Guild Wars 2

I loved that. Thank you. Well done. =)

Don’t thank me, thank Stephen Fry – the guy’s a genius – I’m just the messenger.

It’s not really a British/American english issue, as the word is a borrowing from Hebrew and should be read more or less the same way as there, although obviously anglicised over the years. Even then, you can’t make your own rules just because of ignorance, and if a dialect does so, it’s best to keep some of more extreme variations within that dialect unless you want to be laughed at.
The correct pronunciation is, roughly, ‘goh-lem’ (/??o?l?m/ ), but also a ‘go-lem’ would be fine (/???l?m/ ). There is no ‘a’ sound, tho, and i quite often heard people speaking it there – although Merriam-Webster seems to permit an accented ‘a’ sound after the initial consonant, this would be the heavily americanised version, possibly hard to understand for native speakers. Be careful not to say /??oil?m/, especially to someone who knows Hebrew :p

edit:
Oh boy, my pretty IPA characters got all ???-d.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem for transcription, at the top.

Anytime I hear “Gaul-lum” I can only think of the creepy little precious guy from The Hobbit/LOTR.

Zerefin.6248:

Anytime I hear “Gaul-lum” I can only think of the creepy little precious guy from The Hobbit/LOTR.

Well, that is who that is…

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

~Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass)

lordkrall.7241:

So, why would your way of saying be more correct?
Why assume that everyone in Tyria would speak with lets say an american accent?

g?l?m

According to the dictionary this is the correct pronunciation.

Quxudais.5142:

lordkrall.7241:

So, why would your way of saying be more correct?
Why assume that everyone in Tyria would speak with lets say an american accent?

g?l?m

According to the dictionary this is the correct pronunciation.

I have yet to find a dictionary in the world of Tyria. Please point me to it’s location.

Or I suggest we move over to the Skritt naming scheme of Golem and just say Big Shiny Thing instead.

This thread got the better of me! I would not normally get into this sort of debate … but …

The whole Gollum (choose your spelling) thing is A bit silly! As someone posted already, the word is from Hebrew and has been change in pronunciation over time.

Personally I cringe when I here ‘kway’ instead of ‘quay’ (key).

Thing is, I’m with Tolkien on this! Each to his or her own.

I forget the exact quote but Tolkien wrote something like —- for all the wonderful characters with varying names – pronounce the names as you feel you should.

Gollum, potato, shaman and quay – so long a you make yourself understood say ’em as you will.

Harpy gamin’ haul.

Leo G.4501:

Zerefin.6248:

Anytime I hear “Gaul-lum” I can only think of the creepy little precious guy from The Hobbit/LOTR.

Well, that is who that is…

Gollum, the creepy guy from the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings Trilogy, is not related to the golems, giant robots created by the asura. He took his name from the gargling sound he makes in the back of his throat, for some reason he abandoned/forgot his real name until Frodo started treating him like a person.

I’m not Jewish and I’m not sure if I have the details right, but the golem is from an ancient legend: a clay statue of a man was brought to life by painting the hebrew word for “life” on its forehead. Things did not go well, and it was returned to being a statue by erasing one of the letters, changing it to the hebrew word for “death.”

This is where the Dungeons & Dragons golems as well as others (like the golems of GW2) come from. Well, the flesh golem is Frankenstein’s Monster, which also bears some similarity to the golem above, but that’s another subject.

zenleto.6179:

Lol. Official? According to who? Gimme links, I love reading about this sort if stuff.

You are welcome: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/golem

zenleto.6179:

And so what!

Maybe. Also, there will alway some kind of ambiguity in pronunciation since there are many non-native English speakers around (such as myself) who have their own funny habits.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the OP is right.

~MRA

whats more annoying is the voice actors inability to pronounce quay correctly.

Cameirus.8407:

whats more annoying is the voice actors inability to pronounce quay correctly.

Gotta love English, a word with only one of the letters, the last one, pronounced as written.

Nobody from New England is allowed to tell anyone they are building a golem.

You have a spliced comma in your opening sentence.

MRA.4758:

zenleto.6179:

Lol. Official? According to who? Gimme links, I love reading about this sort if stuff.

You are welcome: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/golem

zenleto.6179:

And so what!

Maybe. Also, there will alway some kind of ambiguity in pronunciation since there are many non-native English speakers around (such as myself) who have their own funny habits.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the OP is right.

