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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Okay, so geas isn't a word commonly spoken.
So, most people run into it via some branch of fantasy, be it d&d or books.
So, how did any of you guys pronounce it in your head before you looked it up?
Edit: ffs, should I say "so" again, or what? Never commente when brain dead, folks.
Hard G, long E, ass.
I'm similar: hard G, long E, ahhs
Gay ass.
Geese.
I still pronounce it like that.
I came to ask what it is.
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Geas#content
in 5e, Geas is a level 5 spell that compels someone to either do something, or refrain from doing something - the compulsion is in the form of the threat of massive damage for disobedience.
A geas is a magically enforced taboo against something. Following the requirements brings power but violation comes with grave punishment, often resulting in a character’s death or undoing.
I always have and will continue to pronounce it as "gay ass"
Me too lol.
What's great is that my family is heavily irish, so there's bits and pieces of language from there. After I realized it was Irish in origin, it was obvious how it was originally said, but the gay-ass brain I have still likes gay ass better :)
"Gee" with a hard G as in geek, then "us." Stress on the first syllable.
I thought it looked a bit like an Old English word maybe resurrected for D&D, so I initially thought something like /gεɑs/ (a bit like "gas" or "GEH-ahs"; ain't no player actually gonna say /ɣ/ or /æɑ/ properly) or /jεɑs/ ("yasss")
Then I looked it up on Wiktionary. It's from Irish "geis" with the wrong spelling apparently. Irish spelling do be silly, so all phonetic preconceptions should be checked at the door.
Wiktionary says /ɟɛʃ/ for Irish, anglicized as /ɡɛʃ/ or /ˈɡiː.əʃ/ (gesh and GEE-ush, respectively).
I pronounce it how most youtubers pronounce the geass in code geass
“Gesh”
Or “goose” if I’m being sarcastic.
So I first encountered the word three days ago - I decided to make my way through the Baldur's Gate series and started with The Black Pits, where it's mentioned. I'm aware of the psychological phenomenon where you start seeing a word or concept you recently learnt about everywhere but man, still feels like a huge coincidence.
So anyway the pronunciation- ge- same as in "get", -as same as "us". My native Czech has super consistent rules of pronunciation, with each letter always representing exactly one specific sound (well, almost always) and it works out like this.
My brain first said "gee-ass", with a soft G, as in jif. I don't think I'd say that out loud though, because as a kid who read a bunch, I have long lasting trauma from being mocked for saying stuff wrong so I'd wait until I heard someone else say it.
Gods, I hate that. I get that kids are essentially sociopaths, but it still sucks. I was in the AP/advanced English classes, and a lot of the kids through the years were total dicks about that with other kids. It's one thing to give someone the formal pronunciation, but don't mock them.
I'm sorry people were jerks to you.
What's worse is that your pronunciation is one of the more common variants among irish immigrant descendants in my area, just with an sh at the end instead of just an s. Weird mountain people lol, they know a smattering of Irish loaner words, but they've changed over the years.
I actually first ran into geas in Halo. The Librarian had the ability to implant people with a genetic destiny, a sequence of DNA which guides their species' evolution in predictable ways. She used it to make Dr Halsey a eugenecist and John Halo a good candidate for surgical augmentation.
So I ran into this word in two different ways without realizing they were the same word. I saw it written down in various World of Darkness books (where I pronounced it phonetically), and I heard it spoken in the Laundry Files audiobooks (where they pronounce it "gesh"). It took me ages to figure out they were the same word.
Gee us
Geese
Like someone with a deep US Southern accent saying geese. Gee-uhs.
Are you my aunt? That's exactly how she says geese. Her husband says geese as "gays" with a sibilant s rather than the hard s.
.... how do you mean? S's are sibilants in every variation I know if not silent like in French.
I'm three decades away from my last class, but I thought that the ess sound than an s makes is called a sibilant, where the z sound it makes isn't.
Most people using the word "gays" will have it sound like gayz, or the word gaze. His is that sibilant s like in hissing
You make a good point about the voicing distinction that I was unsure of, so I looked it up. According to clearly the most authoritative source on the internet, [s] and [z] are both "hissing" sibilants.
See? That's what getting old does to you, you forget shit left and right, or remember it wrong. I always recommend not getting old, just stop at 40.
Seriously though, thanks for the correction.