Board Game Arena

How do you pronounce "Raffe?" Is it similar to "wrath/raft" and rhymes with Giraffe?" Does it rhyme with cafe? Does it rhyme with taffy? Do you change how you say Giraffe if it does in fact rhyme with one of those?

And what does "Raffe" mean?

Thank you for your help.

My native language is Polish, I understand English well and very little of German. When I first saw the title of the game, it felt natural to me to pronounce "Raffe" the way it would rhyme with "cafe" and also say that "e" on the end of "Giraffe" so that it rhymes. Then I checked that "Raffe" is actually German for "I gather" (and is pronounced with loud "e" at the end), which fits the theme of the game. But the publisher is Korean and the author is Japanese, so they may speak German or they may just have felt that repeating the the last syllable of "Giraffe" for the 2nd time would sound cute and been unaware it exists in some language as an independent word. I have no information what the actual intention of the author was for it to be pronounced, so I will just keep pronouncing it the way it sounds nice to me. I think you should also just pick the pronunciation you like most and just go with it.

(By the way, German for "giraffe" is also "Giraffe", so the title could be all in German. In German it's pronounced with loud "e" at the end, so it would authomatically rhyme, but "G" is pronounced differently that in English)

I pronounced raffe like raff, as in riffraff. But because I'm Australian giraffe is pronounced ji-rahrf. So it still doesn't rhyme. But I imagine in some accents it does.
I'm glad this discussion is here. We really have to figure out these important things

Here to weigh in on this Very Important Topic.

The Korean title of the game is 기린 기린, "gilin gilin", meaning simply "giraffe giraffe". In my brief time in Japan I noticed a few times, phrases where a word was repeated for what seemed like playfulness or to convey the cuteness of something. Repetition of sounds in general seems really common. So, if Korea's youth culture has a similar thing, and Girafferaffe is an example of sound reduplication, you should pronounce the word "giraffe" however you pronounce it in your dialect, and then immediately repeat the second syllable. Easy peasy. Book launch next week.

In Thai, repetition is done but mainly for emphasis.

E.g. (transliterated) - very very, big big, slow slow, fast fast, true true, many many...

I have not yet been to Korea.