this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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From the article linked on this very post:
They're being diplomatic. From Wikipedia:
It's clear that it's named after the play. It's also clear that the devs really don't care how you say it.
Personally, I think I'll start doing god-ot, as in "got it".
Isn't butchering the french language cultural genocide or something?
"Like the play" - but where does the stress go? On the final syllable, as in French? (The play was originally written in French.) On the first syllable, as is more usual in British pronunciation of French words? (The author was Irish and apparently this is how he pronounced it - when speaking English.)
That's exactly the problem with prescriptive pronunciations -- they tend to break down depending on how narrow the transcription, which means they're arbitrary anyway.
If it is truly based on the play, then it would have to be /go.'do/, like the French.
/'go.do/ is indeed an anglicized pronunciation.
Source: am a professional linguist.
Edit: and we should not forget: all human language is ultimately arbitrary in terms of form, modulo limits of human articulation. This is often referred to as Saussure's Principle of Arbitrariness. Which is to say: no one should get bent out of shape about how people pronounce things. If the information transfer was successful, nothing else really matters from a linguistic standpoint.
That's partly what I myself tried to hint at with the question and the parenthetical remarks. Various forms have their own claims to "legitimacy".
And the whole issue somewhat surprised me, because I never even considered that there were these different pronunciations at all. I'm not a native English speaker, and I've always used a more French-like pronunciation of "Godot" that is used in my native language. I expected neither the inital stress nor the -ough diphthong in English, but a more French-like pronunciation. As much as I feel comfortable in English and use it every single day, some of these quirks in pronunciation can still catch me off-guard.
I think either is probably fine. Apparently the French stress the syllables equally, not just the second so it's a minor difference.
Actually I just listened to the French pronunciation and it sounds more like they do stress the first syllable to me:
https://youtu.be/fN1VwDpxbXQ?si=1VcffgqbwRelS8zY
According to what I've read, they do stress the final syllable of the phrase (including multiple words). To foreign ears, this is simplified into always stressing the final syllable.
I absolutely don't trust videos such as the one you link because they're frequently made by non-natives. I've personally seen a number of them using obvious non-native (English) pronunciation. Also, I'd say that particular recording has equal prominence on both syllables. But I wouldn't take it to be representative of French either way.
https://youtu.be/__bLxInvVsM - this should be better