyoumaru (Shinmyōmaru) Touhou (Tōhō) and Gensoukyou (Gensōkyō). A related case is Chiruno (Cirno). To pronounce it, you use the 'u' as an extension of the 'i', hence the Cheer-no and not Chir-no.
@@GensouChronicle Oh, that's interesting information that I didn't know very well about elongations. Since Japanese is a non-tonal language, this explains why I've heard pronunciations of Marisa as *Ma*risa. This means there is no 'correct' way to know the tonic syllabe of a name, and the pronunciation we hear tends to be the most comfortable/common one.
@@user-up3qb4ih5w I would say that there's no "wrong" way, but say for instance if you were speaking to a native Japanese speaker in Japanese and stressed one of the syllables like this, it would sound 'awkward' to them. They could understand you just fine, but it would sound just a bit strange.
Im surprised you didn't bring up Marisa's name as it seems like an english name, but it isn't written in katakana at all. Although, I guess fans didn't make a mistake in the translations there.
Im stuck saying "too-we" for tewi I cant ignore that W And then crino has the opposite problem for me of forgetting to add a character And instead I keep saying "sir-no"
I really can't believe that I actually own all 8 volumes of the "Sarai" manga series, and yet I had no idea certain names were derived from it for EOSD... I'm ashamed to say I'm a Touhou fan now :(
@@GensouChronicle I only have the English-translated publication, which sadly ended after 8 volumes. You know, until now I didn't even realize how much Kannagi Sarai resembles a certain "Perfect and Elegant Maid" we all know and (some) love... I really HAVE been oblivious all these years!
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I think the name Flandre is cute. It's just far-stretched from its origin compared to every other name we have to the point it sticks out. And yeah, my version would omit that really fun part of fan history with her involvement with 'flan'. In a way it's kind of nice?
I've never realized how the Chinese character aspect could throw a wrench into Japanese pronunciations. I also like Frandol Scarlet, though I agree that starting a war over it all is rather pointless. The Tewi and Tenshi situations are quite interesting - would we pronounce the "w" as it's sort of like a loanword, except from a past interation of a language instead of a different one?
The Japanese speakers do not pronounce the 'w', but we do keep the original spelling because ZUN went out of his way to use ゐ (quoting discussion on the EN wiki here, but I like this sentiment as well). However, another comment asked the interesting question of whether Tewi herself does. I would say likewise she uses 'Tei' as she doesn't use any other archaic forms of words that used to use 'we' or 'wi'. That said, we can't say for sure unless ZUN gives an official statement.
@@DeltaPie I'd say there's a 99% chance it's Tei, but yeah, there's always that 1% chance she pronounces her name like that. I think if I found some audio of ZUN saying her name as Tei, we could probably rule that out 100%.
It's funny that these days you could tell someone to go listen to the characters say their own name in Lost Word and they go "hold up, what?". Flan-door-ru, Kay-nay, Mo-ko, Tei, Hinanai Tenshi, Cheer-no, Koi-shi, Sa-nigh-e, Iku Nah-guy-e. Funny fan translations of names don't happen as often these days but is funny when it does.
I'd say it still does quite a bit, going solely by the sheer amount of pushback I got from Cirno not being 'Sirno'. Also, I would say a lot of fans don't ever touch Lost Word- myself included.
Some kanji have contradictory meaning based on the context. I love how I forgot all the kanji I knew because it was such a pain. I’d say with English, chirno is fine, because we can fully spell it in English reasonably. And it doesn’t sound stupid.
Id agrue when a language is very different people will be diligent in translation while if its somewhat similar they might fail because they didnt translate and instead assumed it was just the same.
I think I would like to talk about names in a video. I don't think I will simply make a video on that topic. More that I'd talk about them as part of a more interesting topic.
Finally, someone explained what that "Seiga Nyan Nyan" is actually about. When I first saw it in a random fan manga, I thought that it was just Seiga trying to be cute or something.
Well, to be fair, that's not entirely wrong! lol
Fits her personality.
Its weird when I try to read nyan nyan I struggle grately but when reading ņan ņan its easy as cake.
I thought the same thing when i saw her for the first time in TD. Only recently i learned what it actually means through watching Koukyuu no Karasu (Raven of the inner palace), because the main character is refered to by some other characters as "Niang Niang", when i realised that i thought: "isn't that the way Seiga introduces herself?"
the only "nyan nyan" i know is a catgirl maid from a certain visual novel
You say "Seiga" I say "doki doki waku waku"
Honestly I find it kind of charming that Cirno has no "true" English pronunciation outside of the direct Japanese one. Starting the Sirno/Chirno/Cheerno/Searno/Churno/Chillno debate was the greatest prank she ever pulled.
There really shouldn't have been much of a debate on it, since it actually translates pretty well into English phonetically. The problem is mostly the omitted 'h', because some English speakers don't know that English phonetic rules aren't universal, and 'ci' doesn't always make an 's' sound when the language of origin is foreign.
@@GensouChronicle Very true. But I do have to admit the name wouldn't be as interesting to me if we all managed to settle on the correct (or even just one) pronunciation. The irony that pronunciation of the Nineball's name is where knowledge is lacking is not lost on me.
@@ThatOneAnnoyingPubPlayer There is an element of humor to it, for sure.
@@GensouChronicle Funny, how Cirno became a name for a foreign character, despite the fact, that fairies come from Celts, who populated England (and most of Western Europe) at that time.
Guys, guys!
Her name is obviously pronounced "chee-no". You know, like chino pants.
As a french person, Flandre is very easy and natural for us to pronounce and there’s only one way to pronounce it. It’s also the name of a region here and honestly, given how smooth it sounds in our language, I could totally believe it was used as a first name for girls a few centuries ago.
France and England have been fighting and invading each other for as long as I can remember, it really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Scarlet family has mixed origins.
We don’t know where they come from but I doubt Zun would give them an english name if they weren’t english. Translating a name to make things "convenient" and easy to understand isn’t his thing.
I still don’t have any idea how you’re supposed to pronounce Flandre in english, good thing I don’t have to deal with this headache
English isnt even my first language and I didnt expect the -dre part was debated pronounce.
@@seejay9778 I pronounce it as Flander.
you do it the American/English way either butcher it and try to invoke superiority on anyone that complains or you just full on yoink the pronunciation from another language and make English even harder to understand for people lel
Just another French fan passing by and seconding the fact that Flandre always felt right from that perspective
That would probably be フランダー (Furandaa).
