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My group just started a new chronicle and we're trying to figure out how to say "chasse" out loud.

Chasse

This Trait describes how well stocked, vulnerable, and rich the domain is as a hunting ground. One dot in Chasse provides the coterie with a default hunting Difficulty of 6 inside their domain. Each additional dot reduces that Difficulty by one.

Chasse also refers abstractly to the physical size of the domain.

-- v5 corebook, pp. 195 - 196

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    \$\begingroup\$ French speaker here: this is the french word "hunt", pronounced more or less "shass". Go to Google Translate, input "hunt" in English and you will have the opportunity to hear the word "chasse" by clicking the small speaker below it. \$\endgroup\$
    – WoJ
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 20:36

2 Answers 2

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Scroll to the bottom for the TL;DR.

Not sure why I went so deep on this, but I hope someone has fun reading it.

To figure out pronunciation, we first need to disambiguate what word this "Chasse" instance is based on. There seem to be three different words spelled as "Chasse", that each have different meanings (though with a fair amount of shared etymology).

Chassé

The seems to be the most common version of a word spelled "chasse". This is the formal spelling for a specific Ballet step. In English, it can also be spelled as "sashay" ,although that spelling also seems to carry a slightly more expansive meaning than the French spelling which seems to be specifically for the dance step.

  • Pronounced "shaw-say" based on Wiktionary, and my personal experience.
  • This is not a good candidate for the basis of the corebook word as it doesn't really make sense in context.

Châsse

This seems to be the least common usage of the word. It's one of the two options presented upon just googling "chasse". It seems to be a semi-archaic word for certain types of reliquary boxes. It is often not spelled with the circumflex over the "a", but I included it here to distinguish it from the other candidates.

  • I believe it is pronounced "shass" (rhymes with "mass") based on this handout I stumbled upon.
  • This also does not seem like a good candidate for the basis of the corebook word as it similarly doesn't really make sense in context.

la Chasse

This definition was presented the least readily by google, but seems like the best bet. This is a French word which seems to roughly translate to "The Hunt" (based on the word's usage here and in a few other articles I peeked at).

  • Pronounced "shass" (like "mass" in English or "más" in Spanish, but with "sh") based on Wiktionary.
  • This looks like the correct candidate as it best matches the hunting related context of the rulebook quote.

TL;DR

I think "shass" (like "mass" in English or "más" in Spanish, but with "sh") is probably the "most correct" pronunciation. The corebook seems to be borrowing the French word "la Chasse", an French idiomatic word for "hunting season".

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to RPG.SE! Take the tour if you haven't already, and check out the help center for more guidance. Good first answer! \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 10:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ Improvement suggestion: actually transcribe how it's pronounced, instead of relying on the links for that information. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 12:14
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    \$\begingroup\$ French native: La chasse refers to the activity (some may say sport) of hunting. A practitioner is called "un chasseur" (generally masculine, the feminine would be chasseuse) which translates to "a hunter", and will typically "chasse" (from the verb "chasser", 1st group, meaning "to hunt") during "la saison de chasse", that is the hunting season. You correctly identified the pronunciation, ʃas: ʃ as the "sh" in sheer, as as in mass. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthieu M.
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 13:50
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    \$\begingroup\$ “Más” and “mass” are not pronounced the same, this answer should be clarified as to which it is. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 15:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ To my non-francophone, American English ear, the pronunciation buttons make it sound somewhere between "mass" and "más". I don't think I have that vowel in my dialect of English. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nathan Hinchey
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 22:08
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Chasse probably refers to French La Chasse (The Hunt)

VTM uses some other French origin words, and, I suspect from the context, that they are referring to French 'La Chasse', pronounced 'shas' according to Google, or /ʃas/, sounding almost like chase but shorter and softer at the start.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Improvement suggestion: actually transcribe how it's pronounced, instead of relying on the links for that information. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 12:14
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    \$\begingroup\$ I meant /ʃas/, the transcription of pronunciation, since there is ambiguity between how 'shas' is pronounced between different accents and dialects. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 14:24
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    \$\begingroup\$ @indigochild I have repeatedly seen, in the contexts of explaining words and their sounds, 'spelling' and 'transcription' used side by side, with the former denoting how a word is written in a language and the latter for writing down how it actually sounds visually (which is useful for languages with non-shallow orthography). But perhaps that usage is not as much of a default in this context than I am used to. But you are right, I was thinking primarily of IPA (though I'd understand if someone picked SAMPA or the like). \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 17:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ Addendum: 'shas' seemed like an attempt to use a hypothetical spelling to let the readers try to guess at what it sounds like, rather than strictly encoding sounds. \$\endgroup\$
    – vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 17:17
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    \$\begingroup\$ "/ʃas/, sounding almost like chase" – But the English word "chase" doesn't sound similar to /ʃas/ at all. "Chase" is pronounced /tʃeɪs/, with a different vowel. (You correctly described the initial consonant in /ʃas/ as "shorter and softer"). \$\endgroup\$
    – Tanner Swett
    Commented Mar 6, 2021 at 20:26

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