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When you live in a country where English isn't the first language, you quickly get used to
foreign words and names being mispronounced. It happens with everything. Instead of saying
pizza, some people say picsa. Instead of saying sushi, some people say suchi. And when it
comes to videogames, people wouldn't usually pronounce Luigi as Luigi. They'd say Luiyi,
like with a Y instead of a G. Instead of saying Smash Brothers, some people say ES-Mash Brothers.
But all of these are still understandable so it's fine, and when I'm talking in Spanish
with other dudes I also pronounce things in this way. Like instead of saying Silent Hill,
I say Psylenheel, because to some people it sounds kind of *** to be talking in Spanish
and then suddenly pronounce something in English absolutely perfect. So if I'm talking in Spanish
and I want to say "I was hungry, so I went to Mcdonald's" , I say: "Tenia hambre, asi
que fui al Macdonalds". And not: "Tenia hambre, asi que fui al MCDONALD'S ". So anyways, for
years and years I'd gotten used to people saying things a bit different than how they're
supposed to be pronounced. But then there came a time when I met a guy from school that
blew everyone else out of the water with the way he'd say stuff. Now, I should point out
that playing videogames wasn't seen as a normal or cool thing to do when I was in school.
It was considered an immature and childish sort of thing, so if you were a guy, you'd
talk about cars or soccer and not videogames. So because of this, I'd trained my ears to
look out for anybody making any sort of videogame reference, because it was so rare to find
someone else that was into playing games. So if someone mentioned key words, like 1UP
or Mario or Zelda, then I knew I could approach that person and not have to talk about car
stuff. So I'm at school at my locker getting some books out, and my ears detect a videogame
reference coming from close by. So I approach two dudes that are talking near me. I hear
one kid mentioning something about Samus, so now I know what game they're talking about,
but then the other guy, he responds by saying: "Oh yeah, Met... Roid is a great game." And
that's when my mind gets blown and the words echo throughout my head. Met... Roid. It was
at this point that I couldn't help but interrupt their conversation and ask the guy what game
they're talking about, just to see if he'd say it again. So the dude looks at me and
he says "Oh, we're just talking about Met... Roid." . So then I start going through the
different ways that I'd heard it said before. He didn't say Metroid, he didn't say Meh-troid,
he didn't even say Metroi. There's a pause when he says it, why is there a pause? Met...
Roid. Met... Roid. It's just one word! So he continued talking about videogames, and
I keep hearing him say things in ways that keep blowing my mind. When talking about Toad
from the Mario games, he'd call him Todd. Not Toad, not Towd... But Todd. The word 1UP
came up in the conversation, and he didn't say One up, he didn't say Gwan ahhp... He
said ee-yoop, like replacing the 1 with an I. And I can tell that he isn't saying these
things weirdly on purpose or anything, he's not even noticing that he's saying things
in this way and I'm absolutely fascinated. So we became friends and I started going over
to his place to play games. But whenever we were playing, I'd catch myself focusing less
on playing the game and focusing more on how he'd pronounce certain names or places. Because
after playing games with him at his place, I'd always go back to my place and begin theorizing
and creating my hypotheses. Do you remember when I mentioned that people say Luiyi with
a Y, instead of Luigi? So I took Banjo Kazooie over to his place as an experiment because
I knew a lot of the names had Js and JUH sounds in them. Banjo, Jinjo, Jiggy. So he starts
looking through the instruction manual before we play the game, and I'm hovering over him
as he reads through it. And when he gets to the characters section, I'm hoping that he's
going to pronounce Banjo as BanYo, but he gets to him and he pronounces it perfectly.
Banjo. And then he gets further into the manual, and he starts reading about all the collectibles,
and I'm hoping he's gonna say YinYo instead of Jinjo, but he also pronounces it perfectly.
Jinjo. So he reads through the whole manual and I've already given up, I'm just like "Alright,
let's play it now, I guess." and I'm feeling a bit let down. But as he's playing through
a new game though, ten minutes into it, he comes across his first Jiggy. And by this
point, I'm not even expecting him to say it differently, so I don't even pay that much
attention to it. So he gets it and he's reading it out loud, and he says: "Hey, it's me, Mr.