Japanese is best described through Max0r's words: Your character remembers squiggly lines and fridge art, created by gods for passive bonuses that work regardless weaponry. My favorites are more money, more money and more money, they stack (もっとお金).
The best part of the Flandre situation is that since Gouyoku Ibun is getting an official english translation, we'll finally have confirmation on her name.
Well, I think they're going to most like stick to Flandre. I think backlash would be far too crazy if they actually decided to change it. Part of the reason I made sure to put a disclaimer at the end was because I had a feeling a bunch of people would think I'm trying to 'officially' name her on my own when everyone is already so used to Flandre.
Since when have official translation been word of god? Publishers usually hire the cheapest translation firm that they can find, even stuff like the soulsborne games have spotty-at-best translations (and it's REALLY important on those games).
I'll always go for the fan translations since they are a work of passion, and the translators have the context (because they have been fans for decades and have read every other work of the author), unlike official translators who work per hour and have not read any other work, so they don't get references or jokes.
@@devildante9 Pretty much the truth. The exact reason why very few official translations of official touhou media is because it would most likely suck.(And those few existing examples mostly point towards this theoretical prediction being true.) And that is just ZUN and everyone involved being truthful about it. As you say, other IPs have the issue that their localizations aren't always top tier and that burries the actual material written behind the language barrier. This shouldn't be an issue anymore because current hardware and software standards allow for better support, but it's barely used at all.
To add to your talk about フランドール getting turned into Flandre, my absolute favorite name issue along those lines has always been the fandom trying to figure out how to romanize Maribel's name. Considering マエリベリー・ハーン would be more literally translated as Maeriberī Hān (and I guess everyone back then took one look at "Maryberry" and felt that there was no way that could be right)
At least the 'Hearn' we have a clear confirmation given her connection with Lafcadio Hearn. But yeah, lots of... interpretation with the translations. It doesn't help that ZUN has historically been bad with English.
@@GensouChronicle Yeah, ZUN's english is definitely its own thing. I'm glad it got fixed in the full release, but it always amused me how in the demo of HSiFS, ZUN managed to write Eternity, Etanity and Eternity in three different places.
Though thinking about it, even official English translations have had their issues there. "Kokoro Hatano" in FS for example. Hell, you could probably even do an entire video on stuff like that, cause I remember AoCF was lousy with mistranslations here and there. Like at one point with Tenshi, translating "cinnabar" into "beef tongue"
@@MegamanOmega184 I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure there's actually a page on the wiki that looks at all the alternate spellings different characters have had over the years. There's a ton. And most of them stem from ZUN lol.
Edit: Characters/Alternative spellings on the wiki. I found it.
It's also pronunciations of some characters.
Ou is linguistically a long O in japanese.
Everytime someone says “Moku“ I wanna bash their face into a sink.
That's mostly because I am an insane Mokou fan and the german word for 'cow' is 'Kuh', so whenever someone says “Mo-kuh“ I'm just imagining a cow with white hair and ribbons.
Cheeki Breeki Yamaxanadu omg now I really want to hear the Fate of Sixty Years Hardbass remix.
Ah yes Kurenai Musuzu, one of my favorite Touhous
I have heard almost all those names but never knew any explanation so this was very helpful
Glad I could help! I know most people know about the Kurenai Misuzu situation at least, but since I was taking a bit of a dive into Chinese I figured I'd go all out with these explanations.
I was reading some japanese fics and used a shoddy japanese translator and Mokou's name, interestingly, was often translated as “Kurenai“ or sometimes even “Hong“, if I remember correvtly.
I guess we are stuck with "Flandre" since she originated from an era where we took any translation that came to us to heart and "Flandre" does sound more European, than "Frandol" which also sounds like a male name. Could've been artistic liberty by the translator. By the time anyone could object and ask to change it, it was too late.
At least we did manage to correct "Eternany Larva" back to "Eternity Larva".
Luckily, there was an easy fix to 'Eternity'. I can't imagine if it was another gibberish name.
There's Crown Piece too
Thanks to the translator we got all the Flan 🍮Flandre jokes
The romanization "Flandre" comes from an old diary blog Zun used to hold, and Cirno's name has been romanized as such multiple times in official material. There's really not many of these cases. Eternity being romanized as "Etarnity" comes from the trial version of Hidden Star in Four Seasons itself, same case with Eika being called "Youka" in the trial. Zun just seems to make a lot of typos and doesn't seem to understand foreign languages much at all
@@ansyyxux crown piss
UPDATED (8/6/23)
We have confirmation Cirno's name was originally 'Chirudo' (which could be from Chilled) until ZUN changed the 'do' into a 'no'. So it's most likely a mutation of 'Chilled'.
Back again with some more lore content. I had some things I wanted to add as some additional information to the video.
-The 'he' character へ also changes to an 'e' sound exactly like え when used as a particle. Just like how' wo' を is always pronounced 'o'. I say this because in my the video I had said that only the 'ha' character changes sounds, but this is incorrect.
-My pronunciation of Měilíng in Chinese is a bit awkward, but the Měi character should have had a lower than neutral starting pitch before rising.
-My pronunciation of Seiga's Chinese name is VERY wrong. If you're curious enough, I encourage you to look up how it is pronounced on your own. I would have edited the audio in post if I was allowed.
-Likewise, I tried saying Patchouli's name slowly for viewers, and pronounced the 'chu' with a skip by accident, which is wrong. Incorrect: Pacchurii Correct: Pachurii
-I didn't mention that Maribel Hearn is also slightly awkward to translation from マエリベリー ハーン (Maeriberii Haan). Hearn is 100% correct given the naming references, but arguments can be made for the name to be modified slightly. Personally, I think it's fine such that I didn't bother including it in the video. But I felt it warranted mention at least.
-Also important to note is that Chinese and Japanese have different computer fonts for Kanji, so the exact 'writing' of it may differ slightly depending on which font I use at a given moment inn the video. Such as at 2:03. I try to use whichever one relevant, but for any viewers that are versed in either Chinese or Japanese, this may turn a head or two. Just throwing that out there.
In any case, I hoped you enjoyed. The next video may be in more of a 'Video Essay' format such that it'll more focus on personal interpretations and conclusions drawn rather than presenting proven facts. Probably. Or I might change my mind again.
Hey OP, someone would like to have you on Touhou wiki discord server, are you interested?
@@HyperVanilo I wouldn't mind.
Imagine if one of the most enigmatic characters in Touhou was named "Merryberry Hearn."
