Thread: Loh-tro and Law-tro

This is very random... Enjoy nonetheless!

Isn't it true that the Turbine team has it as "Law-tro"? Even though LOTRO is short for Lord of the Rings Online and the word Lord like "oh" at the start... If they're using "Of" it should be "Luh-tro", right? Where's the Law coming from? O_o


Loh-tro

Law-tro


Which one is correct? Now I'm worried I'm saying it wrong haha

The dev team might be saying it like that because they're from Bahston.


I say Loh-tro. I think Law-tro comes from people breaking it up Lot-ro, then of course saying it Lot-tro.

Originally Posted by Fendrone

The dev team might be saying it like that because they're from Bahston.

I hope that doesn't mean they say Lard of the Rangs... something tells me that joke might be accurate O_o Joke aside, I think you're right.

Pretty sure Sapience said "loh-troh" in the recent PAX video interview.

Originally Posted by Tuco

Pretty sure Sapience said "loh-troh" in the recent PAX video interview.

He does? I'll have to check that out. I heard that some/more of them it as Law-tro.

Originally Posted by Fendrone

The dev team might be saying it like that because they're from Bahston.


I say Loh-tro. I think Law-tro comes from people breaking it up Lot-ro, then of course saying it Lot-tro.

I dunno. I'm in Tx and I use a kinda of a phonetic mix between Law-tro and Lot-tro, so I'm not sure that that would be a Bostonian thing.

But then I'm also an Air Force brat so I have no real defined regional accent to begin with, so who knows :P

Originally Posted by Iktomi

I dunno. I'm in Tx and I use a kinda of a phonetic mix between Law-tro and Lot-tro, so I'm not sure that that would be a Bostonian thing.

But then I'm also an Air Force brat so I have no real defined regional accent to begin with, so who knows :P

In Canada, all Americans sound weird.

Originally Posted by Graycient

I hope that doesn't mean they say Lard of the Rangs... something tells me that joke might be accurate O_o Joke aside, I think you're right.

It's a RI/Mass thing - we drop "r" anytime we can :P

Funny though - I never thought of saying the abbreviation as a word. I usually just spell it out /shrug

Originally Posted by Chellcn

It's a RI/Mass thing - we drop "r" anytime we can :P

Funny though - I never thought of saying the abbreviation as a word. I usually just spell it out /shrug

When I'm feeling crabby I reframe the question as "Is MEO (Middle-earth Online) pronounced Mayo or Mee-oh?"

Originally Posted by Tuco

When I'm feeling crabby I reframe the question as "Is MEO (Middle-earth Online) pronounced Mayo or Mee-oh?"

It's rhymes with meow - like a cat.

Loh - troh sounds pretty bad to me. Law-tro is much easier to say.

Why would you make the first "O" a long O? Grammatically there is no reason in English if you follow the basic pronunciation rules.

Had this discussion when I saw the PAX videos.

Lo-tro (as in low) seems odd to me, it is lot-ro (as in parking lot) down this way in Oz.

I'm trying hard to think of any way lot is pronounced as low in other words? (but then I have not had my morning coffee yet, may come to me later). There is 'lo and behold' I guess, the archaism may suit Middle-Earth.

eh, it never struck me to say it any other way than: Low-Trow. Prolly cause it rhymes with itself.
Law-tro, or Lot-roh... no, that hurts to even try to pronounce it as I type it.
(Discussed this prolly 2 or 3 times in the past, my answer has always been Low Trow.

I pronounce it as El-Oh-Tee-Are-Oh, or L-O-T-R-O.

I say it as LOW TRO.

Funny thing though, me and a friend were talking one day, and when i said LOW TRO, he looked at me like i had 120 heads. he said, dude it's totally LOTTRO. Of course i was baffled and argued against it, so in short.......i've heard it both ways. Lottro doesn't sound right to me at all though.

Originally Posted by Griffy

eh, it never struck me to say it any other way than: Low-Trow. Prolly cause it rhymes with itself.
Law-tro, or Lot-roh... no, that hurts to even try to pronounce it as I type it.
(Discussed this prolly 2 or 3 times in the past, my answer has always been Low Trow.

Hmm - how do you pronounce lottery? Pottery?

Pretty sure I read something quite a while back from Sapience that said they (generically at Turbine) pronounce it Low-trow, but don't know if I could find it to quote from....