JigJy!". So it's Banjo, Jinjo... JigJy. And he keeps reading what the Jiggy's saying,
and even though I may look completely normal on the outside, on the inside I'm celebrating
that I've unearthed another gem! And a little side note to this, if you've ever played Banjo
Kazooie, you know that when Gruntilda speaks, her voice goes like REH RAH REHH RAH REH REH,
or something like that? Well, whenever Gruntilda started talking, he didn't imitate it like
that. For some reason, he decided to add a B at the beginning of it, so he'd go BAH BAH
BEH BAH BAH BAH BEHH. So like I said, I'd go back to my house after playing with him,
and I'd start making my theories. So I know he doesn't do the Y replacement for words
like Banjo or Jinjo, so I'm thinking there's something about the double Gs in Jiggy. So
I decided I'd test my theory by taking a comic book to school the next day. Because according
to my calculations, if he pronounces Jiggy "JigJy", then he should pronounce Juggernaut
"JugJernaut". So the next day I take the comic book in my backpack and I walk up to him in
recess and I show it to him. And I point to the panel where the Juggernaut is and I say
"He's my favorite." . And he grabs my comic book, he looks at the page and then he responds
with: "Nah, I don't like the Yuggernaut. He's stupid." So I'd go through this sort of thing
all the time with him. I'd think that I'd found some sort of pattern, but whenever I
tested it out, he'd foil me every time. Like when we played Fatal Fury Special, he'd say
Fatal FURRY Special. So after that, I showed him a game called Brutal: Paws of Fury, to
test out two theories. One reason was to see how he said "fury" this time, but I also wanted
to see if he was doing it on purpose. Because if he said Fatal Furry, and it's a game about
humans fighting each other, if he were doing it on purpose then Paws of Fury, a game that's
actually about furry animals fighting each other, then I figured it'd be too good of
an opportunity for him to resist saying it. So we put the game in, he says Paws of FURY,
perfectly pronounced. So I'd have to scratch that theory off in my head and go back to
the drawing board. We'd be playing a game called B.O.B. , and he'd pronounce it be-dot-oh-dot-be.
And when I showed him a game called Bio F.R.E.A.K.S., he did the same thing as he did with B.O.B,
so he said "Bio eff-dot-arr-dot-ee-dot-ayy-dot-kay-dot-ess". And when he did that, I thought I'd finally
caught him, but then that theory blew up in smoke when we played another game called E.V.O.,
and he called it simply E.V.O. and not ee-dot-vee-dot-oh. He called Diddy Kong Racing "Diddy Kong Racing",
but he called Beetle Adventure Racing "Beetle Adventure Raisin" ... Like the fruit. Contra
IIIThe Alien Wars was "Contra III The Alien Wars". Gradius III though, that one was Gradius
EEE. Joe & Mac? Joe & Mac. The Adventures of Batman and Robin? The Adventures of Batmanrobin.
And just to *** with me some more... Battletoads and Double Dragon? Battetoads and THE Double
Dragon. So this kept going on for weeks, and I felt myself going crazy every night before
I went to bed at my house. And it would keep going on and on until I finally couldn't take
it anymore, so I decided to not play games with him and stop this madness. So I didn't
hang out with him anymore for a couple of months, and in that time I played games by
myself or with my brothers at home. And at first I was relieved I could finally just
sit down and play a game without thinking too much, but later on I'd find myself playing
a game and wondering how he would've pronounced things. I'd play Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball
and I'd wonder if he would've said "Ken Griffey JURR Baseball". Or I'd imagine how he would've
pronounced Mischief Makers if I'd played it with him. So shortly after that, I was in
school and I happened to overhear him talking about games with another one of his friends,
just like I had the first time. And he started saying things in that way that he did, and
that's when I realized that instead of making myself go crazy with theories and asking myself
why over and over, that I should just stop asking so many questions and enjoy his gift
while I still had a chance. I had realized that it was time for me to grow up. So I started
going over to his place to play games again, but this time I didn't even wonder why he'd
say things the way he did, and it was AWESOME. Like the time we played Turok and on the title
screen, he didn't say Turok, he called the game Trunks, like the Dragon Ball Z character.
Or the time we played Ninja Gaiden 1, and he called it Ninja Gaiden. And he died super
quick and then minutes later we played Ninja Gaiden 2, and he called it Ninja Gayden 2.
But then he dies super quick in Ninja Gaiden 2 and we go onto Ninja Gaiden 3, and he calls
it NinYa Gaiden 3. When we played Wolfenstein 3D, he said "Wolfenstein 3D". But when we
played Earthworm Jim 3D, he called it "Earthworm Jim-Ed". So we hung out, and we played games
for like a year, but after that time he told me he'd grown out of games, and he started
liking soccer more. And we didn't hang out as much after that, but I was always happy
for that one year he was able to give me. But his story doesn't end there, though. The
legend of that guy still lives on through me, because I still say stuff like he used
to say it back then. So I guess now in a way, I've become the guy that some people might
hear pronouncing things in a weird way, and then they start wondering why I say it like
that. So here's to that guy, wherever he may be. I hope he's still out there somewhere,
making people do double-takes when he pronounces things in his own unique way.