I know there's pretty much no controversy about it and that's probably why you didn't bring it up, but I've always been a bit mystified about where the long u sound in Nazūrin went when our favorite mouse arrived from overseas. Cutting a short u sound out when transliterating names is understandable, since loan words and foreign names entering japanese usually add a u at the end of non-vowel ended consonants (except for plain t [ト], plain d [ド], plain n [ン], and sometimes ch(?) [either チ or ﾁｭ (I always have to look it up for each instance orz]) but a whole pronounced long u? That kinda stuff makes my skin feel a little inside out, but it is what it is:
Nazūrin or Nazrin, mouse is as mouse does; The greatest of all time
@@cornbeverly So correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting what you're saying, but ト is not a plain t, it's 'to'. Likewise ド is 'do'. The only plain consonant in their syllabary is the n (ン) character that you mentioned.
As for the Nazrin bit, yeah... that is a bit odd. I would have translated her name as Nazurin as well given that elongated u sound. I'm not sure if there's a reason it was translated that, but I'm seeing plenty of reasons it should have been Nazurin. (historical/religious references, and the closeness to Nezumi which means mouse).
I’m pretty sure I’ve also seen Meiling written as Meirin instead sometimes but I’m pretty sure this must be an error since Japanese doesn’t have any L syllables in their alphabet, anyway cool video, I learnt a lot from it.
So in Japanese, Meiling is more or less equivalent to Meirin because r and l are kind of smooshed together in Japanese. However, because the name originates from Chinese, instead of doing a Chinese to Japanese to English translation to get an ambiguous l/r, we can do a direct Chinese to English translation to get Meiling for sure. Hope that helps!
I never got used to fully naming Flandre, so I just call her Flan.
So, seeing how "Frandol" would be a more accurate translation, I think I would have liked it that way.
Glad to hear you like the name too! And yeah, I usually just call Patchouli, Patche as well.
Frandol would not be a more accurate translation. It was likely meant to be Flander, based on the French region, but with slightly different spelling. Based on the katakana, it's likely meant to be pronounced that way as well ("flan-der", and "dre" being pronounced that way is acceptable when you look at words like "spectre" and "theatre"), and the English-speaking community just says it wrong. Really, the way the English-speaking community says it makes no sense when regarding its Japanese pronunciation, nor its likely origin.
@@DJFracus Flanders isn't a French region. It's a Dutch/Flemish-speaking region of Belgium.
@@2712animefreak The historic territory of Flanders is split between modern day France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I'm referring to French Flanders, which is part of modern-day France. Why the French Flanders specifically? Flanders is known as "Flandre" in French, which is why it's thought to be the origin of the Touhou character's name.
@@DJFracus now that you point that out it certainly makes sense
I got into Touhou when I was a lot younger, and I remember mispronouncing the characters’ names a lot from reading mistake habits.
-Touhou was "Toe-hoo" (Probably from "tofu" or "2hu")
-Hakurei was “Ha-ku-rye”
-Flandre was “Flán-dare” (not even close to any of the suggested pronunciations)
-Yakumo was “Ya-mu-ko” (a lot of these are involving mixing up the letters)
-Yamaxanadu was “Ya-max-on-a-doo”
-Byakuren was “Byu-kah-ren” (I thought her name was supposed to be spun off “Karen” I guess?)
-Seiga was “Say-ja” (I remember it was from people comparing her name to Seija, so I assumed her name had a soft g like in ‘giraffe’)
-Sake was "Sey'k" (Obvious)
Have you gotten tested for dyslexia?
@@TheSteam02 Yes, and I don't have it. I was just a stupid kid who used to skim-read everything and almost never heard any audio of people saying their names out loud for years. Since, after all, there wasn't a lot of content for Touhou with vocal English audio(and, even out of that sort, not many of them pronounced names correctly themselves) back then.
And, even then for the syllable mix up ones, the human brain only really detects the first and last letter of each word to read in-head, you know. That's a normal thing.
I used to pronounce it as “Toe-who” when I was six, cause that’s when I found Touhou through the Bad Apple!! remix. ‘Twas truly a time
@@CrazyOkuuProductionsNG I also found Touhou through a Bad Apple!! remix, though specifically a Black MIDI remix _of_ the remix
Hearing Cirno's name is "Chirno" super reminds me of the nightmare that is "Simon"->"Seemon" in Gurren Lagann because APPARENTLY Japanese just doesn't know how the long i sound works. Except when it does. Which is never when actually using it with non Japanese names and words.
His name is Shimon in Japanese, if it was meant to be the English name "Simon" it would instead be written in Japanese as "Saimon". It's not that long vowel sounds don't exist, that's just not what they used because his name isn't an English name.
Same with Cirno. If you wanted "Serno" as some people mispronounce it then the closest you get for a Japanese name would be "Seeruno" and uh... that's *not* her name.
@@QuakeGamerROTMG Simon Belmont's (Belmondo if we wanna be persnickity for the sake of this argument) name is spelled literally with the same Japanese characters as Simon in TTGL, it's absolutely not supposed to be Shimon. I know that if they want to use the long I sound they would use the "Ai" character, but because of the correlation with that and other cultural contexts they usually don't. It's the same reason they use characters to pronounce "Pisces" as "Pisskess". I have been down this rabbit hole for years dog.
Shiimon as it is pronounced is also a word
It means "Underneath"
To go with Kamina's which means "above" and Yōko's "surrounding"
Thanks for this video, it was really instructing about the Japanese language as a whole even if I had most names right from the start, well exept for Flandre or Frandol well Furandouru but the name "Flandre" never felt weird to me, maybe because I'm a natif romance language speaker and it kinda sound close to home in some ways or because it has been adopt by the werstern fandom since so long. Anyway great video as always, It's really cool to get info, facts, lore talking and point of view of persons that are in the fandom since so long. Still hope you'll get more views in the future but in fact I'm not worrying about that. Keep up the great work.
Oh and the "Believe me, I'm just getting warmed up" at the end of the video, freaked me up in the greatest way possible.
"When consuming media that is Based"
Excellent video! We need more 2hu content like this.
It's on the way!
Thank you for making this video, I learned a lot! Your style of video is also very engaging while also very informative, good work!
Glad you liked it.
Then there is Mike Goutokuji, I know it's pronounced as "Meh Keh" but still i can´t be helped to call her as M I K E lol.
Some others call her as Michael for the funies.
Mike Wazowski
I keep calling her the english Mike as well. And imagining her hair on Mike Stoklasas head. That is how she canonically looks in my eyes.
