Poll: So, How Do You Pronounce 'Live A Live'?

@dartmonkey
I think there's a typo at the fourth option: shouldn't /lɪv ə laɪv/ be /lɪv ə lɪv/ ?

I pronounce it /laɪv ə laɪv/ even though it sounds very weird.

Edit: the typo has been fixed.

Tomayto A Tomahto

I follow whatever the great Mr. Nintendo Direct Voiceover Guy has chosen for me.

In japanese, it's ライブ・ア・ライブ. So it's /ˈlaɪv ə ˈlaɪv/

this isn't up for debate. The game has had ライブ・ア・ライブ written on its box art since 1994.

I always thought it was called "Mombo Number Five".

Live A Live. Easy.

I pronounce it as "Triangle Strategy" because its the same issue

Liv a liv and no amount of official pronunciation otherwise is going to change that.

Johnny Five Alive

"lihv-ah-lihv" is not quite "liver-live"

@Justaguest lol, in spite of being a terrible name, there's no pronunciation crusade around Triangle Strategy.

Smoliv a Smoliv.

Thanks guys, for inspiring what is perhaps my dumbest ever comment on this site.

Live-Alive like “Jive-a-Jive,” per the katakana reading.

The relative lack of ambiguity in how to pronounce Japanese writing is one thing I really like about the language.

Oh, and vertical screen orientation for your flip-grip, etc is “tah-tay” mode. “Tate” like “eight” sounds just doofy. 🙃

At least Katakana lets you know the correct pronunciation. I’d say /laɪv ə laɪv/.

Leev-a-laiv ever since I learned of the game's existence some good fifteen years ago, so I don't envision this old dog taught new tricks. I screw up English pronunciations and stresses on a daily basis anyway (especially the many "able/ible" adjectives😓😆), so what's one more? Be thankful I don't call Gust's signature franchise "At-leer".😈

/gɛt ə laɪf/ !

@NinChocolate potayto a pohtato

The direct spokesman called it “liv-alive,” so that’s what it is called.

@Silly_G
I liked it.
Made me laugh.

Weirdly, I say it as “Life a live”. Makes more sense to me than Live a live.

I've always called it "liv alive" because that's what made sense to me, it makes it sound like a catch phrase, "I just try to live alive every day."
But since I heard the very deliberate pronunciation in the Direct, I've been saying it the same way the Nintendo staff do.

It's BlazBlue and Arceus all over again.

In cases like this, I go with how it was pronounced in its original language, so it's "laɪv ə laɪv" for me.

I always thought it was liv a laiv until the Direct where I heard someone pronounce it. Now I try to pronounce it laiv alaiv.

LIV-ALIVE for the win!

https://youtu.be/rFrPz1WkBvk

Maybe should have made this a video.

@TheBigK Agreed

Well, one thing we can all agree on... Square Enix makes the worst game titles around.

How to pronounce "ghoti"?

"fish", because "gh"is from "tough", "o" is from "women", and "ti" is from "vacation".

When I first saw the cover I thought it was called Live A Evil. Now I go with Liv Alive. I like the meaning and it sounds good.

laɪv ə laɪv. I know game's name in rōmaji - raibu a raibu, which translates in English as live a live. So, I pronounce it right - as laɪv ə laɪv.
I'm hope that more English-speaking gamers will pay attention to the original Japanese names, if we are talking about Japanese games.

Ik think it's "live a life"
It has tot do with the role playing aspect of this game.

@Teksetter Counter point: tay-tay sounds doofy. Tate, like eight, makes much more sense when we already have words like mate and late in English. Oh and not forgetting the Tate Modern art gallery.

Live a(nd let) Live.

Liver? There's no R in the title.

@DjinnFighter That's what I've been working from, so I do the same thing.

@calbeau I figure it's gotta be "Arc-eus" 'cause of the Arc Phone in that same game. Otherwise, we'd be calling it the "Arse Phone" LOL

It's lie-valive. It's written in katakana in the Japanese version, which is a phonetic spelling.

English is broken, everybody knows it

@Gaviin Definitely. For example, the history of how the first game got its name aside, the Final Fantasy series shows no respect for the word "final."

I pronounce it, “game series I have never played.”

@OwenOtter Hahah, yes. Also, I believe its pronunciation was already decided since Arceus was first introduced.

@JamminOnThe1 The “liver-liv” one is referencing a certain British accent, got a damn good laugh at that one. “Oi guv! You played Liver-Liv?! I reckon it’s a beaut uv a game, ay!”

@Tyranexx French-fries

@BloodNinja lol gotcha

I think I've been saying Live a Life, just rolled off the tongue better.

@Justaguest What issue? There's no ambiguity about how to pronounce "Triangle Strategy."

