Ever since RPGs began in 1997 with the launch of Final Fantasy VII, players have argued about the correct pronunciation of Cait Sith, the name of a potential party member in a game full of better options. As there was no audio dialogue, only text, players came up with creative fiction and dug their heels in, like our one friend who steadfastly insisted it was pronounced "Cat Sit".
As Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth features a playable, voiced Cait Sith, Square Enix has finally decided the time has arrived to set the record straight. More than two decades later, on a quiet Wednesday morning and apropos of literally nothing, we get this:
Cait Sith, then, is pronounced "Kate Sihth", surprising no one except a vocal minority who, as it turns out, were egregiously wrong all these years, and thus the retconning will begin.
How have you been pronouncing Cait Sith? Is this the confirmation you've been seeking, or the shattering of an internalised truth? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 53
I've been pronouncing it right the whole time. But Cat Sit? No no no no... No. Unacceptable.
This is as monumental as them telling us the “X” button on the PlayStation controller is actually called the “cross” button. Preposterous!
What next? Sackboy is actually 8 feet tall?!
Interesting, I could have sworn the proper localization would be pronounced as "F***ING BAS***D" 🤔 Boy I was way off...
This what I always called him. I heard others would say it differently but forget what they said because it never made sense.
Now if only capcom can fix Tie-grex and not Tea-grex.
I always thought it was that in my head. I recently saw a YouTube vid and the person pronounced it in an insane way like Ket Shi.
Also… how do you pronounce “chocobo”? I’ve been saying “choke-a-bow” but they’re saying “chauk-a-bow” in FF16. What?!
@Th3solution
Aside from 16 every other FF game with voice acting pronounced it as "choke-co-bow" so I just go with that.
Phonetics win again.
I've never played Final Fantasy VII, and why is there a bigass cat in the game, and where do I get a plush of it?
I've always known it was pronounced "Kate sihth" but I always say it cat sihth b/c cat. 😂
Me and my brothers were terrible with names of Final Fantasy characters. We pronounced “Cait Sith” as “St Sith” and “Seifer” from Final Fantasy VIII as “Sefire”.
Well, technically that's the incorrect way to say it, because Cait Sith is based on the gaelic fairytale creature of the same name, and there you pronounce it as "Ket Shi".
But hey, it is BASED on it so I guess they can change it if they really want to.
Edit: It appears the Japanese version uses a similar pronunciation to the gaelic one too, so it's a localisation change.
I've always been saying it that way, I didn't even know there was a different way.
@HotGoomba A talking cat that rides atop a gigantic Moogle.
And to say why it exists would spoil some story.
So nothing to see here becuase we've all been saying it that way since 1997?
@GamingFan4Lyf Please don't spoil Dirge of Cerberus, we're about to find out!
@Th3solution This is the real question. I REFUSE to believe it's CHAULK-o-bow. It has always been CHO-CO-BOW/CHOKE-A-BOW.
Apparently Ben Starr(Clive's VA), who is a life long FF fan, had always thought Ifrit was pronounced IF-RIT, but it's actually EE-FREET, and he had to unlearn that for the role. I had always thought it was IF-RIT was well...
Tide-us or Tee-dus. You decide!
@HotGoomba I won't spoil it, but Cait Sith is one of the characters that fans point to when arguing that classic FF is better than modern FF. Compare the design of this character to the "all black boys brigade" of FF15 and tell me that imagination didn't fade away at Square at some point.
@thetraditional Maybe for Chocobo, because I think that's a word made specifically for Final Fantasy, but Ifrit is in fact meant to be EEF-REET.
An Ifrit or Ifritah (female) are fire djinn in Middle Eastern Islamic mythology similar to a demon in Judeo/Christian mythology.
I mean I guess it is just loosely based, so maybe they wanted to go more realistic for how words are pronounced for FFXVI. Square Enix could just arbitrarily change the pronunciation each iteration of Ifrit, Chocobo, or even Cait Sith.
That'd be a absolutely gigachad move.
Huh...I didn't know we could just choose to ignore how things are actually pronounced and just choose to say sh*t wrong on purpose!
It's a Gaelic name, MF'r has an Irish accent. It's pronounced "Cat She". I don't give a F how they say it's pronounced because they thought they had to dumb it down and anglicize it for us moron Americans.
Please tell me that Cait Sith isn't now just that cat without that jacked moggle mascot or whatever it was.
@Th3solution I'm not a native english speaker. I don't understand why english speaking people see square, triangle, circle and go like "THE LAST ONE IS X!"
@GeneJacket it's a Scottish accent that he speaks with
To me it's always been Kate Sith and I doubt it will ever change.
Who the hell.says Cat sit? Clearly an I in there, at least for me was always Kate Sit🙃
I've been pronouncing it as the tweet suggests since the 90s, but there's always been a voice in the back of my mind reminding me that "sith" should be pronounced "shee".
Think of banshee/bean sí.