This channel is amazing, I absolutely welcome more of these kinds of analysis videos for Touhou ❤️
Love this analysis, I appreciate that you made a video about the names because there's so much lore behind them. The etymology of the names and the ways the Japanese interpret them is so interesting. Thanks for making a great video on this and hope you make more Touhou content
Glad you enjoyed it! I have a lot more on the way.
oooh so That's where the whole Kurenai Misuzu (and china too i guess) thing started, interesting, same for Seiga now i finally know why the Lost word event is called that
i came expecting common misconceptions in pronunciations such as "sirno" but this genuinely taught me a lot more than i expected.
i love your content a lot, i hope to see more! good work!
Thanks. I try to go beyond common knowledge to be interesting even to longer-time fans.
Kirno
This is the boost I needed to get back on studying Japanese, thank you sir!
Glad to hear it. It's a rough undertaking, but it's so worth it.
I always thought it was weird how some people say the names of these characters differently, thanks for this!
Flandre makes sense.
Pronounced as Flander.
Flander is an actual family among Anglo-Saxons, and before English had a definite system of spelling rules some spelling variations on the name included Flandres.
Plus Remilia and Flandre are both old, so just like the other examples given, it would make sense that her name doesn't necessarily follow the modern spelling rules of English, and the Scarlet Family very clearly shows that they're supposed to be a representation of 'English' culture.
L's and R's are often both made as 'ru' sounds in Katakana, like Buruma, who was named after bloomers.
I do like this take on it.
Flandray always gets me because there is no "Rei" at the end of her name. It feels like trying too hard to make it sound exotic when there's no indication that it's pronounced that way.
If he wanted the name to end with that sound it would have been written that way in Japanese. Furandoorei instead of Furandooru. Really Flandoor is closest but also most cursed, shorten the end you get Flander.
i gotta say as a touhou fan who main language is french well saying the characters name is more easy to say in a way (at least to me it is ) because in japanese their syllable or the way they are prononced are very similar in french too so i guess it can make a diffrence....? i dunno but thats all i wanted to say xD gotta keep the good work dude cant wait to see more gg !
I'm not too familiar with French unfortunately, but that is interesting.
@@GensouChronicle thanks and its fine dont worry ^^ but i personally follow a french speaker touhou youtube guy so thats why kinda.
I've heard many of these before but it was nice getting a thorough explanation for why each one is the case it is. Didn't know about Seiga so that was interesting learning about her Nyan Nyans.
Got a related question which I'm wondering if you could provide any insight into: how do you think Tewi currently pronounces her name? I've seen it argued that us the fanbase should pronounce Tewi as "Te-wee" because that's how she would have pronounced it herself back hundreds of years ago. Personally I think this could potentially hold weight if Tewi has an archaic style of speaking in general, but I have no clue if this is the case. I don't recall seeing this reflected in the TL to Th9, but of course translations often lose nuances. So if you do happen to know more about her lore or dialogue, do you think Tewi might speak like a boomer or is Tei more hip and kept up with the times? Thanks
This is honestly something I wondered as well. We see lots of instances of characters that were from very archaic origins just operating as modern people (to some comedic effect) and then you have... Futo. Precious Futo. Going by the original Japanese text, Tewi doesn't speak with old words and such that used wi and we. There are many words that changed during language reform (not in 1946, much earlier) and before then, they used those characters. Tewi doesn't use those older verbs and such from what I've seen. That said, a name is different and more personal, so, it could really be up to ZUN. I'm not sure if he's made an official statement on it. I know the Japanese fans call her 'Tei' though.
Very good question. Thanks!
@@GensouChronicle Now that you mention it, yeah Futo does seem to be one of the only characters to speak in such an old fashioned way. Interesting to know that the fans go with Tei. Suppose however ZUN pronounces it would be the most accurate, being the word of god. Thanks for the reply.
On a different note, I did some more thinking about another character here, Flandre. Has there ever been an official spelling of her name in romaji before? If not, I wonder how the translation of 17.5 for the Switch is going to handle it. Guess we'll see soon.
And to ramble a little bit, I remember chuckling at seeing her name spelt as 'Frandle' before just from how odd it sounded. Ironic that it was actually more accurate. Though it did get me thinking, what if Flandre's current name spelling was due to a novice error and/or misunderstanding? As in, it originally was translated as 'Frandle' to be accurate to Japanese, but someone saw this thought that sounded awkward and tried to change it some. Perhaps thinking that L and R are interchangeable in Japanese, they turned the Frandle into Flandre, not realizing that the pronunciation would be messed up. Who knows, just a theory that popped in my head.
@@matt7399 I can't say off the top of my head, but there is more than likely romanized 'reference' to her by ZUN in game files at least. But they generally aren't given too much weight because sometimes he would put random stuff in there. Other than that, I can't say for sure. Unfortunately, Flandre is one of the characters that isn't from the manga Remilia, Patchouli, Cirno, and not!Sakuya are from.
@@GensouChronicle Ah, suppose it's hard to rely upon ZUN's drunken filenames haha. Still an interesting case about her name all around. Definitely curious about the manga you've mentioned now, looking forward to when you may cover it.
Even though ゐ is spelled "wi", Japanese people back then pronounced it as うぃ(wi) but the "w" sound is pronounced extremely lightly so that it sounded almost like an "i" sound. Combine that with て(te) and it would be pronounced as "tei" so Tewi would still be calling herself tei hundreds of years ago.
Damn bruh, I loved this video, langauge and it's differences have always interested me
Glad you liked it!
As Person who RP as Hieda no Akyuu Backthen when G+ was still a thing... i learn so much about Touhou world , and their youkai, and so many thing.... the fact that i still create and draw Touhou World is prove...
Google+ mentioned
Really insightful, interesting and entertaining. This is the kind of stuff I've been craving from the touhou comunity for a bit.
I died a little inside when you said Flandre's name was inaccurate. As a French person, it's childishly easy to pronounce, it sounds very soft and sweet, and I've always loved it for that. Also, Flandre is the actual name of a region in Europe, which might be why it was interpreted like that. It's actually more authentically European than "Remilia".
It's less a matter of how it's pronounced, and more the fact that ZUN emphasized to 'o' sound in her name. 'Furandooru'. If someone is looking at it purely from the romanization of 'Flandre' then yeah, sure you can easily say it's French. But in the first place, 'Flandre' wouldn't be an accurate romanization. So either ZUN made some mistakes with her name and intended Flandre, or he didn't make mistakes and it was intended as he wrote.
@@GensouChronicle I...didn't say it was French. I said that I had attachment to the pronunciation, and that I like its sound in my language. The region of Flanders (or Flandre in French) is not French-speaking either, so that really was not my argument.
