Dominaria and Magic Pronunciation

Last weekend, I participated in both days of the Dominaria Draft Weekend event, getting the opportunity to test my skills against other players who want to familiarize themselves with the new format. I would have written about it at the time, but I was in the home stretch of my 30 Teams in 30 Days project to celebrate the start of the baseball season, and I didn't want to distract myself. But getting the chance to play against some real life opponents not only gave me a chance to show off the extensive research I did into the new set, but also brought into focus the second-weakest part of my Magic game: pronunciation.

I first came across this particular pitfall almost a month ago, when the official Magic website posted a link to an exclusive Italian language preview card, Rite of Belzenlok (aka Rito di Belzenlok), an Enchantment of the Saga subtype, which is new to Dominaria. I am a little bit familiar with the ways to say some of the key Magic terms in different languages (thanks to a rabbit hole I once went down on my former favorite Magic card searching database magiccards.info, which includes easily accessible links to various foreign language printings of each card), so I decided to attempt to figure out what this card was all about without looking at the English card image gallery. I got the general idea that the Saga was all about creating creature tokens (pedine di creatura): first you get some of the Cleric type (Chierico), then one giant Demon (Demone), who requires you to sacrifice another creature (sacrifica un'altra creatura), otherwise it deals 6 damage to you (ti infligge 6 danni).

After that experiment went so well, I scanned the text of the article, not understanding much, but doing my best to sound it out in my best Italian accent. When I came to the name of the set, I instinctively pronounced the last three syllables starting with a soft, open "AH" sound, like an "aria" from an opera. This is in contrast to how I had been saying it in my head while reading English articles, which rhymed with the English word "area," but I immediately thought that the Italian version sounded more correct. My suspicions were confirmed when I watched the official trailer for Dominaria, in which the Silver Golem Planeswalker Karn pronounced the name of the plane "dom-in-AH-ree-uh" in his deep, metallic voice. Incidentally, the new card representing that character (Karn, Scion of Urza) is the most expensive card in the set and one of the most powerful. Two weekends ago, I opened a Karn in the prerelease pack that I bought after the fact, since I was busy for the prerelease tournament itself, but I did sell my copy of Karn back to the store to pay for my draft on Sunday, and then some.

My Saturday draft deck didn't have anything as exciting as Karn, but I did first pick Helm of the Host, a Legendary piece of Equipment that lets you copy one of your creatures per turn, which was the start of a pretty decent "go wide" deck. I went into Green because of Yavimaya Sapherd (which is just good two-for-one value), and then into White thanks to a Mesa Unicorn (I ended up getting three of those total), and then was rewarded for my strategy by a late Shanna, Sisay's Legacy, who gets a bonus based on how many creatures you have in play. I never got to cast Shanna in any of my matches, but it felt good knowing that she was in my deck.

My Saturday Draft Deck List. Note the Red splash, and the one-too-many "Fiery Interventions"

The only thing I knew about my opponent's deck going into Match 1 was that he had apparently first-picked a card more for fun than playability, and then tried really hard to force it through the rest of the draft. I had a pretty good idea of what card he was talking about when a panoply of Swamps, Mountains, and Forests entered the battlefield, so I was not expecting it when he dropped a different mythic rare legendary build-around card, Jaya Ballard, a planeswalker who is the focus of the most recent official Magic Story. I was also not expecting the way he pronounced the character's first name: like he was saying "Jay and Silent Bob," but without the "nd Silent Bob."

If it were me casting this spell, I would have pronounced the first part of her first name like the first syllable in "gyroscope." This is based on examples from both the real world and Magic history -- also that's how my wife pronounced it, after she reluctantly agreed to look at the card and give her input. I know someone with the same first name as the Planeswalker from Conspiracy named Kaya, Ghost Assassin, and she does not pronounce it like you would say the letter "KAY-uh." Also, the Shard of Alara called Naya is pronounced like Bill "NYE-uh" the Science GUY-uh, and those both only have one letter differences from Jaya. Speaking of GUY-uh, that's how I would pronounce cards like Gaea's Blessing, but I have a friend who plays with a Gaea's Cradle in one of his Commander decks, and he has been pronouncing it GAY-uh since Urza's Saga, which is also how my wife said it when I showed her this card (shortly before she told me to stop bothering her), so I guess the jury's still out on that one.

However you pronounce it, I made a mistake in handling that card that likely cost me the game, if not the match. I had managed to Helm of the Host-up my Dubbed Mesa Unicorn, which in itself is a strange circumstance: we're talking about a mythical horse-like creature, upon whom had been conferred the title of Knight, and who is wearing a sweet headpiece that creates a copy of it each turn. On top of that, my Unicorn was further enhanced by another Saga, Triumph of Gerrard, a card that comes with a couple of pronunciation issues itself. First of all, most Americans would agree to say that name as juh-RARD, while British English speakers would say JERR-ard nine times out of ten. But it's when you look closer at the triumphant Gerrard's last name that things get a little more complicated.

