Where does the 'leak' in the fountain story come from?

[Shipyard Locked]

Does anyone know who originally told this story and perhaps on which forum? I'm paraphrasing of course.

GM: You enter the cavern and see a big beautiful fountain lit by magical globes floating above... but in the fountain there is a leak!!!
[The players are confused by his intensity on that last point.]
PLAYER A: ... Ok. Sure. I guess I will approach the fountain to see if there is anything in the water.
GM: What? Are you sure you want to do that, there's a leak right there.
PLAYER A: Yeah, and? Wait, how big is this leak?
GM: Huh? Medium sized, but that doesn't matter, it's a leak!
PLAYER B: ... Oookay, I guess I'll... try to plug the leak with my hands?
GM: What is wrong with you guys!? Fine, the leak gets mad and uses water magic to attack you, roll for initiative.
[Baffled silent pause.]
PLAYER A: How is a leak casting spells? Is this some kind of elemental?
GM: No, it's undead, don't you know anything!?
PLAYER B: Hold on... spell the name of this creature for me.
GM: A leak! L-I-C-H! Leak!

 

[Gabriel]

Never heard it. It's almost certainly a variant on the Gazebo story, though.

 

[Gringnr]

In my hometown, there was a radiator repair shop, and their sign said, "Best place in town to take a leak".

 

[Simlasa]

That story does sound familiar... I must have read it somewhere but not sure where, sometime in the last several years.

I've been in groups where we discussed the pronunciation of that creature... I'd say 'leech' and others say 'li-ch' and our GM said 'lick'... no one said 'leak'.
What's with giving away the type of creature on sight anyway? Plenty of other monsters look similar. Keep the mystery.

 

[Endless Flight]

Isn't it pronounced *litch*, like bitch but with an L?

 

[VisionStorm]

That story does sound familiar... I must have read it somewhere but not sure where, sometime in the last several years.

I've been in groups where we discussed the pronunciation of that creature... I'd say 'leech' and others say 'li-ch' and our GM said 'lick'... no one said 'leak'.
What's with giving away the type of creature on sight anyway? Plenty of other monsters look similar. Keep the mystery.

Yeah, it sounds vaguely familiar, but not sure were I read it before, or if my mind is just playing tricks steaming from pass discussions about how the heck you pronounce "lich".

My memory is crap anyways. I'm gonna go take a leak...

 

[Evilschemer]

In college, one of my buddies said his game master had an accent, so he became very confused when he was told to "Go north and find the whale in the woods".

Only later did he figure out he meant "WELL in the woods!"

To this day, I try to have a whale in the north woods in all my campaigns.

 

[E-Rocker]

I pronounce it "litch."

 

[Toadmaster]

I pronounce it "litch."

litch, like or lick, I've never heard anyone say leak.

I'm trying to think of examples when I sounds like E, but all the examples combine I with E, elite, believe, siege.

 

[Endless Flight]

Leech is even better than Leak.

 

[zarion]

I go with "litch" like with a B with an itch.

 

[CRKrueger]

The word goes back to Old English, and there would have been pronounced most like “leak”, but really a cross between “lick” and “leak” with a soft k sound.

By the time CAS got a hold of it, it would have been used mainly as lich gate, the gate in the cemetery they took the corpses through. I think that’s “litch” but ask one of our Brits.

Interesting enough, “Leech“ goes back to an Old Norse word for healer/shaman.

So a corpse that’s a magic-user use “litch/leech” with one of those dipthongs we don’t have in modern English.
Hopefully Séadna will come in and learn us all good.

I just always said “litch”.

 

[Séadna]

There's not much beyond what you said. It's meaning was "a body" or "a form" all the way back to Indo-European. It's the same root that gives the common word "like", since that word originally was used to mean:
It was the form of a bird => It was like a bird.

It shifted pronunciation during the period when Frisian and English moved away from the other German languages to give the form today, i.e. where it rhymes with bitch.

 

[Stevethulhu]

I never heard this story. But, sometimes I think rpgs could use a pronunciation guide.

When I started playing AD&D, one guy had a selection of weird ways of saying things.