As someone who's been studying Japanese for a while, it is true that "Flandre" would more likely be フランドル. So it might be that ZUN intended something else. I think it'd be interesting to ask.
@@blara2401 That's fair. I brought it up because this is the most common comparison I get. The region, the origin, everything. I'm not trying to misrepresent your comment. Apologies if you interpreted it as such.
As for your katakana there, it's inaccurate. It's actually フランドール. ド is elongated. And while that might seem innocuous or nitpicky, it's actually really important. It means that there is an emphasis on pronouncing it, which goes against the French pronunciation of Flandre. I personally kind of like the French pronunciation as well. But I am not speaking from a point of preference. I'm speaking from a point of whatever ZUN intended 20 years ago. But yes, I think it would be good to ask and see at some point.
@@GensouChronicle Again, I think you misunderstood my comment. I know that her name is spelled フランドール. What I was saying was precisely that "Flandre" would more likely rendered as フランドル and that that supports the idea that ZUN's intention was something else.
@@blara2401 Understood. The first sentence in the second paragraph of your second comment can be ambiguously interpreted either way, leading to the confusion.
In short: Yeah, I agree. 100%
I remember confusing Letty's last name as Winterlock, instead of Whiterock
and man... I understimated Tewi's age by a long shot, I really belived she was at minimun, 300 y/o
The moment Cirno became hisenburger.
Everyone wanted her blue stuff... Truly was the moment of all time.
@@GensouChronicle the blue stuff being copper II sulfate... right TH-cam? hah...
No methamphetamine
The topic of Flan's name really is an interesting one.
Flan's name could have roots in the French spelling and pronunciation of Flandres, also spelled Flandre and pronounced with a silent "e". I'm no expert on neither the French language nor katakana conversion, but the ending of フランドール seems like a close enough approximation of a slightly elongated "r" consonant ending with no clear vowel before it. But who knows, ZUN was probably just winging it.
On another note, English speakers do have a tendency to call her Flan-"dray" as that probably seems more logical and sounds more natural. But using French pronunciation logic instead, maybe ending with a "durr" sound would be more accurate and slightly closer to the katakana spelling.
The Merlin/Merlan mix-up could also be a French thing, I don't really know.
What we can take from this is that Tewi is definitely pronounced Chewy.
Since you brought it up, an elongated 'r' would actually look more like フランドッル. The small 'tsu' character indicatees the elongation of the following consonant sound. Romanized, this would be Furandorru. Instead in the actual spelling, the elongation is on the 'o' sound, emphasizing it.
@@GensouChronicle As a french native speaker, 'r' is not actually elongated in "Flandre". We just not pronounce the "e" at the end. Here the phonetic of Flandre in french : "flɑ̃dʁ". So, the correct katakana transcription is still フランドル.
@@zetech65 I appreciate the explanation from a native speaker.
Only now I noticed the reference to the opening skit was already on the thumbnail....great job! Not only on the intro, on the rest of the video as well obviously
Glad you liked it!
I'm glad we got a mistranslation of Flandre because it sounds cool and mystical I'm I'm sure the japanese see her name as cool and mystical aswell with how foreign sounding it is, so in a way we're sharing an experience there
Tho it only works Cause her name was weird to begin with
This is educational, you earned another subscriber!
Kinda reminds me when I argued with my friend about whether it is "Sa-na-e" or "Sa-nay"
7:24 "And they'll never change! Ever since there was 9, ..."
First, I know nothing about linguistics, but in fact, Chinese also use 々 (maybe not officially but my high school teachers do use it a lot) in writing. As far as I know, 々 was transformed from 仝, a different shape of 同(which means 'the same'). And what's interesting is, after watching your video I tried to find the second repetition mark you mentioned but failed. Maybe I'm reading too few book to recognize it😂
Chinese does use it, yeah. I mention that in the video, but it's considered less common. That's interesting about its origin though.
Just discovered your channel with the Obscure Touhou Facts video and gotta say, you're pretty good ! I like your videos, great quality keep it up :D
Oh also I love your use of LoLK Marisa/Kanmarisa
Thanks. I'm hoping to have more content on the way soon!
Another thing I sometimes see on Pixiv is a tendency to romanize "Aya Shameimaru/Shameimaru" as "Syameimaru".
This is the correct way to romanize her name in Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki romanization. As these systems were developed in Japan, they reflect the actual Japanese writing (that is, しゃ) more accurately than Hepburn romanization, which romanizes "しゃ" as "sha" to more accurately reflect the actual pronunciation.
That also explains things like 'Kotiya Sanae'. Nicely put.
It was absolutely the correct choice to subscribe to you, since this is really damn interesting!
...even though a lot of the video flew over my head. But hey, now I know why Tewi and Hinanawi are usually pronounced as "tei" and "hinanai" respectively now!
Glad you enjoyed it. If you want anything clarified, I can do my best to try of course. I make these specifically to give people a wider perspective on the series for greater enjoyment.
In brazil we call her
Sirno
No h, no fancy stuff, we read it and say it, mostly like that, some fancy pants probably doesn't to make himself feel different tho.
But its weird that, portuguese, at least the brazilian one...is, weirdly related to japanese and chinese because we even share words, like chá, which is also tea.
And we can even pronounce a lot of words perfectly because of japanese and chinese immigration made us really good at those two languagues :)
Almost all spoken language uses some variation of 'cha' or 'tea'. Just a little fun fact. So it's not that weird they share the word.
As for using a 'ch' sound for cirno, I'm not really sure what makes it 'fancy stuff'. Especially seeing as the languages you brought up have the 'ch' sound as a part of the language. If anything, it feels like people take it as a personal attack when they find out they are saying a name wrong, when all I intend is for people to gain a greater understanding and enjoyment of the content through learning.
Same with russian Syrno - literally "Cheezy" or "Wetty".
Thank ya for the context! It’s always important to know how it comes to be similar to looking at food recipes. I want to know the right way prior to altering it to suit my tastes. All that said, from a hearing perspective, I still prefer Flandre over Flandol. For me, Flandre sounds like a fancier name for a “noble vampire” and is more pleasant to the ears.
Ah, “naming wars”. They’re always fun to see when more than one fan translator group translates a manga, so I’ll end up seeing character names bounce around until only one sticks with it.
When it is multiple groups translating it, then an inconsistency at least makes sense. I have seen far too often that names or terms or whatever just sorta...change midway and the audience is supposed to fill in the blanks on how we got there. What people are missing in regards to that is that a mid-translation namechange means one has to retroactively apply it to the prior material, which means re-editing and rereleasing all those manga pages.