I say Loh-troh.

When you say 'O', it makes a 'oh' sound, so it only makes sense.

Originally Posted by airsoftg36c

I say Loh-troh.

When you say 'O', it makes a 'oh' sound, so it only makes sense.

Except in pot, lot, tot, got, pottery, lottery ...

When followed by a t the letter o is generally not pronounced oh. No big deal, but really had me surprised when I saw Sapience use the oh pronunciation on the video.

Originally Posted by trcanberra

Except in pot, lot, tot, got, pottery, lottery ...

When followed by a t the letter o is generally not pronounced oh. No big deal, but really had me surprised when I saw Sapience use the oh pronunciation on the video.

but the word is LOTRO, meaning divided is LO-TRO in syllables, thus is LOH-TRO sound right.

Originally Posted by trcanberra

Hmm - how do you pronounce lottery? Pottery?

hmmm... Power Ball, Mega Millions, Pick 4...
Ceramics or Raku (the coolest results ever to come out of a kiln) ...
Heehee! But seriously, yes with double t's of course I pronounce it Lot ter ee, and Pot ter ee.

If it was Lottro, maybe it'd be different. Lord of the Twelve Rings... *wanders off to ponder a script and mmo now*
I guess it just depends on how you separate your syllables to the acronym. Lot-ro, or Lo-tro. I deem neither wrong, but I just might have to ask you to repeat yourself on vent/ts, if I misunderstand what you said. (Then again, I might ask you to repeat yourself, just to listen to whatever accent someone has. *grinz*)

It's been Low trow ever since the beginning for me and my brother. Any other way sounds wrong to me.

Originally Posted by Fendrone

In Canada, all Americans sound weird.

And vice, of course, versa. Anybody remember Robert MacNeil (a Canadian who spent most of his career reading the news in the US on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report), in his series "The Story of English," standing on the US/Canadian border, pointing to someone's dwelling, and saying, "On this side of the border, that's a house. Over there, it's a h@use." (Using @ for schwa, since my keyboard doesn't have one.) His tongue was, as it were, double-jointed.

Originally Posted by Alcaniel

Pretty sure I read something quite a while back from Sapience that said they (generically at Turbine) pronounce it Low-trow, but don't know if I could find it to quote from....

Well, can't somebody go to the next PAX East and corner a few devs and ask them?

Originally Posted by trcanberra

Except in pot, lot, tot, got, pottery, lottery ...

When followed by a t the letter o is generally not pronounced oh. No big deal, but really had me surprised when I saw Sapience use the oh pronunciation on the video.

This.

Originally Posted by Al.

but the word is LOTRO, meaning divided is LO-TRO in syllables, thus is LOH-TRO sound right.

What? It's not a word, it's an acronym. How exactly are you determining the first syllable is "lo" rather than " lot?"

If you can't tell, I'm in the LAH-tro camp. I'm also a Californian, so it's not regional. In summary, the way I see it, the correct pronuciation would be: "DUDE, brau! Why you gotta harsh on me for playin lahtro?"

Dual-wield for the win! Oh, sorry. Wrong argument.

Lot as in pot
Row as in no

If you're British that definitely seems like the automatic way of saying it, I can understand saying low-trow in other accents though.

As it's not actually a word neither way if wrong or right!


Now.... how do you pronounce LMAO?! or PMSL? haha..

the rest of us have known this for quite some time but its always nice to get confirmation
You Yanks are bloody bonkers!!
Are they putting something in the water over there???
And you think us Aussies are strange you lot are just Wooooooooooah

oh and its Lotro (Low-as in close to the ground / Trow - like crow) ;p

LMAO - LmayO
*ducks*

Originally Posted by Graycient

Loh-tro

Law-tro


Which one is correct? Now I'm worried I'm saying it wrong haha

It's Loh-tro, unless of course it's the 3rd Tuesday of the sixth month of an odd year and there's a full moon
...or you're wearing green underthings
...or you're just really into the whole Law and Order franchise and you just *know* it began back in Middle Earth with Frodo, Golum and the whole ring debacle
...or maybe you've got that speech impediment (er, accent) that makes you pronounce things funny.

Not so sure about loh-tro or low-tro etc but my wife calls it "that #x!@*& game you keep playing"

Definitely Lot-ro, pronounced as in plot-crow.

