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Is it OO-BE-SOFT or YOU-BE-SOFT?
- Thread starter Broken Joystick
- Start date
They retconned it to ubiquity/ubiquité more recently lol. If you Google it you can find an official document that states it.
But yeah, it's pronounced the same way as ubi in your language. We've got the CEO outright say both übi and you-bi in this video and it's not enough for some people?
Nostremitus
Member
That's just wrong, so much that I thought it was a joke. There are a bunch of French words that contain the [ju] sound (like yourte, or youpi), and we know how to pronounce them just fine.
Alx
Member
French wikipedia ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft#Fondation ) quoting an interview from one of the Guillemot brothers in a local paper ( http://bretons.bzh/bretons/163-numero-103-novembre-2014.html ).
Anyway it also explains the "say it however you like" stance of Ubi themselves, there's no deep meaning or reason to say it one way or another. The original founders clearly say it the French way, but in other languages any way that sounds better to you is fine.
Yeah, the only English sounds that are hard for French speakers are the English "r" (I still can't pronounce it properly after 10 years...), "th" (as in "the"), and I guess the "h"s at the beginning of words (they're not really hard but it takes a bit of time to get used to since they're all silent in French).
Can we talk about the way you pronounce French words in English, then? ^^
Just hear Yves Guillemot pronouncing it à la française, and deal with it.
Nostremitus
Member
It was a joke. I'm just having fun here.
Real talk- I actually try to pronounce French words correctly unless it's a word that both languages share, then I pronounce it the American English way.
Oops, sorry then. I had a feeling it was, but after seeing people use really weird arguments to push their preferred pronunciation, I started having doubts. Now I'm relieved.
That said, I'm not surprised that the people at Ubisoft just don't care how you say it. I think it's a problem that happens more often with English, because it's much harder to guess/pick how a word is pronounced from its spelling than it is in romance languages, for example.
People in France call Microsoft "mee-cRo-soft" (including Microsoft themselves); because it's just how it reads, and the "micro" prefix exists in French. I think trying to be somewhat close to how a loanword was originally pronounced is generally a good idea, but sometimes it just doesn't flow well and it can break the rhythm of a language. "You-be-soft" probably sounds more natural to many native English speakers, regardless of what language "ubi" came from.
(I'm not saying people can't say "Oobisoft" though. Just say it how you think it sounds better)
Nostremitus
Member
Oops, sorry then. I had a feeling it was, but after seeing people use really weird arguments to push their preferred pronunciation, I started having doubts. Now I'm relieved.
That said, I'm not surprised that the people at Ubisoft just don't care how you say it. I think it's a problem that happens more often with English, because it's much harder to guess/pick how a word is pronounced from its spelling than it is in romance languages, for example.
People in France call Microsoft "mee-cRo-soft" (including Microsoft themselves); because it's just how it reads, and the "micro" prefix exists in French. I think trying to be somewhat close to how a loanword was originally pronounced is generally a good idea, but sometimes it just doesn't flow well and it can break the rhythm of a language. "You-be-soft" probably sounds more natural to many native English speakers, regardless of what language "ubi" came from.
(I'm not saying people can't say "Oobisoft" though. Just say it how you think it sounds better)
I go back and forth on Ubisoft, personally.
As I mentioned earlier, the English language is a strange hodgepodge of old Germanic English and French. So not only do we pronounce the same letters differently based on word usage, but we have different words for the same things. Example: cow/beef/cattle/bovine
Real question; in English cow and heifer are female, bull is male, steer is neutered male, beef is meat, cattle is plural, bovine is an adjective.. What is the singular name of the species? It can't just be "domestic ox. "
That was a really cute video.
Disclaimer: I'm French.
- UBISOFT with a French "u" is the only correct pronounciation in French. Nobody pronounces it any other way in French-speaking countries. Just listen to the French speakers in the video: they all pronounce it the same way, even those who are from Québec.
- OO-BEE-SOFT is the closest approximation of the French pronunciation in English.
- YOU-BE-SOFT is the most "sensical"/natural English pronunciation if you take words like "ubiquitous" as a reference. That's how I, as a French speaker, would pronounce it in English.
- U-B-I-Soft is incorrect no matter how you slice it. Nobody in France pronounces it like that, and the UBI letters were never an acronym for anything.
- UBISOFT with a French "u" is the only correct pronounciation in French. Nobody pronounces it any other way in French-speaking countries. Just listen to the French speakers in the video: they all pronounce it the same way, even those who are from Québec.
- OO-BEE-SOFT is the closest approximation of the French pronunciation in English.
- YOU-BE-SOFT is the most "sensical"/natural English pronunciation if you take words like "ubiquitous" as a reference. That's how I, as a French speaker, would pronounce it in English.
- U-B-I-Soft is incorrect no matter how you slice it. Nobody in France pronounces it like that, and the UBI letters were never an acronym for anything.
You're not familiar with French company/product names are you? They mix French and English words all the time.
"Le nom Ubisoft vient de “ubiquité”, un don qui caractérise bien le catalogue de jeux de l’entreprise."
In effect this is a retcon of the original reason behind the name anyway, which Alx pointed out at the top of this page. It can completely mean ubiquite in french and ubiquitous in english at the same time.
This is the truth. Although, I'd argue that oo-bee-soft, while technically being the closest approximation, is still a very rough one. oo is a completely different sound in French (e.g. if the company name was suposed to be pronounced that way it'd be written Oubisoft).
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