Really loving these videos!
Glad you like them! I've got plans for many, many more.
Didn't know that Flandre's name was from the translation. Always liked how her and Cirno's names had this psuedo-western sound to them and assumed it was a creative liberty from ZUN. I usually call Flandre "flan" and Cirno "Chillno" (usually as a joke)
3:11 Silly Misuzu, can't guard the gate.
9:37 Name-renderings are arbitrary by default when the actual origin is lost entirely. L and R can both be inserted due to how that whole thing works, so we are left with Fran or Flan on that part of the name. I'd personally side with the localization on this one out of personal preference because there are a lot of potential parallels and puns to be made between the dessert and the character. For reference to how the first part may factor into the full name, Frandol seems to be a very rarely used name(I could only find a random drug as reference, lol) so it is about as likely as everything else, with Frandoll being more common, but also straight up being a rejected romanization because it was used once on accident and then "corrected" to the more recognized Flandre, unless the internet is giving me a tall tale here. So it seems as though a straight shot to a direct real name cannot be made. Then there is the second part, which...er, I guess douru can be rendered as door, dor, dol or dool. Everyone decide for themself if they prefer Flandoor or Flandol.
I'm personally happy enough with just everyone picking their favorite and assuming ZUN partially just made the name up on the spot. Afterall, one could argue the name is simply rendered as foreign because the character is, with no actual guarantee it actually is a foreign name or word. (That theoretical point would be easier to illustrate if there ever happens to be a fictional character who has a japanese name, but is still rendered as foreign because they come from the west. But alas, such a thing does not exist yet as far as I am aware. Maybe in the following decades, with more real kids in the west getting japanese names these days due to the weebstorm.)
10:03 Yeah, that's where I'm personally at, I really wish the h was there. Pronouncing Cirno as Chirno is not particularly intuitive at all, so the only reason I remember is the "Chirno-chan no baka" moment from a fandub of an unofficial anime. For a pronounciation of the localized h-lacking name, I personally adopted the Shirno-pronounciation I heared in a random TH-cam video. This technically does not adhere to language-rules because C is never usually pronounced as Sh in such a context as far as I can tell, but I just source it as a reference to the concept of a [Sheer] cold, which seems context-appropriate enough with one of her special moves being Perfect Freeze and all.
I love ur videos. I’m Japanese touhou fan. your video is so funny because i understand English, Japanese and memes.
Thanks!
0:38 I need to use that idiom to describe Problem Solverz to people
I simply call her Flan (Furan), like the pudding.
As for the katakana names in general, I usually pronounce them in japanese, so Arisu instead of Alice for example.
i love when Zun gives characters just random english words, like Patchouli Knowledge, Wriggle Nightbug, Sunny Milk, Clown-piece, Eternity Larva, its got a engrish charm to it
"Sunny Milk" just sounds like spoiled milk to anyone who isnt a touhou fan
You don't need suggestions or speculation because ZUN wrote Flandre's name in English for Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, as Frandle Scarlet. (This book also writes the three fairy's names as one word rather than two, Sunnymilk, Lunarchild, and Starsaphire). Then again he did write Clownpiece's name as Crown Peace in 18.5 and I don't know what to think about that...
Fairies names are such nonsense, like 'Clownpiece' 'Sunny Milk' 'Eternity Larva' tbh i wan't to know what's the deal with their names.
I think we can put "Medicine Melancholy" on that list (although I love that name)
@@Kasamori Same, but atleast it has a Meaning and is kinda ironic too
The Three Fairy's names, and Clownpiece, + Eternity Larva all make sense, The Three Fairy's are called the Fairies of Light as a title, and their names, and abilities are in theme with it, Star Sapphire, Sunny Milk, Luna Child their first names are the "three lights" that refer to the sun, moon, and stars, the most clearly visible lights in the sky.
"It is from these lights that the fairies derive their power and after which they have been named. Many of their spell cards reflect how they derive their power. These three lights are also referred to in the name of work in which they appeared; The title of the manga, "Sangetsusei" (三月精) is a wordplay, which loosely means "sun, moon, stars" respectively based on pronunciation, whereas "三精/Sansei/Three Sprites" used to be the old name for these three heavenly bodies put together. san (三) can also mean san (サン, Katakana transliteration of English "sun"), getsu (月, "moon") stays the same and sei (精, "fairy") shares the same sound as sei (星, "star").[1]" -Touhou wiki
Clownpiece is called that cause she looks like a Clown, or more accurately a Jester which is said to be a kind of Clown, like Mimes are said to be, Eternity Larva is based on a Shinto god, and may not actually be a swallowtail butterfly fairy, you can get all this about them from the Touhou wiki.
@@Kasamori She's actually a living doll, not a fairy really, so idk about that tú Japano, though the name can be both ironic, and describes Medicine Melancholy's role in Eientei in the process of making well, Medicine, and the fact her power is all the poisons in existence, would make her being pretty un-medicinal doesn't it? If it wasn't for her helping Eirin Yagokoro.
@@baconsoup8346 We were just talking about silly sounding names...
I love these videos
The thing that really bothers me is when Rumia is sometimes translated as Lumia, because it sounds like it comes from "luminous" and that's the exact opposite of her thing.
As for Cirno, it's common for fans outside of Japan to pronounce it like it would sound phonetically in their own language. I myself often trip up and accidentally say "Thirr-noh".
After looking into it a bit more, I actually vote for Lunia as her name(M and N often have a similar relationship in japanese as R/L or B/V). It fits her like a glove with one of her motives in her few existing spellcards being the moon, what the moon can theoretically represent in the context of her powers(Being associated with the night and being able to mostly block the sun in a solar eclipse) and how the only thing linking her to the Lumia-name(The spellcard Moon Sign "Moonlight Ray") being more specifically about the moon too.
The Keine cave is the best place in gensokyo ngl
I'm going to keep finding reasons to use that same cave picture every video if it's the last thing I do.
@@GensouChronicle keep it going, it’s hilarious (at least for me).
@@LuisFelipe-th1lk Good. Callbacks to absolutely ridiculous stuff for comedic effect is my forte.
Ok from now on I wanna personally call her "Flandoll Scarlet"
Imagine if we got Frandle Scarlet instead 💀💀
In all seriousness, I personally think Flandre makes sense. Purely because a lot of western names in Touhou are names that I could see being names of real people; "Alice", "Patchouli", or "Remilia" for example. Flandre is also a name I can see being real person's name. But I can't see a real person having the name "Frandol".
its mostly because its a very old (around 16-18th century) european male name, its not a female name.
