Arimaa Forum - Print Page


    
      
        Arimaa Forum
        (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi)
      

        Arimaa >> Arimaa Buzz >> Hubpages review
        
(Message started by: qswanger on Oct 19^th, 2010, 3:13pm)

Title: Hubpages review
Post by qswanger on Oct 19^th, 2010, 3:13pm

I just found this. I think I kinda like his pronunciation of Arimaa better:

http://hubpages.com/hub/African-Twist-On-Chess-Makes-Arimaa-a-Top-Tier-Strategy-Game

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 19^th, 2010, 5:03pm

on 10/19/10 at 15:13:13, qswanger wrote:

I think I kinda like his pronunciation of Arimaa better

I quite like the pronunciation in the song "Arima Arima", since that was more or less what I guessed it would be on my own.

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by megajester on Oct 20^th, 2010, 12:38am

This probably belongs in another post, but I would like to say something about the pronounciation. Double "a"s in words or foreign names are invariably pronounced "aah" (eg. aardvark, Aaliyah, Saatchi, Aasif, Kaan etc.) so when I first saw "Arimaa" I instinctively pronounced it as "a-ree-MAA", not "a-REE-muh." It took me a long time to get used to the "official" pronounciation, and my father never did, even though he really likes the game and I consistently referred to the game using its official pronounciation when showing it to him. Maybe it's a British thing, I dunno.

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 20^th, 2010, 12:46am

You have it right. The irony is that Omar didn't know why "Aamir" is spelled with two a's in the first place! :o But I suppose if they had pronounced the game ah-ree-MAH there would have been plenty of people guessing wrong the other way.

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by 722caasi on Oct 20^th, 2010, 5:54pm

In my name, Isaac, the double a is similarly confusing. I pronounce it as a short "i" or a short "a". Its another sound altogether from the one(s) in Arimaa.

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by rbarreira on Oct 20^th, 2010, 6:38pm

I don't understand how he ended up with "Air-Uh-MAY-Uh". Some kind of joke or... ?

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by omar on Oct 21^st, 2010, 1:27pm

I tend not to give too much thought to things like names or themes. The name and even how it is pronounced was a spur of the moment decision :-)

Quote:

"Hey Aamir, lets invent a new game" I said interrupting his chain of thought for his next move. He gave me an excited look and said "A new game, like Chess?". "Yea, what should we call it?" I asked while trying to think what Aamir sounds like backwards. "How about Rimaa?" I proposed. "Arimaa?" he asked. Thinking that sounds even better, I replied, "Yea, that sounds good, we'll call it Arimaa." (pronounced Ah-REE-ma). So the first thing we did was pick a name for a game that didn't even exist. But that didn't bother us. The game would be ready by Monday and we had already picked the name. All we had to do now was figure out the rules.

Title: Re: Hubpages review
Post by megajester on Oct 23^rd, 2010, 11:23am

Well, my experiences as a translator have led me to take a rather laissez faire approach to linguistic "correctness", based on consensus, ie. if everybody thinks it's correct it's correct. The concept of linguistic purity is a bit of a joke really in the grand scheme of things, especially in a language such as English, which, let's face it, is basically a Anglo-Saxon-French creole. All thoroughbreds are ultimately descended from a mongrel...

Anyway enough philosophy. What I'm trying to say is: Why does there need to be one correct pronounciation of Arimaa? The word is much too young and confined in it's usage to be able to say anything final on the matter. Meaning, let's say Arimaa makes it big and starts to get talked about on television, but always gets pronounced "aree-MAA". In that case the consensus will suddenly have shifted and permanently so; our insisting on "a-REE-mah" would prove rather Canute-ish.

All we can say about the present consensus is that there's a 50/50, or perhaps 60/40, split between "a-REE-mah" and "aree-MAA" (and of course that "a-ree-MAY-uh" is ridiculous). I say go with the flow, let people say it how they want to. Both are understandable.

Footnote: My mum worked as a CELTA teacher (teaching English to foreigners), and the policy she was encouraged to follow for British and American pronounciations was to accept both. They might prefer to teach one or the other, but they would only correct students if their pronounciation was wrong by both standards. Which I think was very reasonable.