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Why does EVERYONE mispronounce Mario in the UK?

I went to the US once and was amazed at how they pronounced everything wrong. Literally everything, so weird. Why can't they just speak like me?

Don't get me started on non-english speaking countries either, why do foreigners have to be so stubborn.
 
Oh god.

War-io?

WAR-io!?

There's a reason people associate the sound "Wah!" with him. It's part of his name!
 
I think you might be taking things a bit too far here m80.
It's a silly thread about how British people don't pronounce Mario.

Read these and tell me I'm the asshole here...

Mario is an Italian name.

It's usually pronounced Marr-io in Italy. Sometimes they pronounce it Marry-oh

In England, they usually pronounce it Marry-oh. So technically it's not mispronounced.

Source: Me. I'm half English, half Italian, and my late father was named Mario.

See above. I am more qualified than you are in this situation. You are wrong. Deal with it.

So, if my half means jack shit, how about the amount of times I've seen Italians call my Dad by his name. I guess you know better than them right?

I've been in Italy longer than you've been in England. In fact, I'd say I've been in Italy and around Italian people longer than you've known English as a language.

Back in your box.

How about no?

My input is from knowing my dad for my entire life. You're 1) not English, and 2) not Italian. I have nothing to prove to you how people pronounce my father's name. That is insulting.

I don't suffer fools.
 
I am from Glasgow and I pronounce Mario like the Italian name, Mario.

So no, we don't pronounce it wrong.

(Funnily enough, Charles Martinet pronounces it properly, but other speaking characters in game don't)
 
Ask a British person to say "pasta"

From the north: ˈpʰastə

Aside from the aspirated p it's the pretty similar to Italian so I figured it's not entirely incorrect :P

hey, I tried:

A while ago I thought about doing a basic phonetics intro thread in OT for basically this purpose. It'd be very useful for threads like this one. Doesn't even need tuition for stress, extra diacritics etc. Just the IPA and vowel sets.
 
Boy, this thread is aggressive and stupid.

To say nothing of the fact that there is actual, recorded evidence for how your properly pronounce it in numerous Mario games, I'm amazed at how people none the less defend their own personal pronouciation as the end-all-be-all.
 
I'm a bit late to the party here, but having read the OP, I thought he might have a point, that we UK folk (generally) pronounce it wrong, and the (general) US pronunciation was closer to the Italian. However, these examples surprised me, and it has changed my opinion. The Italian pronunciation sounds somewhere in between the US and UK. I'd say most of these sound more like a UK Mario than a US Mario, at least in terms of the length and tone of the 'a'. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I respect your conclusion but I can't understand it.

Not that Americans are saying it perfectly, mind but it is quite a bit closer to the intended effect. Both deviate, obviously, it's just that the UK version fucks up the tonic syllable, which is the most recognizable part of the word, where as the US version does it's damage on lesser part of the words. For someone who knows the word well, the UK version sounds substantially weirder.

Can I get any Italian/Spanish/Portuguese people to weigh in on this one regarding US X UK?
 
I'm from the UK, I say Marry-o but whenever I hear others pronounce it like I do it always sounds wrong to me.
 
The reason why stuff like this gets such a strong response is because it's obnoxious and pretty dumb. Not to mention entirely pointless.

Language and everything related to it (accent, dialect, pronunciation, etc) are largely involuntary for people. These things develop naturally through history and other cultural context.

You knew they were saying Mario, that's all that's necessary. The point of spoken language is to communicate and pronouncing it, even in a way you see invalid, still achieved the intended purpose. This nonsense can be applied to thousands of things across all cultures - it's pointless.
 
wat. people in the uk say it like they do in the games.

its the us that seems to completely ignore the games and say it their own wierd way regardless.
 
In some pockets of the U.S. (for example, Baltimore and Philadelphia) a lot of us say "Merry-O." We also pronounce "water" as "wooder." Deal with it.
 
Can I get any Italian/Spanish/Portuguese people to weigh in on this one regarding US X UK?
Before weighing in on it, I think I (or other Italian/Spanish/Portuguese people) need a good clip for how it's pronounce in the UK and in the US. With the way it's written it's hard to say which one is better.
 
Because every person in every country pronounces every word exactly the same?

Why do Americans pronounce aluminum the way they do?
 
For the "deal with it" folks, that's fine for regular words, but it does not fly for proper names. To quote Star Trek Next Gen: "My name is Data". People care when you say their name wrong and we know how the name of the Nintendo character is pronounced because there is an official pronunciation. Mar rhymes with car, it does not rhyme with carry. How different people pronounce Mario is irrelevant. There is only one right way to say this specific character's name.
 
For the "deal with it" folks, that's fine for regular words, but it does not fly for names. To quote Star Trek Next Gen: "My name is Data". People care when you say their name wrong and we know how the name of the Nintendo character is pronounced because there is an official pronunciation. Mar rhymes with car, it does not rhyme with carry.

See this is where the regional phonetic nonsense really kicks off, because to a lot of Brits, that video doesn't rhyme with car.
 
Because every person in every country pronounces every word exactly the same?

Why do Americans pronounce aluminum the way they do?

Well, to be fair - there's two different spellings. The American spelling is 'aluminum' British (or maybe 'commonwealth') spelling is 'aluminium' - note the I after the n. As a Brit, I'd pronounce the american spelling as americans say it too, but we spell it differently and that changes the pronunciation.
 
