Its "ra a ghoul" i think

To further muddy the "hubba hubba hubba who do ya trust" on character pronunciation, the creator or the dictionary..

2000AD has a character (they'll be VS cards, its on topic!) called SLÁINE, a celtic irish warrior. He's called "Slain" by everyone in the UK. Irish people called him "Slaw-nyeh", which is how it would be pronounced in gaelic.

Cue comic book nerd war.

Turns out, years later, the writer who created the character, just stuck a fada (the squiggly bit) on the A to mnake it more celtic, and he pronounced him "Slain", and was horrified at the contortions irish people had put their mouths through :-)

Brian
who prefers "darkseed", but thinks its darkside

As I've ranted about before on other boards, English is German and German is English.

And in German, the SECOND vowel in a pair is the one that's pronounced. Every single time. (It is German, and Germans are incapable of being inconsistent.) In German, "Darkseid" would necessarily be pronounced "Dark Side."

And in English, too. Haven't you ever wondered why our language has so many vowel pairs that are pronounced weirdly? The "i before e" thing is a problem, and confusing, because often the "ie" and "ei" pairs are sometimes pronounced Deutsche fashion, and sometimes not. Hence the problem.

Even today, after centuries of "correction," the German pronunciation rears its Teutonic head unexpectedly. Like in "Teutonic," where the second vowel, the "u," is pronounced, and we ignore the first. Or "siege," where we pronounce the second vowel and ignore the first. Or "special," where we pronounce the second vowel and ignore the first. All German, folks, all the time.

And thus it is with "Darkseid," where we pronounce the second vowel and ignore the first. Jacob Kurtzberg, who invented the character, grew up in a Jewish household where Yiddish was the norm. Yiddish is primarily German, with a smattering of Hebrew (Aramaic). In fact, Yiddish is primarily German in nomenclature and pronunciation, if not sentence structure and construction.

Did I mention German again? There it is. Jack Kirby probably didn't think twice when he named "Darkseid," and fully expected us non-Yids to pronounce it the way he did, and the way most people he knew would pronounce it.

If Kirby had meant for it to be "Dark Seed," he'd have spelled it Darksied. It never would have occurred to him to do otherwise.

Simon Bisley will always be a better artist than Alex Ross. How's that for a first volley?

Well apparently the correct pronunciation in Arabic where the named originated from, Raysh Al Ghoul, doesn't matter to the forum goers, even though there's still some argument on it even though my last post should've ended it. I mean I asked a native speaker of the language and Raysh=head al=the and ghul=demon. Case Closed on the correct pronunciation but anyone else is free to pronounce it as they please.

For Darkseid, watch Justice Legue. The way they pronounce it is the way it is pronounced.

And the above poster is right in the translation.