Monday, August 23, 2010

What is that weird cat/robot thing's name from Final Fantasy VII, and how is it pronounced?

It's Cait Sith. Technically, only the cat on top is Cait Sith, while the big moogle under it is just a small mech it rides on (which does not have a name).





The name Cait Sith is Gaelic. There's a old joke that Gaelic was created so that only native speakers would ever know how to correctly pronounce anything in the language.





Cait, which translates to cat, is commonly pronounced like the girl's name "Kate", and this is roughly correct. Technically, it should be about half-way between "Kite" and "Khet", but such a pronounciation doesn't really exist in English, and "Kate" is a pretty close approximation.





Sith, which translates to faerie, is commonly pronounced as "sith", but this is nowhere near correct (I blame George Lucas). The correct pronounciation is "shee". This pronounciation was taken phonetically for the end of the term banshee (which translates to "woman of the faeries").


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