@@Mikairium You say that, but a lot of modern female names were historically male names: Lauren, Madison, Kelly, Shelly, Allison, Shannon, Ashley, Darcy, etc.
It's still better than "Syrno".
@@SvafaBlackhandThat doesn't make him incorrect lol
@SfavaBlackhand shannon claude
8:01 i noticed that in niji sousasku fan anime, i was confused why eirin and reisen were refering to tewi as tei, the confusion went away
9:40 not flan scarlet? bloody dessert?
Sometimes I say "Sir No (emphasis on No with Sir like a title)" just to piss people off.
Sometimes it's also Cheerios
Sometimes it's also Cirilo
incredible video and fantastic japanese pronunciation. i have been studying japanese for multiple years now and i understand many things that you are saying. but. i am sorry. she is シルノ. ever since i have been able to read チルノ i have decided it actually means シルノ. similarly to goast or etarnity larva
but for real i'll chalk it up to regional differences, maybe in the same way that in chinese, almost no touhou name or terminology is pronounced similarly to the japanese version. kinda similarly to that, we also use the chinese reading and say "chang'e" when referring to the still-faceless enemy of dear junko, whereas japanese fans (to my limited knowledge) use jouga
aaaaand we also still use gensokyo instead of gensoukyou but mokou isn't moko
I can't tell if the first half of your comment is sarcasm or not, so I am not really sure how to respond properly. Apologies. If you could clarify, I would be more than willing to respond. Once again, apologies.
Regional difference don't justify that reasoning.
Using your example with 嫦娥, reading in Japanese would be Jouga, whereas Chinese would be Chang'e
Another example with Koumei 孔明, reading in Japanese would be Koumei, Chinese being Kongming
Both of these are accurate readings for the respective language, but there is no "english reading" for them, just a romanization.
An english translation for チルノ, the name being in katakana to simplify things, romanization would be as is, which is chi-ru-no.
@@GensouChronicle first part is mostly sarcasm lol sorry dont worry about it i just say seerno
@@bluesoul327 very true and good points i just think seerno is a better name
Cirno honestly needs that "h" on her name.
I used to pronounce it Kirno. I was shocked to hear how her name is pronounced back the the fan animation
I always thought that Cirno's name was based on cryo
6:43 i never heard someone *speak* in impact font before lmfao
I saw somewhere on the Touhou Wiki that Flandre 's name is supposed to be pronounced like the French word for "Flanders". Pronouncing it like th at makes it sound much more like the Katakana spelling ZUN used.
I would be inclined to agree if it was フランドルス instead of フランドール. The elongated ド tells me it would most certainly not have an 'er' ending in English. And then, of course the lack of an 's' sound ending.
@@GensouChronicle Plain Doors.
@@s_pos The link you gave doesn't work for me. If it's the same one that I looked at while making the video though, it sounds like 'Furandooru'. (This might be different between the wiki language settings though) There was someone else who made a comment that I think explained what you are trying to say.
Basically in French it's spelled Flandre, but the pronunciation is more like "flandurr'. Another comment actually explained that the spelling is most likely intentional and based within old Anglo-Saxon roots. And I really like this explanation because it makes a lot more sense than it simply being pronounced using modern English rules.
@@s_pos Ah right. The second pronunciation. Yeah, this is how the English community has chosen to interpret the origins of her name and goes with my previous comment. The written name is still closer to Flandol, but given her Western origin, that name of origin was chosen and the spelling was based on its language of origin rather than how it sounds.
This one is a really nice content about the strange name in Touhou. Good content as always! BTW I have a little suggestion : Can you provide the source of all media (image and music etc.) that you have used in your video please?
Frandol Scarlet mmm idk it doesn't have the same ring to it (sounds like the name of both a mediavel dragon and some high class righ kid), though i do agree that it's weird that it was translated to Flandre anohter non existing name.
Since I got into Touhou while living in Japan and started Touhou by consuming Japanese media, I always caled Flandre Furando-ru but when I started getting even more into to Touhou and saw that her name was spelled Flandre in non Japnese media, my instincts told me to call her flandre like the fish lol. Even though in English or romaji I always spell Tewi as Tewi but always called her Tei. Same thing for Cirno, I pronounce her name with a ch sound all the time.
Ohhh, so that may be why Tenshi is called "Hinanai" in Shanghai.EXE, since it's set in modern times
"Frandol"
Me:How about no?
Understandable. I wouldn't change it at this point either when it's already so ingrained into the community.
Frandol Scarlet hmmmm, too late for a name change, we are keeping Flandre cause it sounds better, and has been Flandre Scarlet's first name for years.
I think part of it is the fact that so many people have 'Flandre' ingrained into their brain after so long that nothing else sounds right. In any case, that's what it'll be from now until the end.
I always pronounce her Frandooru so I guess I'm safe
I would like to assure everyone thay the correct pronunciation of Mike is still Michael.
Great video! My personal take on Flandre is that it is "Flandre", but the "dre" is pronounced "derr", as in sceptre. The reasoning behind this is that many names in Touhou 6 are French derivative (Remilia being derivative of Emilie for example). Flander is a French name, so I believe Furandouru to be some derivative of Flander. However, when written as Flandre, most English speakers read it as "Flon-dray" instead of the acceptable and more accurate pronunciation "Flan-derr".
Is it confirmed they are all French derivative? I know the names come from Sarai specifically. Remilia included.
In fact ,Inaba Tewi or Inaba Tei indirectly caused a heatedly argument in Chinese community😂. Tei homophones with 帝（means emperor），so Inaba Tei was incorrectly translated into 因幡帝，which went viral but sparked jokes in the Japanese community.After research,the correct translation is 因幡天为.天为 nearly shares the same pronunciation with Tewi.Because thbwiki changed the translation without telling community the reason,the fright began.😂
Chill-ni describes her great because ironically enough she has no chill
posting before watching, i hope he mentions Frandle
YEAH
@@nicholaskane69 lol
And then, there's one character so messed up with her name, *to the point that that very character always complains about the way her name is spelled or spoken* .
> *_MARIBEERU HAAN_*
Hungary be like: is this food?
"When consuming media that is based"
I've been calling Flandre "Frandol" since I first watched this video.
Ah, yes, Flanders.
Now i can't unsee Flandre talking like The Simpsons character
Funny spellings such as Furandooru and Maeriberii remind me a bit of the less relevant Meruran (Merlin).
