So how do you say "GTIA"?

[The Usotsuki]

For what it's worth, when I was a kid, we all called it (ETA: SNES) "the Super".

Edited November 19, 2022 by The Usotsuki

[MrMaddog]

12 hours ago, NorbertP said:

Perhaps a better question is why do Americans not say "snezz"?

 

That same reason we pronounce Mega Drive as "Genesis"...

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by MrMaddog

[MrMaddog]

Anyway, this morning I was thinking that I pronouce GTIA by each letter but for the TIA sound chip in the 2600 I say it as "Tia" like a girl's name instead.

 

So should I say "Gee-Tee-Ah" for GTIA? :shrug:

Edited November 19, 2022 by MrMaddog

[MrMaddog]

Deleted duplicate post...

Edited November 19, 2022 by MrMaddog

[MrMaddog]

Seriously, I clicked the Send Reply button over & over and nothing on my end was updated.  Mods please delete this and the last post...

Edited November 19, 2022 by MrMaddog

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Anyway, this morning I was thinking that I pronouce GTIA by each letter but for the TIA sound chip in the 2600 I say it as "Tia" like a girl's name instead.

 

So should I say "Gee-Tee-Ah" for GTIA? :shrug:

Oddly enough, I always say GTIA as spelling out the 4 letters.  BUT - PoKey and ANTIC I pronounce as words.  CPU - the letters are spelled out.  6502 - "sixty-five oh two".  There is no logic to any of this.

[NorbertP]

20 minutes ago, Stephen said:

There is no logic to any of this.

There's plenty of logic. The general "rule" is that if the acronym forms a pronounceable string then it usually gets read as a word rather than spelling the letters out, and given that pokey and antic are already actual words it makes even more sense that you'd treat them as such. GTIA, however, starts with the somewhat unusual "gt" letter pair which doesn't really have a comfortable pronunciation - off the top of my head the only English word with that in it is "length" and the "gt" in that isn't really pronounced in any helpful way.

[.mad.]

GEE-SHA like in inertia

but after a drink GERTCHA. :)

 

[NorbertP]

22 minutes ago, .mad. said:

but after a drink GERTCHA.

 

Damnit, now I have this stuck in my head. 

[roadrunner]

 

 

[+Stephen]

5 hours ago, .mad. said:

GEE-SHA like in inertia

but after a drink GERTCHA.

I am dying - I read this as GER-SHER

 

[.mad.]

[+fdr4prez]

On 11/18/2022 at 12:19 PM, MrMaddog said:

Like they say SNES as "Ze-Nezz"... instead of just spelling the letters out.

 

On 11/18/2022 at 6:20 PM, NorbertP said:

Perhaps a better question is why do Americans not say "snezz"?

 

Because even the official commercials referred to them as "NES" and "SuperNES", so that is what we used and we didn't need to make something else up.

 

 

"N" "E" "S" =

 

"Super" "N" "E" "S" = 

 

 

Were there any official commercials in the UK that referred to them as "nezz" and "snezz"?

 

[NorbertP]

1 hour ago, fdr4prez said:

Were there any official commercials in the UK that referred to them as "nezz" and "snezz"?

For the NES, I don't think there were any commercials at all. The console was a bit of a non event over here: Nintendo initially licensed manufacture, distribution, and marketing to Mattel who, for some reason, made it only available through a single chain of our equivalent of something like Walgreens, then when that failed abysmally Nintendo dropped Mattel and produced the console themselves but for reasons I don't fully understand it wasn't entirely compatible with the Mattel version (something to do with the CIC I think).

 

When the SNES was released, because almost nobody in the UK knew what an NES was the new console was generally just called "the Super Nintendo", so the acronym never really came up.

 

Combining Nintendo's irrelevance in the 80s with our lack of "the crash" that we needed saving from means that they had far less cultural significance over here in the early days; the SNES was reasonably successful but it wasn't really until the N64 that they stopped being a firm second behind SEGA in the console market. (Which reminds me, if you think how we say SNES is weird, just listen to an Australian pronounce SEGA!)

