How would one pronounce "Tengen"?

[nildem]

Alright, ever since forever I, and everyone else I've met, has pronounced the word "Tengen" as 'Ten' - 'jin'.

Now today while watching a re-run of Double Dare (shut up) the announcer pronounced it as 'Tang' - 'ghen' while listing the contestants prizes.

Who wins?

[Querjek]

I have always said "Ten g(h)en", with a hard "g" on the second syllable.

[Gapporin]

Ten-jin would be the correct pronunciation, because it is a Japanese word.

[SMB]

Yeah I always pronounced it as Ten-jin. But I often here people say it as Ten-gin.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ten gen. Whatever the Japanese pronounciation is, anyway. Tengen is the center point of a Go board (does this remind anybody of ANOTHER COMPANY'S NAME? HINT HINT!!), and means "center" or "origin of heaven" or some such.

@ Double Dare: W00T!

[Gapporin]

Tengen is the center point of a Go board (does this remind anybody of ANOTHER COMPANY'S NAME? HINT HINT!!)

Funny you mention that, since the two companies were practically bedfellows.

[Ed Oscuro]

It's a mystery to us all. ;D ;D :o

[TRM]

Alright, ever since forever I, and everyone else I've met, has pronounced the word "Tengen" as 'Ten' - 'jin'.

Now today while watching a re-run of Double Dare (shut up) the announcer pronounced it as 'Tang' - 'ghen' while listing the contestants prizes.

Who wins?

Oh man, did they show pictures of the prizes?

I always called it Ten g(h)en.

[qbertandernie]

i say ten-jin, my buddy says ten g in...if its japanase i would expect it to be te n ge n or tay n gay n... the characters are based on ah, ee, oo, ay, oh..

and why the hell would MArk Summers be a man that would raise this question? hes a game show host!

yes, i watched the show religiously as a child...

[davidbrit2]

The "correct" pronunciation, as this is a Japanese word, would be ten-gen, with a hard G in the 2nd syllable (both syllables rhyme).

Fun fact:
Atari is a term from the Japanese game Go, similar in a vague sense to "check" in chess.
Tengen is also a term from Go referring to the center point of the board.

Tengen was a division of Atari Games, I believe. If not, it was definitely part of or a spin off from Atari. The relation between the two terms used for company names is almost certainly not a coincidence.

Go glossary: http://www.britgo.org/bgj/glossary.html
Is there anything else familiar in there? I don't feel like looking through it all. Heh.

EDIT: Yeah, some of this is repeated. I'm tired and I don't care. ;-)

[Aussie2B]

I've always read it as "ten-jen" myself, but I guess that's wrong. If it really is Japanese in origins, then as others have said it would be "teh-n-geh-n".

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I tend to pronounce it as "ten ghen" with the hard G.

On alternating Thursdays, I simply call it Wallace.

[qbertandernie]

wallace? thats news to me, but i like!
LOL

[Dahne]

Definately a hard 'g'. This is one of the many reasons I love Japanese - they don't go around changing the way they pronounce a letter just because of its placement in a word, whether or not it's by a vowel, what day of the week it is, etc. A 'g' is always what we would call a hard 'g'. For the soft 'j' sound, they just use a 'j'. Makes life a whole lot easier.

...until you take kanji into account. :yipes:

[SoulBlazer]

For someone raised in the west, WRITING it can be a real bitch also. ;) Harder then speaking it, that's for sure -- I took two years of Japanese in high school. :P

[Jive3D]

Tengen is the center point of a Go board (does this remind anybody of ANOTHER COMPANY'S NAME? HINT HINT!!)

Funny you mention that, since the two companies were practically bedfellows.

Yeah everyone knows that about Atari's name, but what about Sente? Remember them?

Who owned them anyway?

Atari is kind of like the equivalent to "checkmate"

Sente is more of a position that one player in GO will have that will force the other player to take counteraction.

Learned that from the oldergames.com version of GO for CD-i 8-)

[Kroogah]

...

[FlufflePuff]

I've always pronounced it Ten Jen. That's before I lived in Japan.

[maxlords]

I've always pronounced it Ten Jen. That's before I lived in Japan.

That's how I say it too.

[rolenta]

Tengen was a division of Atari Games, I believe.

This is correct.

[rolenta]

Yeah everyone knows that about Atari's name, but what about Sente? Remember them?

Who owned them anyway?

Sente was founded by Nolan Bushnell the day his 5-year no-competion clause with Atari ended.

[Lady Jaye]

I always pronounced it with a hard G.

[Jorpho]

I also went with Ten-Jen. (Never really occurred to me that it was a Japanese word, given that other companies publishing unlicensed Nintendo games were American.)

[Barbarianoutkast85]

Ive always said it as Ten as in the number and Gin as in Gin and Tonic

[The Manimal]

Ive always said it as Ten as in the number and Gin as in Gin and Tonic

So have I....but I guess I will change that from now on. I dislike saying things improperly. :)

[izret101]

Ten - Jen for me.
Kinda just flows never really thought about it before. I have actually never heard it pronounced other wise.

[rbudrick]

Yeah I always pronounced it as Ten-jin. But I often here people say it as Ten-gin.

When transliterating Japanese words, we use a J for the J sound and a G for the hard G sound. So, a hard G it is. Also, since the E in Japanese is more like a hard A sound in English (as in cake), some may say that it almost sounds like ten-gain. But when an N follows the E, it becomes more slight, from what I hear in Japanese speech, for whatever that's worth. Maybe it's just my ear, but maybe there's a real grammatical explanation for this.

-Rob

[FlufflePuff]

Ive always said it as Ten as in the number and Gin as in Gin and Tonic

So have I....but I guess I will change that from now on. I dislike saying things improperly. :)

Word of warning, Nintendo should be pronounced Neentendo.

[NESaholic]

I think in Japan they say Ten-jin, i always day Ten-ghen,ah well does it really matter?As long as you write it correctly! :)