Pronunciation of "Nausicaä"

nah-see-kah-ah

or perhaps

now-see-kah-ah

One of those A's at the end has the umlaut and the other doesn't, so both are pronounced, though it's not emphasized.


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Well... since 'ä' is a regular letter in my language (Swedish) pronounced like 'eh', and the swedish 'a' sounds "warmer" then the english 'a', 'a+ä' together would sound something like 'aye' when pronounced at normal speed. So at first I pronounced it "Nau-seek-aye". But then after seeing the movie, I kind of liked the japanese pronounciation and got used to that one instead!

I wonder if Miyazaki intended there to be any connection between this Nausicaa and the one in Homer's Odyssey? I didn't see any particular connection myself--so maybe he just liked the name. Anyway, the name of the princess in Homer is pronounced now-see-KAY-ah.

Na-uh-shi-kaa

Granted, it is pronounced differently than the original greek character's name but, in this case, it is a borrowed western word and the closest the Japanese could come to it was my above pronunciation(basically, the word broken up into the closest sounding Japanese equivalents). Also, you should kind of run the first two syllables together as opposed to enunciating each separately(as my text-based breakdown of the word could imply otherwise).

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