Edited November 20, 2022 by NorbertP

[Ecernosoft]

On 11/16/2022 at 9:01 PM, fdr4prez said:

if i saw this for the first time, I would have said it like "G" "TIA" (like in tee-ah), so gee-tee-ah

You forgot the “iey” between tee and ah! And shouldn’t it be ay?

[+fdr4prez]

Nope

[NorbertP]

17 hours ago, Ecernosoft said:

You forgot the “iey” between tee and ah! And shouldn’t it be ay

Think "Tia Carrere".

[roadrunner]

Tia Carrere on Married… With Children


https://idolfeatures.com/2015/03/tia-carrere-on-married-with-children.html

[Sir Guntz]

Jee - Tee-ah.

 

Also works great for See - Tee-ah

 

Last I checked, Tia is a real name for a person. Atari loved women's names as internal codenames for their products, like Sally, Stella and so on. Atari also loved acronyms that can be pronounced as a word, like RIOT.

 

How is the TIA an exception?

[NorbertP]

2 hours ago, Sir Guntz said:

How is the TIA an exception

That was basically the argument put forth in the video and comments that started this thread, but my counter argument is that Stella etc. aren't acronyms, they're just plain old names, which is how TIA is an exception.

[Sir Guntz]

1 hour ago, NorbertP said:

That was basically the argument put forth in the video and comments that started this thread, but my counter argument is that Stella etc. aren't acronyms, they're just plain old names, which is how TIA is an exception.

So you guys say Arr Eye Oh Tee instead of Riot for the MOS 6532? 

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sir Guntz

[NorbertP]

6 hours ago, Sir Guntz said:

So you guys say Arr Eye Oh Tee instead of Riot for the MOS 6532? 

No; see previous comments for an explanation as to why. I will admit that the existence of the TIA in addition to the GTIA complicates matters and is really the only reason I questioned whether I'd been pronouncing GTIA wrong all these years, but despite it being a reasonably plausible argument as to why GTIA should be "gee tier" it still doesn't feel right. TIA is a pronounceable set of letters, but GTIA isn't, and I can't think of another acronym that takes a "spell out the awkward letters, read the rest as a word" approach; maybe C-SPAN, but I feel the hyphen is doing the work there, everything else is either "it's a word" or "it's a jumble of letters".

 

And at the end of the day whichever is "right" is immaterial - language is driven by mob rule so if 95% of people read it as letters then that's that, and that's really all I was curious about; I've not heard it spoken out loud very often so I was wondering whether my "internal pronunciation" was unusual or not, and it turns out the answer is "not". Whether we're all "wrong" or not is of no interest to me!

[+x=usr(1536)]

4 hours ago, NorbertP said:

Whether we're all "wrong" or not is of no interest to me!

It's not so much that any one of us is right as it is everyone else is wrong

[Ecernosoft]

On 11/19/2022 at 7:01 AM, MrMaddog said:

Deleted duplicate post...

I feel your pain.

 

On 11/23/2022 at 6:27 AM, x=usr(1536) said:

It's not so much that any one of us is right as it is everyone else is wrong

Like how I say carmel but my family says caramel. 

 

On 11/22/2022 at 7:16 PM, Sir Guntz said:

So you guys say Arr Eye Oh Tee instead of Riot for the MOS 6532? 

Rieoth. Right?  

 

On 11/22/2022 at 12:11 PM, roadrunner said:

Tia Carrere on Married… With Children


https://idolfeatures.com/2015/03/tia-carrere-on-married-with-children.html

I guess the GTIA is basically the "good television interface adaptor". The TIA and the 6502 then had a baby called "Antic" so the 6502 didn't need to draw the screen. 

 

[mutterminder]

C-T-I-A, G-T-I-A,  S-N-E-S (Though back in the day, we used to call it Super Nintendo).   And while I'm at it - "Zee-Eighty". "Zee-Ex Eighty-One", and "Zee-Ex Spectrum"   No offense to my British friends,  this is the way I've always said these things, and I'm not about to change now.   I do, however, find the British pronunciations quite charming. 😀

Edited November 26, 2022 by mutterminder