The one I remember best was, there was a three headed monster called a Shimmerer. He used to say Ark-Mage, rather than arch like in archbishop. But j never heard anything other than litch for lich until an episode of Lost Girl where they said lick instead.

 

[E-Rocker]

He used to say Ark-Mage, rather than arch like in archbishop.

I say "ark-angel," not "arch-angel." Not that that often comes up in conversation, unless someone asks why my middle name is what it is, in which case I would tell them it's for St. Michael the Ark-Angel.

 

[Stevethulhu]

I say "ark-angel," not "arch-angel." Not that that often comes up in conversation, unless someone asks why my middle name is what it is, in which case I would tell them it's for St. Michael the Ark-Angel.

Archangel is a weird one. Archbishop, arch chancellor and the like are all arch. But angels have to be special and be ark.

 

[raniE]

There's not much beyond what you said. It's meaning was "a body" or "a form" all the way back to Indo-European word. It's the same root that gives the common word "like", since that word originally was used to mean:
It was the form of a bird => It was like a bird.

It shifted pronunciation during the period when Frisian and English moved away from the other German languages to give the form today, i.e. where it rhymes with bitch.

In Swedish "lik" (pronounced very similarly to English leak) is the normal word for a dead body, and also has the meaning of "like", as you "you look like him" or "these two things are alike".

 

[PolarBlues]

Does anyone know who originally told this story and perhaps on which forum? I'm paraphrasing of course.

GM: You enter the cavern and see a big beautiful fountain lit by magical globes floating above... but in the fountain there is a leak!!!
[The players are confused by his intensity on that last point.]
PLAYER A: ... Ok. Sure. I guess I will approach the fountain to see if there is anything in the water.
GM: What? Are you sure you want to do that, there's a leak right there.
PLAYER A: Yeah, and? Wait, how big is this leak?
GM: Huh? Medium sized, but that doesn't matter, it's a leak!
PLAYER B: ... Oookay, I guess I'll... try to plug the leak with my hands?
GM: What is wrong with you guys!? Fine, the leak gets mad and uses water magic to attack you, roll for initiative.
[Baffled silent pause.]
PLAYER A: How is a leak casting spells? Is this some kind of elemental?
GM: No, it's undead, don't you know anything!?
PLAYER B: Hold on... spell the name of this creature for me.
GM: A leak! L-I-C-H! Leak!

I have nothing useful to say, but this made laugh out loud. That's probably because I was expecting it was going to refer to some obscure, deep D&D lore so the final punchline caught me totally off guard.

 

[Séadna]

I say "ark-angel," not "arch-angel." Not that that often comes up in conversation, unless someone asks why my middle name is what it is, in which case I would tell them it's for St. Michael the Ark-Angel.

It's basically related to whether English borrowed the word directly from Greek (often via Latin) or whether it applied "arch-" to an English word later. The former usually has a "k" and the latter a "ch".

Note interestingly that the original "correct" term for a high wizard in English was archimage as found in Elizabethan writing and borrowed from Greek, being the Greek word for a Persian high priest. And this is still pronounced with a hard "k" by those who still use it*. "Archmage" is a later derived term in fantasy literature done by applying the typical "arch" to mage without knowing that archimage was an available word.

*I've seen it in folklore gathered from Northern England, typically rural Yorkshire.

 

[TJS]

It's basically related to whether English borrowed the word directly from Greek (often via Latin) or whether it applied "arch-" to an English word later. The former usually has a "k" and the latter a "ch".

Note interestingly that the original "correct" term for a high wizard in English was archimage as found in Elizabethan writing and borrowed from Greek, being the Greek word for a Persian high priest. And this is still pronounced with a hard "k" by those who still use it*. "Archmage" is a later derived term in fantasy literature done by applying the typical "arch" to mage without knowing that archimage was an available word.

*I've seen it in folklore gathered from Northern England, typically rural Yorkshire.

I wonder if the origin point of the modern archmage was Ursula Le Guin with a 'A Wizard of Earthsea' (1968)?

If so, I wouldn't be surprised if she was aware of the original usage, and decided to modernise it.

 

[Séadna]

I wonder if the origin point of the modern archmage was Ursula Le Guin with a 'A Wizard of Earthsea' (1968)?

If so, I wouldn't be surprised if she was aware of the original usage, and decided to modernise it.