My wife's Italian, her whole family is Italian, her Grandad is called Mario. They say "MA-rio"rather than than the weird Americanism "Mahhhrio". Italian accents change a lot around Italy, she's from Rome. "Mamma mia" is similar, Americans usually pronounce is "mahhma" or even"muhma mia" but it's a hard "mam with a hard A".

In Italian there's generally a little emphasis on the first syllable so it's more "MA-rio" rather than "MARRY-o".

Generally listening to Americans pronounce anything other than American English is hell for the ears. Fucking paaaahsta
 
But the thing is, everyone thinks they pronounce it like the games. It's not like no-one knows "It's-a me, Mario!"

I've also run into people who, thanks to Comcast, use the word exfinity when they mean infinity. It takes a bit of persistent correction, but eventually they get it right.
 
I've also run into people who, thanks to Comcast, use the word exfinity when they mean infinity. It takes a bit of persistent correction, but eventually they get it right.

I'm not sure if you're talking to people that are saying it wrong because again, most people think they match the video and the words you used to describe what the video sounds like, don't sound like the video to many people.

Honestly, pronunciation threads should be mandatory voice sample posts only.
 
I respect your conclusion but I can't understand it.

Not that Americans are saying it perfectly, mind but it is quite a bit closer to the intended effect. Both deviate, obviously, it's just that the UK version fucks up the tonic syllable, which is the most recognizable part of the word, where as the US version does it's damage on lesser part of the words. For someone who knows the word well, the UK version sounds substantially weirder.

Can I get any Italian/Spanish/Portuguese people to weigh in on this one regarding US X UK?
That is interesting, I guess my ear is tuned to UK accents (and I guess all other accents relative to it) in a different way. I have a UK accent, and therefore when I hear someone say 'Mario' in a UK accent, I don't really hear an accent and I just hear the short 'a' as in 'cat'. When I hear 'Mario' in a US accent, I hear a strong accent, which compounds the strength of what sounds (to my ears) like an overly-stressed, longer 'a' as in 'car'. But when I hear those clips of Italians saying 'Mario', the 'a' seems much shorter and far less overly-stressed than the US 'a', and therefore closer to the UK.

Another way of describing it would be that I hear the US pronunciation as an American attempting (and failing) an Italian accent, whereas the UK pronunciation makes absolutely zero effort to sound Italian, and as a consequence (and completely unintentionally), actually sounds closer to Italian than the US.
 
It's "Marry-oh" you cretins.

And it's fucking "Snez" too.

It's not according to Mario in the game.

And where would you get the Z sound from in Snes. That should tell you British people pronounce things wrong. Not only did they make up their own pronunciation, they made up one that doesn't even make sense.
 
And where would you get the Z sound from in Snes. That should tell you British people pronounce things wrong. Not only did they make up their own pronunciation, they made up one that doesn't even make sense.

You know it's not really a Z right? It's just a way to communicate in text a hard S rather than a soft hissing S.

Also we can never pronounce things wrong. We invented the language so we can say things however we like.
 
You know it's not really a Z right? It's just a way to communicate in text a hard S rather than a soft hissing S.

Also we can never pronounce things wrong. We invented the language so we can say things however we like.

Americans won the war. They get to make the rules I'm afraid.
 
Too many people in here seem to believe that there are "right" and "wrong" ways to say things, without understanding how dialects and regional variation work. Nobody "owns" English (no, not the English), and it can be changed and altered in many ways by many people, and still end up being correct, in its own way.

If a certain pronunciation is pervasive enough within a dialect, then it is "correct", regardless of whether or not it conforms to the standard set by the audio clip that plays at the beginning of the game. While it may not be the same way that North American dialect speakers will say it, or the same way an Italian would say it, it is still, nonetheless, correct. Even extremely deviant ways of pronouncing foreign words such as 'karaoke' or 'karate' are considered correct (by English and Japanese alike), and are simply a product of English, and of dialect.
 
It's not according to Mario in the game.

And where would you get the Z sound from in Snes. That should tell you British people pronounce things wrong. Not only did they make up their own pronunciation, they made up one that doesn't even make sense.

You know it's not really a Z right? It's just a way to communicate in text a hard S rather than a soft hissing S.

Also we can never pronounce things wrong. We invented the language so we can say things however we like.
Listen to the man.
 
You know it's not really a Z right? It's just a way to communicate in text a hard S rather than a soft hissing S.

Also we can never pronounce things wrong. We invented the language so we can say things however we like.

As a Portuguese person I learned you are wrong (in the sense that British English is no longer what people think of when they think of English) the hard way. Brazilian Portuguese is THE de facto version since it's the one most people speak and recognize. I just have to grin and bear it. Our language literally gets adapted officially on a regular basis to more closely resemble Brazilian Portuguese.

Britain has a much stronger cultural impact than Portugal, but you will eventually end up getting diluted, it's inevitable.

And the differences between BrPt and PtPt are quite a bit more vast than the differences between US and UK En. We lost the culture war, same as you.

I'll always prefer UK English personally, though. Unfortunately I speak with an American accent and can't do a proper Brit accent to save my life. Everyone always thought I was North American when I was living in the UK.
=/
 
Bunch of east coast Americans and Canadians I know pronounce it wrong too. I ribbed one in voice chat the other day by saying "ah yes, the classic line, it's-a me, mare-ee-oh" because he didn't think he was mispronouncing Mario.
 
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