(05-30-2014, 02:21 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: Yep, that's been my read of it as well. If, for instance, the given name starts with an "e" and the tribal prefix sound ends with an "e" -- as in L'yhta -- I would think you wouldn't repeat the a sound (as that'd separate the prefix from the rest of the name) and instead elide one of them. you get Lee-tah instead of Lee-ee-tah. In this case, the "h" is silent per the other pronounciation rules.
TBH, the more important rule is that the names "follow common English phonics." If the name sounds funky, as if it had an extra syllable, then one of the vowel sounds probably needs to be omitted.
To the larger question of whether you can change the sound of the tribal prefix to better match the rest of the name, given that we have to do a bit of finessing to match English phonics anyway, I think you're on pretty safe ground there as long as the name flows well.L'ahmi, for instance, is probably pronounced Lah-mee, even though the tribal prefix L is normally associated with a short Lee phoneme per the lore. That said, the examples provided in the dev post assiduously avoid such constructions, so it may be that miqo'te don't give their children names that would require changing the tribal prefix phoneme. Without dev clarification, this remains a grey area, so I say, do what makes a cool name that you like and don't worry too much about such a fine distinction.
I think it's a little more trickier to do with the 'k' sounding tribes (C, K, and Q - Ka, Koo, and Kee, respectively) because of the syllable that is imposed against those letters according to lore. Actually, it would seem like most letter tribes impose an extra syllable in conjunction with the actual name. A short syllable, but an extra syllable nonetheless. Reference taken from this link.
For example:
C'mahji = ka mah gee (this is an actual character in-game that I know of)
K'rhen = koo ren
Q'ruzho = kee roo zoe
H'mahsa = ha mah sah (my character)
Y'shtola = ya sh'toe lah
X'yue = shee you eh (another character I know)
The two letter tribes that don't do this are F and N. For example:
N'orzha = n or zah, nor zah
F'azhar = f ah zar, fah zar
At any rate, this is the rule I go by. Honestly, if I saw the name K'ailia, I would read that as "koo eye lee ah" or "koo ey lee ah". It sounds silly, sure. But that's how I would read it.
