This is a blog for my thoughts on old-school RPGs and whatever else crosses my mind.
For your amusement you may attempt to prounounce the title of my Blog, "The Seven Geases," though I do not recommend it. It is the title of a Clark Ashton Smith story and the word "geas" is apparently the source of some phonetic controversy.
Like many kids who played D&D in the 1980s I was exposed to a multitude of words through reading alone. Using these in public made one sound very erudite, provided they were pronounced correctly. My favorite word "crenulation" is not too hard to figure out, and "wyvern" is bad enough, but no one had ever heard "geas" used in conversation. Although we pronounced it "gi-as" we knew it was wrong.
There is a short but informative thread at The Straight Dope discussing it. It is related to the Gaelic word "geis," and is found in Irish mythology. If you know anything about old Irish words you should know this; they are not pronounced how an American would guess from the spelling. I will go with the the OED where "geas" is pronounced with a "sh-" sound at the end, so "gesh" it is.
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