@Kiz3000
Feel free to say “teight,” mate, but it’s “tah-tay” ‘cuz this is Japanese parlez 😉

Jai Alai. I thought this was a sports game.

It'll always be "LIV-ALIVE", don't care how it's supposed to be pronounced.

Live-alive flows nicely to an English ear, and it makes sense. Only other way I wpuld think is "Live a Life", which may be too on the nose, squareenix

I always pronounced it as liv a liv. So imagine my surprise when the Nintendo direct guy pronounced it laiv a laiv.

I always thought it was a mistranslation from Japanese and it should be called Live A Life, since you are living multiple lives in the game

@Teksetter I've known it was pronounced tah-tey for decades, and literally every time I say it out loud what comes of my mouth is TAYT. I can't get the Tate Museum out of my head.

I also say liv a liv even though I know it's wrong.

I think it's pronounced
"High five, more dead than alive
Rockin the plastic like a man from the catskills/casket"

Live A Evil. Similar to the Miles Davis album.

@aznable “Going back to Houston to get me some pants.”

I pronounce it "The demo was just ok, I might get it on sale"

@Nancyboy I see you are a man of culture as well.

I've been pronouncing it in the fourth variation, but now that I've seen it written out "LIVER-LIV", it shall now permanently be "Liver a Live" (which rhymes with "Giver a Give") to me.

"leave ah leave"

Come on, we all know it's "fax ANNA doo"

I do remember the game title being pronounced in the original game, by "SQUARE SOFT!"

I think it was Live a Life, but they just made a mistake translating it back in the day.

This is not "Live is Life" from Opus 🤮

@Friendly That must be it, because Live a Live doesn't make any sense.

I've always pronounced it like Liv A Lie-v.

@Moroboshi876 yeah, and the game is about living eight lives.

I’m a fan of “as wrong as possible”, Lie-Valiv sounds very convincing in that regard.

I dunno, maybe just ask the creator how to pronounce it.

Labuschagne like champagne.

as others have stated, the official japanese title ライブ・ア・ライブ is undeniably the first option, however, the poll's question is how to i pronounce it (not what is the "correct" pronunciation) so I go with the second option, because it doesn't sound idiotic in english lmao

It's "Live Alive"
Like 'We're coming at you LIVE' and 'The Legend is Alive'.

The first way is the only correct way. Squaresoft used to say it that way, the Nintendo Direct said it that way, even the katakana on the original box says it that way.

lɪv ə lɪv
There is no other way to pronounce it.

@NintendoWife That’s the correct way though, haha.

I'm convinced they decided to remake Live A Live to continue the proud tradition of HD-2D games having strangely descriptive yet confusing names.

Regardless of how you say it, what does it even mean? How does it relate to the game? The fact it's multiple stories I would've thought it was supposed to be "live a life"

@JasmineDragon
Oh I hear you, it took lots of Japanese classes to stop using English pronunciation of syllables.
Prior to that, I was playing Ninja GAYden trying not to commit harry-carry with RAI-yuu Hayaboosa 😅

Im surprised anyone picked anything other than 2.

I pronounce it “Remake of the year!”

I've been following "Legacy Music Hour" protocol and pronouncing it ""LIV-ALIVE" /lɪv ə laɪv/" (or "giver jive" by the NL distinction). It's a game that has also been featured once on our show once as well (C2E5 "Nihon Dake De" - where my co-host Hugues brought the VERY "Ken's Theme"-like "Knock You Down") and referenced a couple other times in addition to that, where it has also been pronounced this way.

You know, if we could just see the Japanese katakana for Live-A-Live, that'd probably straighten this all right up! I'll go have a look, and reply-to-self if I find it. I'm not so married to the pronunciation that I would refuse to abandon it if we can get conclusive katakana confirmation to the contrary. But until then, it's "giver jive" in the book of NNR!

Cheers!

@NerdNoiseRadio ライブ・ア・ライブ - (raibu a raibu)....so, that's that. I've been wrong this whole time, and Legacy Music Hour (for as fantastic as they are) "done told us all wrong"! 🤣

It is "LIE-VALIVE" /laɪv ə laɪv/ (or, "jiver jive")....and that's that! One may cling to an alternate pronunciation if they so wish...but they cannot do so CORRECTLY. And as such, I'll immediately abandon the "giver jive" I've enjoyed this whole time, and issue a correction on our next "Channel 2" episode!

I'd have been even happier had it turned out to be what I've been calling it this whole time....but at least the ambiguity is cured, and now I know for certain what the real answer is - and that by itself feels nice!

Cheers!

@Tyranexx LOL I remember when fast food chains were pushing the “freedom fries” term.

