granmagus

cryptic, you are the best. best changes ever!

SWEEET!

All they need to do now is add a Time Control powerset for trollers and doms!

not a big fan of the storyline only because the presentation is lackluster.

Not bad, though a little abstract--which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Can't wait to see the pics!

Host of Avalon (revised)

Recruiting Officers: Deirdre Lefaye, Jiao Han, Aruko
Preferred Contact Method: In-game email or tell
Guild Description: We are a group of players who want to get together to team up for missions and simply help each other out when needed. Functions include team building resource as well as base tools. Join us for a fun gaming experience!

Host of Avalon
Recruiting Officers: Deirdre Lefaye, Nitaka Medso, Icysis
Preferred Method of Contact: Any
Guild Description: A Faerie-themed SG; we accept natural, mutant, or magic origins mainly. We are dedicated to making sure our members always have someone to team with or someone to help them when in need. Come join us for a fun game!

Only "ts" in Tsoo could never be like "s" in Sue since no romanization for any Asian language has it. It doesn't make sense to add a "t" to a sound when you can have one letter like "s." More like "Tsue."

Oh, one more thing.

Taiwan is not too far from Fujian Province, where they speak Fujianese, another Chinese language. Thus, my father, a native speaker of Fujianese, pronounced "ts"'s differently than a native speaker of Mandarin from Beijing. In any case, the pronuciation of Tsoo depends on what language/dialect of Chinese you speak more than anything. So if the Tsoo in COH are from Taiwan--or even are the Tsoo that speak Tsoo--how you pronounce "Tsoo" will depend on which way you think is right. The Tsoo themselves might pronounce it like "proper" Mandarin (as described in my previous post) or with a Fujianese twist (if, assuming COH Tsoo is actually the Tsoo culture of Taiwan), since Fujian is so geographically close to Taiwan, and it is safe to assume there was a great deal (and, perhaps, still is) of cultural exchange or migration between the two areas (Fujian and Taiwan). Thus, "ts," by the Fujianese Theory, is pronounced like English "ch" as in "chair."

Okay, well, I have something of a linguistics background, but I am not an expert on Asian languages. It seems to me, however, that if the words of the pedestrian are true ("Those Tsoo make the Hmong community look bad."), then the case is solved, the Tsoo are Hmong.

On the other hand, the Tsoo seem to have dress styles that could range from Chinese to Japanese. But the word Tsoo, while certainly Chinese, is not Japanese. Of course, we must consider that "tsoo" is romanized, and there may be several spellings of a Chinese word, depending on which system of orthography one chooses. Doing a quick search on the Internet does reveal that the word "tsoo" is the name of a language, and the people that speak it, in Taiwan. It is also the name of a writer, Chiachin Tsoo, from Taiwan. Furthermore, any search including "tsoo" and "taiwan" or "chinese" yields a multitude of Chinese/Taiwanese examples of the word "Tsoo" in other words. Chinese culture is quite dominant in Taiwan, and it is likely that the Tsoo language is a derivation of Chinese and not Japanese--which is apart of a different language family altogether.

Now to why it isn't Japanese. Simple. The "oo" part is not found in any Japanese romanization. If we assume that "oo" is like Korean "oo," then it would be pronounced in English "soon" or "broom." But since the Tsoo are in Taiwan, we might assume it sounds more like Chinese.

And in Chinese, at least in Mandarin (which is the official language in Taiwan), the closest vowel sound is actually a diphthong (that is, two vowels which sound like one vowel like in English "high," where "igh" is actually "a" and "I" according to the IPA). Thus, the "oo" seems to be an alternate spelling of "Tsu," which we find, is a very Chinese spelling (and while also Japanese, we can discount that origin since no Japanese orthography claims "oo" though many Chinese languages/dialects do); and it is pronounced more or less like "ooh" in English but with a stronger labialized offglide (that is, the second vowel has a more "w" quality to it).

In Mandarin, the Wade-Giles system uses "ts" to describe a similar sound found in English "cats"--referring to the "ts" cluster as the final sound. In pinyin, the official romanization system, "ts" is replaced with "z." Honestly, it doesn't get any simpler than that.

Chinese is a tone language, and we can assume, quite safely that Tsoo would be tonic as well. If Tsoo in COH is Taiwanese or Tsoo, then their name has a tone to it. I cannot conjecture as to what tone it is since there is no indication of it in the spelling.