Hell Mel: Pirate, right?

[Alunissage]

Um, Jenner, you have it backward. He was Deadly Mel in TSS and Hell Mel in SSSC.

[GhaleonOne]

Actually she doesn't. It WAS supposed to be Hell Mel in TSS, but Sega nixed it. It's in that interview with Vic in the TSS guide.

[Jenner]

Actually she doesn't. It WAS supposed to be Hell Mel in TSS, but Sega nixed it. It's in that interview with Vic in the TSS guide.

They only nixed it in a few of the TSS versions, it didn't get edited out in ALL of them. Since they released SO MANY versions of TSS.

Hell Mel is Hell Mel in the rarest 7th CD
( I know because it's the one that I own. )

[Kizyr]

Actually she doesn't. It WAS supposed to be Hell Mel in TSS, but Sega nixed it. It's in that interview with Vic in the TSS guide.

They only nixed it in a few of the TSS versions, it didn't get edited out in ALL of them. Since they released SO MANY versions of TSS.

Hell Mel is Hell Mel in the rarest 7th CD
( I know because it's the one that I own. )

That is true... I never heard of "Deadly Mel" until folks mentioned it on Message Boards. I just heard of Hell Mel. Makes more sense now that Jenner corroborated that; we have the same version of the game. KF

[Alunissage]

That seems really, really weird...that it would be different in different pressings of the game. However, the first pressing, which is what I played originally, was done by Sega, I'm pretty sure, and the other six were all by WD (that's why the disc art goes to the center in those) so I suppose it's possible they changed it in later versions -- disc 2 or 3 also says 'deadly'. It just seems very unlikely. The person who says he was called Deadly Mel is in the mansion the first time you go there (I think), so it wouldn't be too bad to play up to that point, save, and reload with different disks.

I'd forgotten about that interview in the TSS guide; my sister borrowed it from me a few years ago. I really should get another one of it and the EB guide as extras.

[Ardekh]

How is there absolutely no way Meribia is derived from Mel? It doesn't have to match exactly, many towns named after people change. America was named after a guy named Amerigo. Not exactly the same, an important syllable is changed. And in Japan they can't really say L, so even if it WAS Melibia in Japan, it would be pronounced Meribia.

[Rune Lai]

America and Amerigo is probably the best example of how Meribia could be derived some Mel.

But the r/l doesn't work because Mel's name in Japanese is Meru and Meribia is Meribia.

Me-ri-bi-a
Me-ru

The "ru" and "ri" are written with two different kana so there is no transliteration confusion involved. They're as different in Japanese as they are in English.

[Alunissage]

I agree in principle, but I have to say that saying "ru" and "ri" are different in English doesn't really prove anything linguistically. If the question of whether Meribia's name was derived from Mel's, much stranger transformations occur in language than a simple vowel alteration. They may be written differently and be derived from completely different kanji, but they still sound similar, with only one vowel feature difference... [i] is +back and [u] is +front. In English there'd also be a +round involved, but as I recall, [u] isn't even rounded in Japanese. I mean, "dewa" is undoubtedly written rather differently from "ja", and yet the one has verbally turned into the other and is even written that way at times. (Kiz, please clarify as needed.)

However, since Mel's still alive at the time Meribia has its name, one would expect something more like Merubia. Otherwise it'd be more like naming this country Aquerigo.

[phyco126]

Well, from what I read into SSSC, is that Meribia was in a state of anarchy, which isn't helped with Hell Mel attacking all the time. However, when he became the leader of Meribia, he made it a pretty darned nice city. Of course, I'm pretty sure that the various NPCs that told the story of Hell Mel and Meribia would have mentioned if it had a different name before Mel, but they don't, they actually talk like the town was Meribia even before he took charge. That's just me though

[Kizyr]

I agree in principle, but I have to say that saying "ru" and "ri" are different in English doesn't really prove anything linguistically. If the question of whether Meribia's name was derived from Mel's, much stranger transformations occur in language than a simple vowel alteration. They may be written differently and be derived from completely different kanji, but they still sound similar, with only one vowel feature difference... [i] is +back and [u] is +front. In English there'd also be a +round involved, but as I recall, [u] isn't even rounded in Japanese. I mean, "dewa" is undoubtedly written rather differently from "ja", and yet the one has verbally turned into the other and is even written that way at times. (Kiz, please clarify as needed.)