@DjinnFighter Yep. Came here to say this. /laɪv ə laɪv/ is the only answer.

I just pronounce it "pass".

Live a live, doesn’t get much simpler.

How is Liv-a-Liv not one of the options? I think that's how the develope actually pronounces it. It's still gonna be Lie-v Ah Lie-v to me.

I pronounce it Live Alive and I don't care if it's wrong. It's the Ar-see-us/Ar-key-us situation.

It's pronounced Another One Bites The Dust: The RPG.

@Tyranexx Yes!!

They say it like "Laive Alive" so that how to say it. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Honestly, thank you for posting this article/poll

I swear I think about this daily and how the heck you’re supposed to pronounce it haha
I was ready to google it finally and bam this popped up.
I always pronounce it “Live Alive” in my head but wonder if it’s “Liv uh liv”
I hope someday we all figure this out.

@BloodNinja You can? Which chains? I seem to remember the idea of freedom fries being mostly a joke that fell out of favor almost instantly and was wholly ignored by major companies. It was akin to the renaming of sauerkraut and frankfurters during WWII.

@CountDrakeulah If my memory serves me, Burger King, Carl's Jr, Wendy's, IHOP and Denny's. Happened in the early 2000's, supposedly a response to the French being against whatever war we were fighting in the Middle East at the time. Weird nation we are, sometimes!

Yeah, it’s potato potato really

LONG-WINDED REPLY ALERT!

@Kestrel I mean, hey, if what's more comfortable to you as an English speaker about a Japanese game with an English title where the Japanese Katakana clears up the Japanese creator's English intent is more important to you than said Japanese creator's actual English intent, then, go nuts, I guess. "Liv-a-Laiv" it is (or "baked potato" for as much as it would matter at that point - your options are that point are as infinite as the entirety of the English language itself).

But if the Japanese creator's English intent (as merely REVEALED by the Katakana), is more important, then your choices are a) "Laiv-a-laiv", b) "Laiv-a-laiv", or c) "Laiv-a-laiv".

This one isn't a matter of Japanese language rules vs English language rules. This is ultimately a question of English. -BUT- it is a question of English -AS INFORMED BY- the Japanese syllabary for words of foreign origin (katakana, as opposed to hiragana, the syllabary for words of Japanese origin, or Kanji, the ideographic symbols carried over from Chinese Hanzí).

Perhaps it's a tad bit reductionist to do so, but you can almost think of Katakana as the opposite of Romaji. Romaji is Japanese words in our writing system, such as "tanoshii desu ne" (trans. "this is fun, right?"), where Katakana is our words (or any non-native Japanese word) in their writing system (such asコンピューター or "computer"). Only, since the Japanese language has vastly fewer unique sounds than English (something crazy, like 110 vs 8000), the more complex pronunciation of English words is reduced to the more limited sounds available in Japanese, and thus, "computer" becomes "konpyutah", "Playstation" becomes "pureisuteishon" (a la the late 90's early 00's Playstation commercials), or more relevantly, "Laiv-a-laiv" becomes "raibu-a-raibu". If it had been "liv-a-laiv" that had been intended instead, then I suspect the Katakana would've looked something more like リブ・ア・ライブ ("reebu a raibu").

So, again, this is ultimately not a question of "how Japanese works". This is simply a matter of a moment in language where there is ambiguity in our own writing system which is cleared up by cross referencing the same thing as expressed in their writing system (or more properly, ONE OF their writing systemS).

In light of this, you can call it whatever you want...and be happy...but you can only call it one thing....and be correct. If you've read my earlier comments, you'll already know that I too had been pronouncing it "Liv-a-laiv" this whole time, as I followed the Legacy Music Hour example in feeling that this was the most intuitive, linguistically comfortable, and "obvious reading as an English speaker ". But looking at the Katakana pointed out my error and set me straight. And now I'm going to try to retrain my brain to adjust accordingly, and try to start saying "Laiv-a-laiv" (even though, yes, that's awkward as hell!) 🤣

But what YOU do with this info (if you even bothered to read it in the first place) is entirely up to you, my man. I can only lead you to it.

Cheers!

@NerdNoiseRadio Yeah man,there's no "English intent" here — Japanese is a phonetic language, and that includes foreign loan-words. There's only ever one way to pronounce English words in Japanese as a result--no one is picking and choosing a specific pronunciation.

And, yeah, "you can only call it one thing... and be correct," is a perfectly valid argument... if we were all speaking in Japanese here. We're not. You've noticed this, right? We're all speaking English here, and in English there is no singular, universally correct pronunciation of any word.

Also, wow, what a weird hill.

Why does the majority pronounce it wrong? Lol.

