{"id":8780,"date":"2017-08-17T04:46:54","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/17\/news-2553\/"},"modified":"2017-08-17T04:46:54","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:46:54","slug":"news-2553","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/08\/17\/news-2553\/","title":{"rendered":"We Asked a Linguist How to Pronounce ‘PUBG’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Jason Johnson| Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

By now you must have heard about hit battle-royale shooter PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds<\/i>, which has sold 7 million<\/a> copies since it launched in early access back in March. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds<\/i> has a tongue-twister of a name that is unnatural to say and a pain to type out. This has led its players to shorten it to a simple acronym: PUBG<\/i>. <\/p>\n

But the thing is, no one can agree on how PUBG<\/i> should be pronounced, as witnessed in numerous<\/a> forums<\/a> around the internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While some players like to say Pub-Gee, where the G rhymes with “bee,” others prefer Pub-Guh, where the G makes an “uh” as in “gun.” A few even swear that it’s pronounced Pub-Gah, ending with an “ah!” sound. Less common are Poo-Bee-Gee and Pee-You-Bee-Gee.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at the E3 2017 trade show, the game’s developer Brendan Greene avoided saying the name<\/a> out loud as much as possible.<\/p>\n

So, how exactly are you supposed to say PUBG<\/i>? <\/p>\n

According to linguist Robert Daland, an assistant professor with UCLA’s Department of Linguistics, there is a perfectly good reason why no one can figure out this phonetic freak of nature. The trouble stems from the final two letters in the PUBG<\/i> acronym. <\/p>\n

“No English words can end with a B sound followed by a G sound,” he told me in a phone interview. <\/p>\n

Unlike acronyms that have passed seamlessly into English vocabulary, like SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) or LASER, (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), PUBG<\/i> was not designed to be pronounceable. It falls in a category of emergent acronymization, along with other internet shorthand, such as LOL and OMFG. <\/p>\n

At this point, a native speaker has to make a decision: What to do with that G?<\/p>\n

One approach is to break the acronym down into familiar sounds, giving them the word “pub” with a leftover G. That’s Pub-Gee.<\/p>\n

Equally valid is the technique of looking at the G, seeing what word it represents, and borrowing the sound from it. In this case, the G stands for “grounds,” which is pronounced like “Guh-round,” leaving us with Pub-Guh.<\/p>\n

Well, that narrows it down. But adding to the headache is the fact that PUBG<\/i> is played all over the world. <\/p>\n

“People from other countries might not be as conscious of how Americans pronounce the names of their letters,” said Daland. A French speaker, for instance, would see the G and say “Ja.”<\/p>\n

Clearly, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds<\/i> acronym is truly a product of the internet age. No matter what you say, you will be wrong somewhere. <\/p>\n

https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Jason Johnson| Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is ‘PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds’ Pub-Gee? Pub-Guh? Pub-Gah? Pee-You-Bee-Ge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10643,13328,10378],"tags":[13768,1445,13335,13769,13767,11227],"class_list":["post-8780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent","category-motherboard","category-security","tag-bluehole","tag-gaming","tag-pc","tag-playerunknowns-battleground","tag-pubg","tag-steam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}