~MRA

Thank you but too late I’m afraid. I got the low down nearly half a day ago from a Jewish friend.

People are hilarious. There is a very clearly correct phonetic pronunciation of the word rooted in well-known English rules, which are not nearly as nebulous as people are trying to assert. It’s “goh-lem”. Everyone keeps tossing out regional dialects, when that rarely affects the actual pronunciation of a word, only the inflections (in most cases when there is a difference in pronunciation it’s because there’s a difference in spelling, such as aluminium vs. aluminum).

It’s just as obvious that the only reason anyone is saying “gaul-lem” is because of the character Gollum in LotR when this is clearly incorrect because the two are totally unrelated.

I get it, it’s language and it isn’t that huge of a deal, but it’s quite humorous how people will just dance around and all day long to avoid admitting they are wrong. It is “goh-lem”, period.

And why would YOUR version of English be more right than other version of English?

lordkrall.7241:

And why would YOUR version of English be more right than other version of English?

That’s just it, it’s not just my version of English, it’s the official version of English which most everyone uses.

Einlanzer.1627:

That’s just it, it’s not just my version of English, it’s the official version of English which most everyone uses.

There are HUGE amount of “official versions of English” however, which version is correct?

lordkrall.7241:

Einlanzer.1627:

That’s just it, it’s not just my version of English, it’s the official version of English which most everyone uses.

There are HUGE amount of “official versions of English” however, which version is correct?

None of the ‘official versions’ of English would pronounce this word any differently than “gho-lem” based on their own rulesets. Why do people not get that inflection /= pronunciation?

Einlanzer.1627:

None of the ‘official versions’ of English would pronounce this word any differently than “gho-lem” based on their own rulesets. Why do people not get that inflection /= pronunciation?

So an Indian guy would pronounce it the exact same way as an American guy? Or a British (the “real” English) guy?

lordkrall.7241:

Einlanzer.1627:

None of the ‘official versions’ of English would pronounce this word any differently than “gho-lem” based on their own rulesets. Why do people not get that inflection /= pronunciation?

So an Indian guy would pronounce it the exact same way as an American guy? Or a British (the “real” English) guy?

A British person would, yes. An Indian person would depending on how well they spoke English. If an Indian person pronounced it in any other way, they would be mispronouncing it, even if it was considered acceptable because English isn’t their native language.

Are you honestly trying to argue that each language doesn’t have rules on how to phonetically pronounce words within its language, and that when you don’t conform to those rules you aren’t mispronouncing words?

Jack of Tears.9458:

Don’t thank me, thank Stephen Fry – the guy’s a genius – I’m just the messenger.

Oh boy. I read this and I though “Philip J. Fry is a genius? I have to see this.”
You can imagine my initial shock, which however I have to say turned into six minutes well spent. Bravo.

MRA.4758:

zenleto.6179:

Lol. Official? According to who? Gimme links, I love reading about this sort if stuff.

You are welcome: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/golem

zenleto.6179:

And so what!

Maybe. Also, there will alway some kind of ambiguity in pronunciation since there are many non-native English speakers around (such as myself) who have their own funny habits.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the OP is right.

~MRA

That’s an earth english dictionary, we need the tyrian-asura edition of the merriam webster dictionary..

Einlanzer.1627:

People are hilarious. There is a very clearly correct phonetic pronunciation of the word rooted in well-known English rules, which are not nearly as nebulous as people are trying to assert. It’s “goh-lem”. Everyone keeps tossing out regional dialects, when that rarely affects the actual pronunciation of a word, only the inflections (in most cases when there is a difference in pronunciation it’s because there’s a difference in spelling, such as aluminium vs. aluminum).

It’s just as obvious that the only reason anyone is saying “gaul-lem” is because of the character Gollum in LotR when this is clearly incorrect because the two are totally unrelated.

I get it, it’s language and it isn’t that huge of a deal, but it’s quite humorous how people will just dance around and all day long to avoid admitting they are wrong. It is “goh-lem”, period.

The OP spliced a comma in the first sentence. But, hey, no one cares about that! Clearly, OP is not a hypocrite.

“I don’t know how this became the convention. But it isn’t right.” One shall not join two independent clauses with a comma (I showed the corrected version).

I watched the first 40 seconds of that Stephen Fry video and that summed the OP for me. Go back under your rock.