The Pfhorums

How does everybody pronounce it?
I pronounce It (puh-for)

i pronounce it "pf'hor"

I pronounce it pf-for.

And here I thought everyone pronounced it like "four."

RyokoTK wrote:And here I thought everyone pronounced it like "four."

Me too!
I thought everyone pronounced it like that.
Does anyone else pronounce it like the way i do?

Nathan92 wrote:Does anyone else pronounce it like the way i do?

Ryoko, obviously, and me too.
"Four"

$lave wrote:I pronounce it pf-for.

I do the same.

Nathan92 wrote:I pronounce It (puh-for)

i used to

RyokoTK wrote:And here I thought everyone pronounced it like "four."

i do this now

"Four" is the way to go!

The Thug wrote:"Four" is the way to go!

Of course it is. Otherwise all of the play on words wouldn't sound right. e.g. Pfhorums, Hell pfhor you etc.

When I was young, I used to call them the "Pro-File)

Don't ask me why, there are syllables that aren't even in the original word.


I pronounce them Four now.

When I was young, I pronounced it "puh-four"
But when I became older and wiser, I started pronouncing it "four"

When I was young, I pronounced it "puh-four"
But when I became older and wiser, I started pronouncing it "four"

Same here.

EDIT: Welcome to the puh-forums

I pronounce it exactly as it's spelled: Pfhor. No Puh, and no silent P. You guys.

Treellama wrote:I pronounce it exactly as it's spelled: Pfhor. No Puh, and no silent P. You guys.

May we have auido?
Mais oui is the answer, but of course.

All the map puns, namely "Two plus two equals..." lead me to consistently pronounce it "Four" though I can understand Tree's phf-four version.

Dannicus wrote:though I can understand Tree's phf-four version.

I said I pronounce it how it's spelled, not like that.

When I said pf-for I basically meant "for" with a slight "p" sound at the beginning ("for" is pronounced the same as "four" pfhor any of you who don't know that).

Treellama wrote:I pronounce it exactly as it's spelled: Pfhor. No Puh, and no silent P. You guys.

He does; I've heard it.

I'm wondering, though, is it easier for you because you learned with pfhonics?

Treellama wrote:I pronounce it exactly as it's spelled: Pfhor. No Puh, and no silent P. You guys.

Audio please!

When I was very young, I pronounced it "p'for". No "puh" for the p, but more like... the way some people slur "before" into almost one syllable, with just a slight "b'" tacked on the front of "fore"; just take the vocalization off the b to make it a p and you've got my old pronunciation. A vowel-less "p", full stop, followed by "for".

When I got older and hear both Bungie's Forge tutorial videos and realized that there were a bunch of puns in the M1 level titles, I started pronouncing it like "for", "fore", "four", etc.

But lately, I've been tacking a p to the start of it again, but not like before. I've been studying phonetics as a hobby, and realizing that there's a perfectly good voiceless labiodental affricate to use at the start of that word. An affricate is a sound like "ch" or "j" (which could be written "tsh" or "dzh", respectively), or the Italian "z" in "pizza" (which is of course pronounced "peetsa", the "ts" sound being the affricate) - a sound that starts as a plosive (p, b, t, d, k, or g) and ends as a fricative (f, v, sh, zh, s, z, th, dh, kh, or gh, though the last two are rare in English). Labiodental sounds are those articulated with the lips and teeth, like P and F; "pf" sounds are rare if not unheard-of in English, but they exist in German and some other languages.

If you're having trouble imagining what it sounds like, consider the difference between the common incorrect pronunciation of "tsunami", which is just "soo-nah-mee", and the correct pronunciation, which is "tsoo-nah-mee", with a "ts" like in our good friend "peetsa". A "pf" is just like "ts", except "ts" is an alveolar sound (articulated with the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth just above and behind the upper teeth), and "pf" is labiodental (articulated on the teeth and lips). To pronounce it, try saying "cap forever" a couple times (as in, "I will wear this awesome new cap forever"). Cap forever. Cap forever. Capforever. Capforever. Then drop the "kaa" sound at the start and the "ever" at the end, and you've got "pfor". Spoken quickly it sounds almost just like "for"... but "tsunami" often sounds just like "sunami" too. Add in a silent H and you've got Pfhor. (Though I suppose you could throw in some Scottish accent and pronounce the H too).

A good pronunciation exercise that might help is to say "it's a tsunami" a couple times, which has a lot of alveolar affricates (itsatsunami, itsatsunami, itsatsunami), and then replace the t's and s's with p's and f's (ipfapfunami, ipfapfunami, ipfapfunami). Then take the "pfunami" part out and say "it's a pfunami". Now you know how to use pf's on their own, and "it's a Pfhor" should come just as naturally. (I still have difficulty saying "the Pfhor" myself, though; I think going from th to pf in one syllable is just too awkward, and I drop the p and just say "the for").

Jesus-fucking-Christ, Pfhorrest.

Same as the number four, otherwise all of the M1 puns wouldnt make sense.

Pfhorrest wrote:Ridiculous post.

Did anyone read this without laughing?

W wrote:Did anyone read this without laughing?

I chuckled, but good-naturedly.