I didn't expect that. Remember in spanish almost everything is pronounced as it's written, a language that comes from latin and also greek, so, to pronounce Metropolis as "metropolis", we just write, well, M E - T R O - P O - L I S. I'll make a hack that changes the zone names to "mother city", "water city" and "workroom city", and ask them to be the official names.
If you wanna go full English teacher on this, there is literally no possible way in Engish that "o" alone can be the second syllable of "sandopolis" or "hydrocity". That isn't allowed by the rules of the language in this context. The o vowel sound is just a resonance you produce off of the d plosive. You don't say the entire word "sand" and then "awpullis", you pronounce the second syllable "daw" (or "doe" if you wanna be silly) because it begins with the plosive that is used to accent the vowel. Then "dro" is the second syllable of hydrocity, regardless of which pronunciation you use. In "hydro city", "dro" is just the second syllable of "hydro". In "hydrocity", the o is again just the resonance you produce off of the "dr" consonant cluster. Also I think you guys are confusing syllabic separation with vowel sounds. It is separated as san-do-po-lis, regardless of whether you borrow the o vowel sound from "metropolis" or "sand-o-polis". Putting "o" as its own syllable is completely antithetical to the way you are pronouncing the word, regardless of whether it's a short or long O. Where the first word in the portmanteau ends, and where the second one begins, only changes the vowel sound and the stress of the syllables. But not the way they are separated. O is its own syllable in "studiopolis" or even just the word "studio" because it is distinct from the "di" plosive sound. The only way to circumvent this were if you combine "dio" into one whole syllable and say "stu-djaw-po-lis" which, come to think of it, is fucking amazing
I've actually heard the "stu-djaw-po-lis" pronunciation before, mostly by non-native english speakers though.
If I got that correctly, yes, that "djaw" is how we read it in spanish. The spanish word is in fact "estudio" but it also comes from the latin "studium" which you're already using in english as a separate word. We're so fans of sonic games we just had fan with zone names.
It's studio + polis. Studio-polis. It's just the English word studio with the Greek word polis. Studiopolis is the most straightforward one to pronounce because it makes sense. Sandopolis is hard to pronounce because it makes no sense and is incorrect. It should be sand + polis. Sandpolis. They probably just made it Sandopolis because it sounds cool and they didn't put much thought into it.
I wouldn't want this to become a pronunciation debate because it's tedious and never goes anywhere BUT No official sources put a space between "Hydro" and "City" until Sonic Generations. And they had many, many opportunities to fix it - the level select, the manuals, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Jam, Sonic & Knuckles Collection, the emulated versions... https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic3_MD_JP_manual.pdf&page=41 https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic3_MD_US_manual.pdf&page=18 You'll find "Hydro City" is in the Archie comics... but you'll also find interspecies love triangles in there, so we don't dwell. Sonic Origins has "Hydro City" but it also has "Sandpolis" and a bazillion other mistakes, so I'm not sure you'd call that reliable (and of course it has cases of "Hydrocity" within Sonic 3&K itself). Or to put it another way, when half the planet wipe their arse, they reach through the toilet seat. The other half hover above. Both think the other side is weird.
"Opolis" is recognized as an actual suffix, both informally and in some dictionaries. It comes from the greek "polis", but both are valid as suffixes in English. Popular examples have existed prior to Sonic like "cottonopolis", "porkopolis", "technopolis", etc, and they're generally pronounced with a short o, a long o like "studi-oh-polis" is antithetical to the way the suffix is used in both Greek and English (and per Taxman in the Mania Dev Diary, it's intended to be pronounced with the customary short O). These aren't meant to be literal portmanteaus and it's not an oversight that there is an o before "polis", the o is just easier than saying incongruent-sounding things like "porkpolis" or "sandpolis".
In Portuguese -- Brazilian Portuguese at least -- every single city or town whose name ends with -polis has the syllable immediately before the suffix stressed. So stu-di-o-po-lis or San-do-po-lis feels weird to say, but Stu-di-o-po-lis or San-do-po-lis feel nice to say. Can't really imagine what "stu-djaw-po-lis" would sound like.
Just imagine a "j" sound, "stujopolis". Like "djembe", "djent", or (because this is a Sonic forum) "Erazor Djinn".
I agree about the debate, but I didn't suggest to separate the halves of the composite word, just that "hydrocity" means "city of water", not "waterness" (that's aquosity).
And yet, despite all this discussion, I've seen some people still using the senseless "SOZ" acronym in these very past days, so I guess that stopping them really is an impossible crusade, oh well.
I've always just used it because it's how you pronounce the word. Sand-opolis. SPZ can be confused for Studiopolis and it doesn't even make sense. You don't pronounce it Sando-polis.
Not to put the cat amongst the pigeons, but I kinda always have... think how you pronounce Metropolis (met-rop-o-lis) and just replace it with Sand (san-dop-o-lis).
Say it with me... high-Drō-sitty. All one word. An amalgamation of Hydro and -ocity (quality of). But, not pronounced like velocity because that is wrong. Not Hydro City either.
This may be a bit of a tangent but I had to engage with this point because I can read a bit of Ancient Greek and am a professional Classicist. So I find this interesting. Lol. I looked up the suffix 'opolis' in an academic journal: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/opolis/about.html Apparently the suffix is not a 'proper word' (I've never heard of it!) but is colloquially used to refer to 'economic activities of cities'. Hence 'Porkopolis' and 'Cottonopolis' (both specifically named in the journal!). So if we use this framework, I guess Sandopolis hints at the urban nature of the zone. I mean the first act seems to be fairly well developed as a society and of course the second act takes place inside a large pyramid. Honestly I have no idea if Sonic Team had this in mind. They might have just thought Sandopolis sounded cool. But it fits either way! I just thought that was kind of neat!
That's how oliver is suggesting it's pronounced. They're saying "sand-oh polis" is the wrong way, I think. The way you're saying it is the common way. Also re: Hydrocity, I don't get the hubbub. If the devs wanted it to be a "water-x-velocity" pun, they did and it's correct by virtue of descriptivism. If they wanted it to be a synonym for "water city", they did and it's correct by virtue of descriptivism. So the pronunciation is up in the air depending on the intent of the person who coined the term, and I don't think anyone has ever said in an interview what the intent was. If someone from the S3 dev team came out of hiding and said "it's pronounced X" that would be cool, but it's probably not gonna happen. Hydro City sounds cool and I like the Hydrocity pun, especially because a bunch of people collectively thought it. So.... por que no los dos? Or, just to be contrarian, we can start saying "hid-RAW-kitty".
The fact this pronunciation debate is still going strong is nothing short of amusing BTW: It's Laby-rinth, not Lab-uh-rinth