Originally Posted by trcanberra

I'm trying hard to think of any way lot is pronounced as low in other words?

Let's see...lotion, lotus.....

Sorry, that's all I got. Preponderance of evidence for the short "o."

And bending that o sound away from "ah" (as heard in "plot," "Scott," and "rotten") toward "aw" reminds me of an old girlfriend from Boston, who called her friends back home "Bawby" and "Tawmy."

I say it both ways

Thank god I'm a Finn. Our language doesn't have any weird pronunciantion rules - we pronounce everything literally, letter by letter. Nothing gets modified or skipped, except in a few very rare cases. In abbreviations of foreign terms, our pronunciation couldn't really be more clear. We have a very simple language indeed... ;P


Feel free to try it out. Our pronunciation I mean. Good word for practice would be... hmm.. how about "kolmivaihekilowattituntimitta ri?" It's a real word; in fact, it's a device used in three-phase systems for measuring electric energy consumption in kilowatt hours. It also seems to be too long word for these forums to cope with, which is the reason for that weird space before "ri?". That space doesn't belong there...

Originally Posted by Wingeman

Let's see...lotion, lotus.....

Sorry, that's all I got. Preponderance of evidence for the short "o."

And bending that o sound away from "ah" (as heard in "plot," "Scott," and "rotten") toward "aw" reminds me of an old girlfriend from Boston, who called her friends back home "Bawby" and "Tawmy."

Awesome - looks like we have great examples either way.

Now - next conundrum - did the decade end in 2009 or 2010??

1. Not all 'Bostonians' drop their r's. Aaight?
2. Low-tro sounds better because it has a rhyming quality to it.
3. None of the standard rules for pronunciation apply to abbreviations.
4. You are all wrong. It is pronounced lew-TREE-AHHHHHHHHHHHH-WHOOOO!

And you really have to belt those last three syllables out like you're going to war!!!! Brothers and Sisters!!!!

Well, don't blame Bostonians for skipping R's without considering other people who have similar behaviours. Brits, for example, often skip their T's, even if there's two of them.

"Wha'ever. It's like the le'ers don't even ma'er..." -Elon Gold

Originally Posted by djheydt

Well, can't somebody go to the next PAX East and corner a few devs and ask them?

I live fairly close to their offices, but I don't think they'd appreciate a player knocking on the door and demanding a correct pronunciation lol

Originally Posted by hex2323

1. Not all 'Bostonians' drop their r's. Aaight?

I see what you did there... :P

Let's take a look at the two (or more) syllable words that begin with "LOT" that have popped up in this thread:

lotto
lottery
lotus
lotion

LOTRO? It really comes down to which syllable you stick the "t" sound on (which is why we can ignore single syllable words for this exercise). LAHT-RO, or LOW-TRO.

The words on our list with the "ah" have two "t"s together, so it makes sense to split them and stick one
"t" with the first syllable. Not so with low-tus or low-shun, where the "t" goes with the second syllable. The "tr" go especially well together. (And POT, POTTERY, and POTION follow this pattern as well, by the way.)

The general rule mentioned above is incomplete. More accurately:
A single "o" followed by a terminating "t" is short in words of one syllable.
A single "o" followed by a single "t" in multi-syllable words is long.
A single "o" followed by a double "tt" in multi-syllable words is short (the "t"s are split).

LOTRO has a single "t", so based on this, LOW-TRO is the optimal fit with our list. The acronym is LOTRO, not LOTTRO.

Never in a million years could you have convinced me I'd one day be involved in a conversation about how to properly bastardize the title of The Lord of The Rings (Online). This is crazy. You're all crazy. It's making me crazy! Normal people don't be acting this way! ALL I WANTED WAS A PEPSI! JUST ONE PEPSI!

Pulling out my crypto dictionary and looking for lot<consonant> (since a single consonant followed by a vowel is usual a long O anyway), I get:

loth (long o, variant of loath)
Lotharingia (long o, the duchy that eventually became Lorraine)
Lothario (long o)
lothsome (long o, variant of loathsome)
lotment (short o)
lotrite (long o, the only lotr*)
lots (short o)
lots of words with double t, all short.

You're justified in going either way... until we standardize on Finnish or Esperanto.