I'll try and find out, that would be interesting.

 

[robertsconley]

So myrmidon.
Back in the day I developed an anti-paladin idea. I didn't care for the Chaotic Evil Anti-Paladin in Dragon #39. I thought it stupid that chaotic evil would be organized enough to have something like a class based holy warrior. My way of thinking is that a proper anti-paladin is lawful evil. So on that basis I created the Myrmidon picking the name on the basis of it definition as an elite warrior who obeys unquestionably.

I pronounced it as mer-ri-done. And all my friends pronounced it the same way.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/myr_ri_don.mp3

This was circa 1984

Now flash forward to 2004 and Brad Pitt in Troy.

A one point Pitt as Achilles give a speech to his myrmidons.


One of my friend from "back in the day" had the close caption on. We still roleplayed together and the next session he tells us about it and how for over two decades we got it wrong.

So it is mer-mi-don.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/mer_mi_don.mp3

 

[Stevethulhu]

So myrmidon.
Back in the day I developed an anti-paladin idea. I didn't care for the Chaotic Evil Anti-Paladin in Dragon #39. I thought it stupid that chaotic evil would be organized enough to have something like a class based holy warrior. My way of thinking is that a proper anti-paladin is lawful evil. So on that basis I created the Myrmidon picking the name on the basis of it definition as an elite warrior who obeys unquestionably.

I pronounced it as mer-ri-done. And all my friends pronounced it the same way.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/myr_ri_don.mp3

This was circa 1984

Now flash forward to 2004 and Brad Pitt in Troy.

A one point Pitt as Achilles give a speech to his myrmidons.


My one of my friend from back then had the close caption on. We still roleplayed together and the next session he tells us about it and how for over two decades we got it wrong.

So it is mer-mi-don.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/mer_mi_don.mp3

I had a friend who would pronounce Paladin like Aladdin with a P. Never having heard the word said aloud, we just went with it. I was mildly surprised after I left school to find out that was wrong.

 

[AsenRG]

Isn't it pronounced *litch*, like bitch but with an L?

That's how I've always heard it pronounced, FWIW. Litches, bitches, whatever!

But it's still funny.
Next thing, someone shall tell a party of 20th level adventurers they're meeting ork. And it'd turn out he means Orkus.

 

[Séadna]

I wonder if the origin point of the modern archmage was Ursula Le Guin with a 'A Wizard of Earthsea' (1968)?

If so, I wouldn't be surprised if she was aware of the original usage, and decided to modernise it.

Good catch!

Prior to Le Guin "Archimage" is the common word for a powerful wizard.

The spelling "archmage" only appears as a term directly translating the original Persian term for a high priest. Particularly in the first set of major Persian translations in the 1920s, though there are shorter translations from the 1870s in some books and even then the intended pronunciation is "archimage" since books from that era often contain words like "arch-tect" for architect, as the spelling "arch-" was understood to be read as "archi". Many other books from the time citing these translations spell it "archimage".

So it would seem indeed that Le Guin coined the modern pronunciation of the word, as she seems to pronounce the word that way in recordings and first writes it without the hyphen.

 

[Gabriel]

In college, one of my buddies said his game master had an accent, so he became very confused when he was told to "Go north and find the whale in the woods".

Only later did he figure out he meant "WELL in the woods!"

To this day, I try to have a whale in the north woods in all my campaigns.

View attachment 31553

I am SO swiping this.

 

[Gabriel]

The pronunciations I've heard for lich are:

litch (most common and one I've always used)

long I, sounds like Lie-ch. Kind of similar to "like" but a ch at the end instead of hard k.

I've also heard people use the P-alladin pronounciation of Paladin.

Arcangel and Archangel tend to be used pretty interchangably. I think Arcangel is more common. I've never heard anyone use ArcMage or ArcBishop. For those it's always Arch.

 

[Toadmaster]

English is such a messed up language, even those of us who use it as their primary language can't keep it straight.


Did you see the herd of meese?

What?

Meese, you know tall knobby knees, big antlers, Bullwinkle, meese.

Oh, Moose.

Yeah, but a bunch of them so meese...

 

[E-Rocker]

My favorite quirk of the English language is how there are at least eight different ways to pronounce the letter combination "ough."