Unless the pronunciation is different in Scottish Gaelic 🤔
@saffeqwe Most of the games that had voice acting I experienced pronounced it as the "letter X" in tutorials which stuck in my head from there on. The ps1 Harry Potter game was the only game I recall ever saying "press the cross button". I still just see it as the letter X even if it's incorrect.
On topic though, this pronunciation of Cait Sith is far less controversial than the Aeris/Aerith debate once was in the past.
I mean, that's obviously how you pronounce it.
And that comes from someone who used to call Sephiroth "Superioth" and Phoenix Downs "Phonetix Dawns"!
Then again I persist in calling Chocobo's "Choocoboo" and Gil "Jill".
@InsaneWade As I understand it, there is no "th" in Japanese, so Aeris and Aerith are actually pronounced exactly the same.
I usually imagine every name with a thick Japanese accent and the deepest voice possible. It would be something like "Kaito Shitu!". It does make everything better... or maybe I've been watching too many anime lately.
This is more like SE of America. In Japan, and in the folklore it's based on, it's always been like Cat Shii, or something like that. I say Kate Sith myself, but that's just out of habit. I also still say Aeris.
@LifeGirl Yeah it's Aerisu in Japanese. Sephiroth is Sefirosu or something similar.
@Rhaoulos Well this is the odd thing about this debate. In Japan it's ケット シー or Ketto Shii which is similar to how it's actually said. Though when I first played FFVII I called him Moola Bob for some weird reason. 😂
I always thought it was said that way, but actually, now knowing a few Irish lasses, Cait is sometimes pronounced as "Kite".
But who am I to complicate matters...
@GamingFan4Lyf It confuses me to no end, that you're writing to "goomba", whose pfp is a warthog, whilst yours actually is a goomba, but has nought to do with your name... 😂
@J2theEzzo Any gaming-related picture fits my profile.
I was once NintendoFan4Lyf; but it didn't represent my platform agnostic nature (though I have a strong affinity for Nintendo as I grew up with it since the NES days).
The profile picture just carried over.
Kate-Sith, Yuff-ie, May-ko, Tie-dus, If-rit. No one is telling me my 25 year head canon is wrong, that's the only "truth" I care about. When I hear it in game it's like the person who always pronounces my name wrong.
As a native Gaelic speaker, this profoundly irks me.
@KendoHead, should it be Cait Sidhe (pronounced shee)? I used to love Tir Na Nog back in the day because of all the Gaelic names
@DrVenture69 It's a bit of a hodge-podge, but it's closer to the Scottish dialect rather than Irish, which is my language, but you're pretty much spot on with the "sh-ee" pronunciation. "Cait" is trickier, because, again, dialect and regional differences differ from "cat" to "caw-t", as well as the spelling itself.
There's a cool Irish epic called The Táin, or Táin Bó Cúailnge, which you might be interested in - it's a seminal piece of Irish Mythology, if that's your jam. Not the easiest read for some, but cool all the same.
Thanks for taking the time to respond @KendoHead, I’ll take a look! I remember Tir Na Nog (ZX Spectrum) was focused around Cú Chulainn, so it sounds right up my ally. It had Sidhe in it
Cait Sith = Ket Shee
Numpties at SquareEnix trying to tell the world how our own language (Gaelic) is pronounced .
Pronouncing it Kate Sihth just makes you sound like an uneducated idiot.
I've always called him Kate Sihth, despite the insistence otherwise.
@kyleforrester87 "Superioth" sounds like something you'd call a dom guy in Sephiroth cosplay.
@Ralizah that’s true, but I generally stick with “Sir” and “Master”, if I know what’s good for me, at least.
@kyleforrester87 Pats head Good boy for knowing your place.
Never once thought it wasn't Cait sith
It’s Scottish Gaelic, this is factually wrong. Now, I’m not fluent but I’m pretty sure it should be “Cat She” if I simplify the specific phonetics. “Sith” for starters is garbled, it should be “Sìth”, which makes a world of difference. The TH is silent.
@KendoHead Just be thankful there hasn’t be a Final Fantasy game with anyone called Caoimhe, they’ll probably pronounce it as Commie.
@Th3solution It's "choke-a-bow." The only reason it's pronounced "chock-a-bow" in FFXVI is because of the British accents employed. Just like yogurt is "yoh-gurt" in American English and "yog-uht" in British English.
@nessisonett Tell me about it - I have an English friend who consistently mangles my daughter's name, pronouncing "Aoife" like "Ow-fee".
I wouldn't be surprised if the bin-lid worked for SE.
@InsaneWade I can't even remember any game that pronounces button names
It's so Square Enix to tell us how to pronounce Cait Sith - a thing that already has a pronunciation and it's not the one they're telling us it is - but not tell us how to pronounce things they made up like Chocobo or Cactuar or Seifer.
@KendoHead imagine if they introduced the perpetually mispronounced Siobhan as a new character and purposely had the whole cast get it wrong.
@saffeqwe Yeah. Japan don't know have a letter X in their language and they designed it. It's clearly a cross. It works in every language if it's a cross.
It also bugs me that real-world aircraft joystick controls are considered "inverted" o.O'
I'll see myself out.
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