The transformation of certain sounds over time in Japanese isn't a random process. I could go into detail, but I'd have to start bringing up aspects of classical and literary (i.e., pre-Meiji) Japanese. Just limited to phonetics, though, certain sounds do change over time and others don't. For instance, pa -> ha -> wa, deha -> dewa -> ja, kwan -> kan, and wan -> ou (side note: the character for the name Wang in Chinese is pronounced Ou in Japanese, due to that last connection).

There's no shift from Ru to Ri. I mean, the only way it's vaguely possible is that the writers were thinking in English first rather than Kana, and transliterating everything back afterwords. There's an argument for similarity to be made, but "names can change" isn't it.

Oh, and also the vowels are occasionally pronounced differently depending on the consonant. The U is dropped or glossed over in some cases, and emphasized in others. KF

[Alunissage]

Yes, of course some sounds are more apt to change than others. [p] gets lost easily because there's so little sound associated with it to begin with; it's voiceless and it's at the lips so the sound doesn't resonate in the mouth. And there have been some really weird sound changes; one I remember my historical linguistics teacher telling us about is in Armenian, I think; it's a dw/jerk change...through a set of simple, logical changes, the phoneme [dw] altered to [jerk] (that j is pronounced more or less like y) over time. Most sound changes aren't random or isolated. I'm just saying that vowels are a very common thing to change and whether or not it's plausible in Japanese it might well be plausible in Lunarese.

It's all academic for me anyway, as I agree with Phyco that the city was already named that. I'm just saying from an isolated phonological/linguistic viewpoint it isn't an odd change.

[drumlord]

Kiz: You mislead unintentionally. You mention one Chinese character pronounced different in Japanese and Chinese. But almost all of them are pronounced different; they're different languages This you already know, but they have the same characters because the Chinese Buddhist monks brought them over as a form of writing when the Japanese didn't have one yet. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

[Kizyr]

Kiz: You mislead unintentionally. You mention one Chinese character pronounced different in Japanese and Chinese.

...I didn't mislead; you misunderstood. It was a side note that was very relevant to what I meant.

Wang was originally directly pronounced as Wan in Japanese. The N sound shifted to U (as both are related). An A + U sound in literary Japanese makes the long OU sound. So, the pronunciation became Wou; as the W is silent, now (postwar) it's simply written as Ou. The progression is a direct parallel to the point I made about changes.

Most sound changes aren't random or isolated. I'm just saying that vowels are a very common thing to change and whether or not it's plausible in Japanese it might well be plausible in Lunarese.

That was also my point. Trying to look for changes based on what might've been possible in Japanese is ridiculous (i.e., by bringing up the L-R bit). There're other ways to prove the possible point, just that's not a viable method. KF

[Alunissage]

L/R change isn't limited to Japanese, though. Again they're about as similar as two sounds can be without being identical. I'm not good at coming up with examples on demand, though; the best that comes to mind offhand is marmalade coming from melimelon.

[drumlord]

Kiz: You mislead unintentionally. You mention one Chinese character pronounced different in Japanese and Chinese.

...I didn't mislead; you misunderstood. It was a side note that was very relevant to what I meant.

I didn't misunderstand.

the character for the name Wang in Chinese is pronounced Ou in Japanese

That's what you said and all I was saying is that nearly every Chinese character is pronounced differently in Japanese. So citing one occurance doesn't show that you were trying to say that at one point a character that Japanese pronounced one way is now pronounced a different way. For instance, if I said the Chinese pronounciation for the water character is shuey and the Japanese is mizu, that doesn't mean that shuey evolved to become mizu.

[Kizyr]

So citing one occurance doesn't show that you were trying to say that at one point a character that Japanese pronounced one way is now pronounced a different way. For instance, if I said the Chinese pronounciation for the water character is shuey and the Japanese is mizu, that doesn't mean that shuey evolved to become mizu.

Shuey did evolve into Sui, however.

The point is that the original pronunciation very closely approximated the Chinese one. It's one example that shores it up. In fact, a good deal of the more common Chinese characters have similar pronunciations in Japanese that can be directly, and logically, revealed through the shifts in language that've occurred from literary to modern Japanese. KF

[Ardekh]

....*head spins*