Something slighly interesting are the cases in which the 'i' in a name acts as an extension of the 'e', in the case of Eirin (Ērin?), Seija (Sēja, I've never seen this romaji spelling, always Seija) and Seiga.
A problem with pronunciation that some of us might have is the dreaded question "What's the tonic syllable?"
We know that the tonic syllabe in Yu*yu*ko is the second Yu, though I'm not sure if *Yu*yuko is even 'correct'.
Another example is *Ni*tori.
Because of the tonic syllabes paradygm, I still am not sure whether it's *Ta*kane or Ta*ka*ne (I bet it's the first, like *Ka*nako, or the language may pull a Ma*ri*sa on me). I believe that listening to a Japanese person pronounce the names is the best option for this question, even though as long as you get the name across, you won't get much other than a few glances when pronouncing *Ke*iki as Kei*ki*.
So, in Japanese, i and u elongate to another i or u. However, o elongates to u and e elongates to i because that is how the mouth naturally progresses the sound. Those elongated spellings are good for writing out a 'pronunciation' but that's about it.
As for your tonic syllable question, I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking what the correct tonic syllable is for Japanese names? Because there are none. Japanese is a non-tonal language. There are no stresses placed upon any syllables naturally, and thus the same should be done even when saying the names in English.
Adding to the 'i's acting as extended 'e's, it's very common in the Japanese language for 'ou' names to be pronounced as 'o' and romanized as ō.
See Mokou (Mokō, as with Seija/Seiga, I have never seen this spelling), Shinmyoumaru (Shinmyōmaru) Touhou (Tōhō) and Gensoukyou (Gensōkyō).
A related case is Chiruno (Cirno). To pronounce it, you use the 'u' as an extension of the 'i', hence the Cheer-no and not Chir-no.
@@GensouChronicle Oh, that's interesting information that I didn't know very well about elongations.
Since Japanese is a non-tonal language, this explains why I've heard pronunciations of Marisa as *Ma*risa. This means there is no 'correct' way to know the tonic syllabe of a name, and the pronunciation we hear tends to be the most comfortable/common one.
@@user-up3qb4ih5w I would say that there's no "wrong" way, but say for instance if you were speaking to a native Japanese speaker in Japanese and stressed one of the syllables like this, it would sound 'awkward' to them. They could understand you just fine, but it would sound just a bit strange.
The optimal strategy is just calling Cirno 9
2:13 that's literally how we call tea in Portuguese too
Every place in the world calls it either some variation of 'tea' or 'cha'.
Glorious !
Flandoll Scarlet.
Im surprised you didn't bring up Marisa's name as it seems like an english name, but it isn't written in katakana at all.
Although, I guess fans didn't make a mistake in the translations there.
I actually talk about Marisa's name in my first video.
Im stuck saying "too-we" for tewi
I cant ignore that W
And then crino has the opposite problem for me of forgetting to add a character
And instead I keep saying "sir-no"
I really can't believe that I actually own all 8 volumes of the "Sarai" manga series, and yet I had no idea certain names were derived from it for EOSD... I'm ashamed to say I'm a Touhou fan now :(
Do you mean 19 volumes? In any case, they should appear in volume 8 if memory serves right. In any case, that's awesome to hear!
@@GensouChronicle I only have the English-translated publication, which sadly ended after 8 volumes. You know, until now I didn't even realize how much Kannagi Sarai resembles a certain "Perfect and Elegant Maid" we all know and (some) love... I really HAVE been oblivious all these years!
@@gott2641 Ah. I was aware it didn't have full translation, but that makes more sense.
And then there's Merry, whose full name is only conveyed to us via transliteration into katakana, and implied to have lost some data in the process.
Yeah, I mentioned her a bit in the pinned comment.
Frandol sounds like a guys name, good thing they miss translate Flans name, so we have the iconic name of Flandre the flan vampire🍮
Yeah, don't get me wrong, I think the name Flandre is cute. It's just far-stretched from its origin compared to every other name we have to the point it sticks out. And yeah, my version would omit that really fun part of fan history with her involvement with 'flan'. In a way it's kind of nice?
I've never realized how the Chinese character aspect could throw a wrench into Japanese pronunciations. I also like Frandol Scarlet, though I agree that starting a war over it all is rather pointless. The Tewi and Tenshi situations are quite interesting - would we pronounce the "w" as it's sort of like a loanword, except from a past interation of a language instead of a different one?
The Japanese speakers do not pronounce the 'w', but we do keep the original spelling because ZUN went out of his way to use ゐ (quoting discussion on the EN wiki here, but I like this sentiment as well). However, another comment asked the interesting question of whether Tewi herself does. I would say likewise she uses 'Tei' as she doesn't use any other archaic forms of words that used to use 'we' or 'wi'. That said, we can't say for sure unless ZUN gives an official statement.
@@GensouChronicle Ah, I see. I suppose that could be another way of saying that we will never settle this for certain.
@@DeltaPie I'd say there's a 99% chance it's Tei, but yeah, there's always that 1% chance she pronounces her name like that. I think if I found some audio of ZUN saying her name as Tei, we could probably rule that out 100%.
It's funny that these days you could tell someone to go listen to the characters say their own name in Lost Word and they go "hold up, what?".
Flan-door-ru, Kay-nay, Mo-ko, Tei, Hinanai Tenshi, Cheer-no, Koi-shi, Sa-nigh-e, Iku Nah-guy-e. Funny fan translations of names don't happen as often these days but is funny when it does.
I'd say it still does quite a bit, going solely by the sheer amount of pushback I got from Cirno not being 'Sirno'. Also, I would say a lot of fans don't ever touch Lost Word- myself included.
Some kanji have contradictory meaning based on the context. I love how I forgot all the kanji I knew because it was such a pain. I’d say with English, chirno is fine, because we can fully spell it in English reasonably. And it doesn’t sound stupid.
Id agrue when a language is very different people will be diligent in translation while if its somewhat similar they might fail because they didnt translate and instead assumed it was just the same.
I'm surprised you didn't talk doremy. It's kinda cool how her name plays off of English and French and might also be a reference to ojamajo doremi.
Well, the scope of this was about people getting the names wrong. I don't think anyone mispronounces Doremy
@@GensouChronicle oh yeah lol. Just thought the name was interesting
@@GensouChronicle in that case do you plan on making a video on names you find interesting in the touhou project
I think I would like to talk about names in a video. I don't think I will simply make a video on that topic. More that I'd talk about them as part of a more interesting topic.
@@GensouChronicle Sounds cool. I'm down for whatever you make.