I never imagined it to be anything other than "live" with a long "i" sound followed by "alive" which also has a long "i" sound. The other pronunciations would literally never have occurred to be as being correct. 🤷‍♂

If you can't read the question in English, you don't get to sneer about the answer.

@Kestrel no, no. That still misses the point. Live (liv) and Live (laiv) are two separate English words. They're closely related words, sure. They're two words which are spelled the same, like "trunk of an elephant" vs "trunk of a car"...also sure. But they're still two different words that have slightly different meanings, and, unlike our "trunk/trunk" example, noticeably different pronunciations. But most important of all, they are not interchangeable without significantly altering the meaning of a sentence.

The first mistake you're making here is this: it's not a case of "potayto" vs "potahto" or "tomayto" vs "tomahto", it's a case of "live from New York, it's Saturday night" vs "I don't want to die, I want to live". And all the Katakana does for us here - that even our own roman alphabet cannot do for us is to specify which of the two separate, similar, but technically different English words were being used / intended by the Japanese creator. And on each side of the "-a-", it just so happens to be the "live from New York" one. I suppose we could put it this way: in writing, the words are indistinguishable without the aid of context. And to be sure, "Live-A-Live" itself gives us no context. But the Katakana's specificity here gives us the missing context we need. Your second mistake is to presume this is a Japanese vs English thing here, when really, it's English vs English with the Japanese simply providing the clarity.

tl;dr: We're dealing with two different words, not two different opinions over how to pronounce one word. And it's just a weird quirk that we need to appeal to the Japanese writing system to settle the ambiguity for us.

So, as I said, you are absolutely free to be wrong, if being comfortable is more important than being right to you. But to help put the error in better perspective for you: to argue "liv-a-laiv" is an equally valid pronunciation here as "Laiv-a-laiv" is PRECISELY as valid or as invalid of an argument (not one iota more or less valid) than to argue "'liv' from New York, it's Saturday night', or "I don't want to die, I want to 'laiv'" are valid pronunciations of the previous examples - that do NOT change the original sentences' meanings in the process.

If that's something which you'd REALLY want to attempt to argue here, then your "rightness / wrongness" factor is....well.....precisely identical to what it has been this whole time, at which point I suppose I would be euphemistically polite enough to simply say "then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree". Failing your willingness to attempt such a silly argument, then if being comfortable is more important than being correct, then by all means, please continue to enjoy "liv-a-laiv". Hell, I would even agree with you that it -IS- more comfortable! Way more comfortable! I don't really actually like "Laiv-a-laiv" very much, if we're being honest! Failing that also, though.... well, then welcome to the exact same boat I am finding myself in: learning to reprogram my "mental muscle memory" on this matter away from something I like much better to something I like much less, and start calling it "Laiv-a-laiv" instead of "liv-a-laiv". Because once again, until yesterday....until the facts forced me to do otherwise....I would've totally been on your side on this.

But hey, listen, if absolutely nothing else, a SINCERE thank you for reading that whole thing and engaging with it. Truly. Most people don't have the mental energy to deal with anything longer than a tweet, and would've simply "tl;dr'd it" and moved on. But not you. So, I do sincerely appreciate the engagement, @Kestrel.

If, after everything I've had you read, you feel like replying back, I would at least owe you the courtesy of reading it. So I'll be sure to do so. But my guess is that this is where things will probably begin to wind down. And if so, a completely genuine "all the best"!

Cheers!

@Ralizah I was talking about Squares interesting choice of names for their titles

@San_D I know.. It was juat a bad dig at them picking bad names for their games.

I always read it as Live Alive.

So live as in live animals or live music then alive. So live Alive.

Isn't there a folk type song that goes 'live a live oh'?

You pronounce it with such a thick Japanese accent as to render the actual words all but unintelligible, in order to properly convey the native meaning of the title.

I have no clue how to pronounce such a simple name, so I just call it that "Live game on Switch"

I pronounce it “NotGonnaBuy”

@somebread It's because you're from the US and you pronounce the rhotic "R" in liver. Nintendolife is a UK-based site, and British English speakers don't vocalize the final R, so they say "car" like "cah". Lihv-ah-lihv sounds exactly like liver-live to them.

But like everyone says, the official pronunciation is /laɪv ə laɪv/ and there's no argument.

@HADAA i'd argue the tempo implied is slightly different ("liver-live" without the IPA implies less of a stop/more slurring between sounds, could put this in better words but my linguistics course was like a year ago) but yes it's a dialect-based thing

the article is asking how we pronounce it, not whether that's the correct way, i don't really assume there's any argument

@Azuris Well, to be fair other languages want you to know the gender of a pencil or have 20 different names for the same thing. So, English isn't perfect but no languages are.

It's two lives, like you are untruthful and tell a lie. Live A Live.