When I started playing Magic, around the first Zendikar block in 2009, the game's story had long since left its home plane behind, so characters like Gerrard Capashen were not exactly relevant to the conversation. But whenever I read stories about the human element of Urza's Legacy Weapon, in my head I would always pronounce it CAP-uh-shen, emphasizing the first syllable, like baseball cap, or the Greek letter kappa. However, the majority of the times that I would hear other people say the name, they would pronounce it cuh-PAY-shen, emphasizing the second syllable. The first time this happened was when my opponent played a Capashen Knight against me at the Magic 2014 prerelease, and it was corroborated by Marshall Sutcliffe in the Limited Resources set review of Dominaria when discussing Gerrard's offspring, Raff Capashen. (Later in that same podcast, Luis Scott-Vargas used my preferred pronunciation when covering Raff's sister Danitha, but I suspect that he might have been trolling us all, as he made a point of pronouncing her first name as dun-EE-the -- and then later dun-EYE-the, but that one was obviously a joke -- when I'm pretty sure it's supposed to rhyme with the first name of racing legend Danica Patrick.)

I'm willing to go with the accepted wisdom here, which I did whenever I announced that I was casting Raff Capashen, whom I drafted for my Sunday deck, but once again, like my pick of Shanna, it was only after I had established myself in Blue-White fliers. But I'd also like to go on record by saying that I think that it's dumb to pronounce it where the second syllable rhymes with the first part of PayPal. And here's why: you have the letter "a" appearing twice in the same word, basically right next to each other, but we're supposed to pronounce it a different way each time? That just sounds like a recipe for confusion. Granted, when you say my way really fast, the first "a" sounds more like "after," and the second one sounds more like "under," but it's the same basic principle.

My Sunday Draft Deck List. Note my custom playmat, based on the Magic Online interface.

This issue didn't come up in my first game on Saturday, as the card I had just cast didn't include Gerrard's last name. It did, however, include rules text that grew my 4/4 Unicorn Knight into a 6/6 over the first two turns after I cast it, and then gave it flying on turn 3, enabling it to soar over my opponent's random Saprolings gumming up the ground. It was at this point that I made a crucial error: I attacked my opponent directly instead of sending Sir Unicorn at Jaya, who had exactly 6 loyalty at that point. Here was my reasoning: I was going to have plenty of Unicorns -- in addition to the original, my Helm had already given me two tokens and counting -- and it was still three turns before Jaya could access her ultimate ability, which would give my opponent the ability to cast Instant and Sorcery spells from his graveyard. I thought for sure I'd be able to at least get a couple of attacks in before that happened. But multiple Fungal Infections later, and the shields were up around Jaya, and I had no way to stop her ultimate from popping. Pretty soon my team was decimated by removal spells long since cast already, paving the way for the build-around card my opponent had picked first in the draft...

But by way of telling you the name of that card, first I'm going to tell my favorite Magic pronunciation story ever. Back in the day, my friend had a burn deck that included a certain board sweeper that, for the low low price of two mana, would deal 1 damage to each creature without flying and each player, but if you paid the kicker (an additional 2 mana), it would deal 4 damage to each target instead. Whenever my friend would cast said spell, he would declare, "I cast breath of Drogzia (pronounced DROG-zee-uh)." Now, this card was from back when Magic cards were printed with the hard-to-read white font, so we didn't look at the name too closely: we would recognize it by the picture, let out an exasperated groan, and then move all our creatures to the graveyard.

Later on, when our regular playgroup settled in at five players, we developed a new way to play: we pooled all our card collections together, divided them into five mono-colored decks, and assigned one deck to each player. Then we would play a multiplayer game, but not a straight up free for all: we would sit in the order of the color wheel, and you could only win if the players in your two enemy colors were defeated. It made for some really fun games and some fascinating political interactions. One day, when I was assigned the red deck, I noticed something about my friend's board sweeper, and proclaimed it loudly to the group: Drogzia was in fact WAY off, and the real name of the card was Breath of Darigaaz! We all had a good laugh... then we all let out exasperated groans and moved all our creatures to the graveyard.

Back to the present day, my opponent did in fact have Darigaaz Reincarnated, which finished me off quick-snap in game 1. Then I was hopelessly mana screwed in game 2 -- I don't think I cast a single spell, despite starting the game with Shanna and two plains in my hand -- and just like that, there went my hopes of going 3-0 in the draft. I did, however, win my next two matches, and took home two packs as prize support. I had the same record on Sunday with my classic UW skies deck, which included not only the aforementioned Raff, but two Academy Drakes, two Aesthir Gliders (pronounced EYES-theer?), two Cloudreader Sphinxes, and a Tempest Djinn. When faced with the decision whether to take the two packs or $6 in store credit, I took the packs, and opened up... you guessed it, another Karn, Scion of Urza!

So that's the story of how I essentially got two drafts and a prerelease pack for free, thanks to two pieces of cardboard, a card that, no matter how much you try to convince me, I'm not going to pronounce CAIRN, sk-EYE-on of YOUR-zuh...