 

[VisionStorm]

My favorite quirk of the English language is how there are at least eight different ways to pronounce the letter combination "ough."

That's the worst part about learning how to write and pronounce words written English, specially if your native language is more phonetic, like Spanish, where each vowel always has the same consistent sound.

 

[xanther]

Isn't it pronounced *litch*, like bitch but with an L?

or "litk" like lick except with a "t" sound in there.

 

[xanther]

....

I've also heard people use the P-alladin pronounciation of Paladin....

There was another common pronunciation I recall for Paladin, think it was "a**hat"

 

[Lofgeornost]

Good catch!

Prior to Le Guin "Archimage" is the common word for a powerful wizard.

The spelling "archmage" only appears as a term directly translating the original Persian term for a high priest. Particularly in the first set of major Persian translations in the 1920s, though there are shorter translations from the 1870s in some books and even then the intended pronunciation is "archimage" since books from that era often contain words like "arch-tect" for architect, as the spelling "arch-" was understood to be read as "archi". Many other books from the time citing these translations spell it "archimage".

So it would seem indeed that Le Guin coined the modern pronunciation of the word, as she seems to pronounce the word that way in recordings and first writes it without the hyphen.

Tom Shippey made an interesting observation about Le Guin’s words for magic in “The Magic Art and the Evolution of Words in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy,” Mosaic (1977):

Le Guin accordingly makes consistent use of the base-from from which “magic” itself is derived, “mage,” from Latin magus, and from it she creates a series of compounds not recorded in the O.E.D. at all, “Archmage,” “magelight,” “magewind,” “magery,” etc. The point may seem a trivial one, and yet is its close to the trilogy’s thematic centre. The continuous and consistent use of words not familiar to the modern reader reminds him to suspend his judgement: his ideas, like his vocabulary, may be inadequate, or wrong.

 

[Agemegos]

Archangel is a weird one. Archbishop, arch chancellor and the like are all arch. But angels have to be special and be ark.

Like architects, architraves, and archetypes.

 

[Ronin]

Isn't it pronounced *litch*, like bitch but with an L?

Thats how I and everyone I know pronounce it. But what ever, I work in a town thats spelled Charlotte. But pronounced shar-LOT.

 

[E-Rocker]

Y'all ever been to Louisiana? There's a town spelled Natchitoches, which I can't quite pronounce correctly, but the nearest I can relay is "Nak-a-desh."

 

[Simlasa]

That's the worst part about learning how to write and pronounce words written English, specially if your native language is more phonetic, like Spanish, where each vowel always has the same consistent sound.

I used to teach ESL and grew to appreciate having been born into this chaotic mess of a language rather than having to learn it later on.

As for 'liche'... I'm happy to use 'leech' or 'litch'... but 'lick' never sat well with me... 'don't lick the liche' gets stuck in my head.

 

[Silent Green]

That's the worst part about learning how to write and pronounce words written English, specially if your native language is more phonetic, like Spanish, where each vowel always has the same consistent sound.

For me it's the other way round, but I consider English words to be logograms resembling sequences of Latin letters; you have to learn shape, meaning and pronunciation as a unit, farmers produce the produce and all that. This is, of course, a bit cathedralgic if most of your learning is done by reading. I really ought to look up the pronunciations but I'm too lazy for that, although the “inferred” pronunciation has come to bite me every time. Every.

For the record, I initially said leech like bloodsucking worm and learned (though the thread makes me doubt the outcome) to say bitch s/b/l. And PALLA-din.

 

[Séadna]

I've mentioned this before here but even if you are a native English speaker and learn Italian or Spanish your brain will be putting more effort into reading English than your second language. It even starts at a basic level since English has 46 phonemes but only 26 graphs.

 

[TJS]

I've mentioned this before here but even if you are a native English speaker and learn Italian or Spanish your brain will be putting more effort into reading English than your second language. It even starts at a basic level since English has 46 phonemes but only 26 graphs.

At some point over the next century or so I think we will have "Vulgar English" with simplified grammar and reformed spelling

And those of us who are native speakers will have to learn to speak and write the international dialect along with our national dialects (assuming we don't get pulled along).