[DF] How do you pronounce Paut?

[Ransom]

Exactly what the thread title says. My players need to know. Also, where does that potion name come from?

[sir_pudding]

We say "pot" which is funny and possibly correct, although it might have been "pat", I think. It's ancient Egyptian barley beer.

Edit: Although maybe not. Apparently it means "First Occasion" and refers to the cosmological emergence of a god.

[Bicorn]

One of my players kept pronouncing it like "pout" but I'm fairly sure he's wrong. Of course, even scholars don't agree how Ancient Egyptian was actually pronounced, especially in regards to vowels.

Edit to add - apparently it comes from a word that E.A. Wallis Budge, an early Egyptologist, said meant something like "primal matter". Budge's work is generally considered outdated today, mind.

[Anaraxes]

The Egyptians didn't write their vowels, so we don't really know. We have some guesses based on comparison of sounds in other scripts, as on the Rosetta Stone, or comparing pronunciations in Coptic or names written in other ancient languages by Egyptians. Plus a few arbitrary rules just to make things pronounceable (like "if nothing else, just stick an 'e' between consonants").

The vulture we like to transliterate as "a" might be the sound at the end of the name "Cleopatra", or it might be a glottal stop. The hieroglyphic transliterated as "u" is also used for "w", so either there's a missing vowel, or it probably has the sound of a short "u" rather than a long one. (On the other hand, it's also used to write the name written in English as "Khufu", and which I usually hear pronounced as "Koo-foo" rather than "Kuh-fuh", if for no other reason than the alternative is Kh?wf?w, where you guess your favorite vowel, maybe "Khawfaw" or "Khehwfehw". Besides which that name is also spelled "Cheops", which gives you an idea of how much we're guessing.)

So, probably something like pah-uht. Or if you want to go with the glottal stop, think the Cockney pronunciation of "bottle", change the "b" to a "p", and the ending "l" to a "t", so like "p'uht".

Since it's a magical term, the meaning is probably close to something like "primeval matter", the stuff out of which the gods and the universe were made.

[whswhs]

I say it "pout," because I'm accustomed to using the continental vowels rather than the English ones for a language transliterated into English, unless I know specific rules that say otherwise. I haven't studied how Egyptian is transliterated at all closely, but I have the impression it's mostly guesswork in the first place.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Bicorn

One of my players kept pronouncing it like "pout" but I'm fairly sure he's wrong. Of course, even scholars don't agree how Ancient Egyptian was actually pronounced, especially in regards to vowels.

Yeah, we're guessing. It's bilabial stop-vowel-alveolar or dental stop. Your guess what goes in those slots is probably as good as anybody's. Though you can perhaps build a reasonably strong case the initial bilabial stop is *not* [p] - because the absence of that sound despite the presence of [b] is a fairly common feature of languages in this part of the world for some reason.

I think pot works pretty well what with the gamer connotations, though I've suggested bud before, and it may be more likely.

[David Johnston2]

Any way you want. Personally I go with giving it two syllables Pah-ut.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Ransom

How did it end up being chosen as the name of a the DF equivalent of a mana potion?

Google tells me it was used by Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates as a magical substance.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Google tells me it was used by Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates as a magical substance.

Which is probably where Ken Hite got it for GURPS Cabal, and thence to Dungeon Fantasy.

[Kalzazz]

I say it like taut, but with a p