There are several companies and yoyo names that I often hear pronounced one way, but I pronounce it in my head another way.
( e.g. ) “Gee-Squared yo-yos” is how @G2_Jake’s company seems to be pronounced, but it is often abbreviated as: G2 yo-yos. Is pronouncing it “Gee-two” yo-yos also acceptable?
I have the same problem with yo-yos like the 000, (correctly pronounced “Triple Zero” or “Zero-Zero-Zero”?) the 543, (correctly pronounced “Five-forty-three,” “Fifty-four Cubed,” or maybe even “Five-Four-Three”? @chaosgow)
What are other Yo-yo related terms out there like this that you might have the same trouble with, and could any of the manufacturers shed some light on your personal opinions?
There are a lot of yoyo company names I don’t know how to pronounce “properly” because they appear to just be initials or something, like iLYY and so forth.
In addition to company names, there are yoyo names that people mispronounce all the time. One of the most common I hear mispronounced is Draupnir (the “Drau” part rhymes with cow, not draw). The Sleipnir gets mispronounced a lot too (the “Sleip” part rhymes with snipe, not sleep).
And tangentially, there is begleri, which should be pronounced b’GLARE-ee, not BEG-lerr-ee.
This reminds me of Suzuki’s GSX-R which I guess got some people tongue twisted enough that overtime people adopted the easier slang term Gixxer. It stuck and became more common to hear this than the actual name.
For names that are a string of capital letters and are clearly not acronyms, I tend to just say the letters: gee-ess-exx-are. I mean, we say “Confusion gee-tee” for the Confusion GT, right? It only makes sense to me that if a subsequent model comes out that tacks on another letter, like X, then you just continue the pronunciation protocol: gee-tee-exx. Throw on an “R” and it becomes gee-tee-exx-are. And so on. Trying to turn every string of capital letters into an acronym is a fool’s errand.
Right, it’s not an acronym cause it doesn’t make any word and actually stands for “Grand sport eXperimental Racing” . People just thought the slang term Gixxer was easier to say in conversation without tripping over their own tongue, either way it’s something that stuck and here to stay in the bike community Haha.
Are there any throws like that? Not a mispronunciation or anything like that but where people just made up their own slang term and it stuck?
Saying Gee-Two is wrong, it is clearly branded as G Squared Yoyos. As for his internet handle, I say Gee-Two Jake, but this is because I dont think the ‘squared’ symbol is allowed on most sites when registering a username. People abbreviate it G2 because there is no simple way of typing ² (especially with the loss of the numpad on many PCs, and because nobody knows the “code”). Id say typing G2 is acceptable, but it should be said G Squared.
But shouldn’t it still be pronounced Gee-squared-Jake regardless of how it is “spelled” (i.e., don’t let the limitations of your keyboard lead you to mispronounce things).
This reminds me of that old Monty Python sketch: "No no no, it’s spelled, ‘Raymond Luxury Yacht,’ but it’s pronounced, ‘Throat Warbler Mangrove’.
Type it however you can, but pronounce it properly in any case.
I feel like with “G2,” it should be something that only the creator of the brand name should be able to clarify, but since he hasn’t said anything, (@G2_Jake) I agree with @zslane l on this. We should do our best in whatever we do, right?
I found another two that I have no idea how to pronounce, “Battosai” and “888” (can I pronounce it “triple eight”?)
When I see a series of three digits like that, I tend to pronounce them like a flight number: eight-eight-eight. It isn’t a quantity (so definitely not “eight hundred and eighty eight”), but more of a model number. Saying “triple eight” sounds too much like poker jargon (“trip eights”) to me. Like trying a bit too hard to be abbreviated and “hip”. I imagine someone saying “triple eight” while making gun fingers and winking…
. People just thought the slang term Gixxer was easier to say in conversation without tripping over their own tongue, either way it’s something that stuck and here to stay in the bike community Haha.
