I’ve noticed that in Dota 2, the English talent pool tends to mispronounce the hero’s name “Abaddon” as “uh-BAD-un” instead of the closer Hebrew pronunciation, “ABA-don.” It’s interesting because most veteran talent have corrected themselves for other names in recent broadcasts. The only one who consistently gets it right seems to be Fear, with Purge occasionally doing so as well before correcting himself. Is this just a quirk of the community, or is it something influenced by British English versus American? It feels like there’s a story behind this. Anyone have some insights?
3 Answers
That’s a good question! A lot of English speakers just go with the common pronunciation that feels natural to them. Sometimes it doesn’t match the original like with names or terms from other languages.
Pronunciations can vary quite a bit, and there’s no absolute ‘correct’ way to say someone’s name. Dictionaries capture common usage, so it makes sense that ‘uh-BAD-un’ is widely accepted even if it’s not the original Hebrew.
Yep! If the majority use it one way, that’s the ‘correct’ way for most. And even if we want to stick to the original Hebrew, the way names are pronounced can change across languages.
Actually, the hero himself refers to his name as ‘uh-bad-duhn’ in his voice lines. That might explain the trend among the talent—it’s about how they hear it from the game itself.
Exactly! It’s just how language evolves. Just like with ‘karaoke,’ there’s always some variation based on regional accents and familiarity.