On Prouncing Ghibli and Staying Alive.

For a long time now I’ve wondered how the word ‘ghibli’ (as in Studio Ghibli) should be pronounced. It’s taken me a long time to get around to it, but today I finally researched the issue and now I’m going to give the five readers of this blog the benefit of my effort.

(It’s a bit complicated, but not very.)

The European origin of the word is Italian and refers to a desert wind. It’s pronounced Gibley (hard g). The Italians, however, purloined the word from Libyan Arabic where it refers to a desert wind and several other things depending on the context. Fortunately, the Libyan Arabic pronunciation is similar enough to the Italian as makes little difference, so you’re still OK with Gibley.

Ah, but… The Japanese, who have a certain proprietorial interest in the matter since Studio Ghibli is a Japanese studio, pronounce it more or less as ‘Jiburri’. (The ‘r’ is a little troublesome because Europeans swallow their tongues, turn blue in the face, and die if they try to pronounce an ‘r’ the way the Japanese do.) But never mind; ‘Jibburi’ is close enough.

So where do we go from here?

Well, since I’m not Japanese, never have been, and don’t particularly want to die with a blue face, I feel that it would be a little pretentious – and not entirely accurate unless I’m happy with the prospect of suffocation – to use ‘Jibburi.’ So from now on I’m going to use ‘Gibley’, since that’s close enough to both the Libyan Arabic and Italian pronunciation.

Do you feel better now, all five of you? I hope so.