Saturday, March 8, 2014

Rhum is NOT Rome

One of the first supplements Board Enterprises ever produced was our city supplements on the fantasy city of Rhum. It was the second city designed in the World of Fletnern, and extensive work was done on it. My Rhum Master file is currently 396 pages long. That’s about 680 locations described, and some of those are office buildings filled with service providers.

Anyway - One of the most common questions is how it is pronounced. OK, not a question, because everyone thinks they know. But a lot of people are getting it wrong. It is NOT Rome!!! It’s more like the sound a little boy makes when he is playing with his cars and trucks. “vrroooum”. But not “room” either, and not “rum”, though that’s a lot closer. No, I did not name all my cities based on booze, but yeah, “rum” is about as close as I can hope folks will come.

Years ago, one of our major distributors had a guy working there who’s last name was Rhum. I asked him how his family pronounced it, and yeah, we had it right. By the way - Sorry about all the hassles the guys gave you over us using your name; it was entirely unintentional!
So - Not the most earth shattering blog post, but possibly interesting to some of you.

3 comments:

  1. So, "rum", but with an "h" sound between the R and the U? "R(huh)um", as though the R is huffing at the U?.

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  2. "It’s more like the sound a little boy makes when he is playing with his cars and trucks."

    I have a 2-year old. I know that sound intimately and can reproduce it precisely. :-)

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  3. I got it sort of right. Always figured the RH sound is like the Gaulic, where the R is rolled is followed by an H.

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