The SEGA of a different kind
by Blake Snow 
{ Jan 31st 2007 at 1:25AM }
SegaNerds.com has an unhealthy obsession for all things Sega. They scour the internets on a daily basis for any Sega scraps they can muster and deliver them to you in loving form. They even cover stories of companies that merely share the name of the organization they hold so dear. Take Sega Inc. out of Stilwell Kansas, for example. The engineering company employees 100 peeps and was founded in 1973. So how have they not gotten sued by the Japanese gaming giant already? Well, as the company explains on their website, "We pronounce the 'e' in our name with a long 'e' vowel sound, not a long 'a' sound like the game company." SEEGA! It's sorta like the difference between pronouncing "jogging" and "yawgging" with a soft "j."
[Thanks, Chris]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
zagga @ Jan 31st 2007 5:14AM
Isnt it pronounced with the japanese character for 'se'? making the 'e' sound more like the 'e' in 'pen'?
Christopher7xii @ Jan 31st 2007 5:28AM
Pronounced "Say - guh". Just think to all the early 90s commericals where they end with the excited "SAY-GUH!", also when you start a good chunk of games the intro screen with the soft "saaayyy-gguuhhh!"
So while I've always said "seh guh", the company seems to disagree with me.
accidental @ Jan 31st 2007 5:44AM
Yup, I'm in New Zealand and we say it "Seega". You know, it is actually an E (say the letter 'E' now put it inside SEGA – there you go). You guys say "Pen" like "Pan" and you say "Pan" like "Pe-an". It's awesome.
Awesome as in, screwed up.
PurpleSfinx @ Jan 31st 2007 7:09AM
Yeah I always said 'Seega' for the game company too. So does everyone else I know. Maybe it's an Austrlaian thing.
Jon @ Jan 31st 2007 8:08AM
It really shouldnt be that hard to learn how to pronounce it, the genesis sonic games screamed it at you when you turn the system on.
shivr @ Jan 31st 2007 12:46PM
@ accidental
so I guess you pronounce "wii" like "why"?
d'naw how et works upp'n naw zelun', but dawn heah letters 'r havin' all kindsa pronounciations, dependin' on thuh situh-ation.
Richard Mitchell @ Jan 31st 2007 10:00AM
Jogging is supposed to be pretty wild, as I understand it :)
Aradayn @ Jan 31st 2007 10:31AM
Well, actually, suing isn't a problem in this case:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm#7
Even if they were pronounced the same way, I doubt anyone would argue that it's easy to confuse a major game developer and publisher and an engineering firm.
pv845 @ Feb 1st 2007 12:48AM
So that power plant is outside my hometown. Kinda interesting that I didn't realize that Sega was so close.
accidental @ Feb 1st 2007 2:14PM
[ so I guess you pronounce "wii" like "why"? ]
Yeah I did when I first read it, until I looked further and found the two i's were pronounced "ee" same as in "skiing" since there's two i's it's an e sound.
Sega is still one e, with an e sound.
I realise there are different pronounciations in different places.
If you want to write New Zealand and make it sound like how we say it:
"Nyew Zeelund"
Muess @ Feb 1st 2007 9:47AM
I would have thought it should be pronounced seg-ahh similar to the seg in segment.
kip @ Feb 1st 2007 9:59AM
Most people I know say "pen" like "pin", not "pan". I've never heard anyone pronounce "pan" as anything other than "pan".
Also, when a word is transliterated from another language, "e" is typically pronounced like in Latin/Spanish, which is to say, the long "A" sound in English. An "i" is usually used for the long E sound (again, the Latin/Spanish sound for "i"). If it was supposed to be a long E, it should have been spelled "Siga". Which wouldn't be pronounced "Sigga".
We do have a very convoluted language, that has very little to do with phonetics ("ough" can be pronounced something like 14 different ways).