Listen, young’un. Back in my day, there wasn’t much voice acting in our games. Only text. So we could read something like Deku or Kakariko and have no idea how it’s actually said. Cait Sith in Final Fantasy VII is one that caused some vicious debates, and now Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is giving the official answer.
This was revealed before launch by Square Enix. However, to reiterate and also confirm, it’s pronounced “Kate-Sihth.”
If you’ve been pronouncing it some other way, I’m sorry to say you’re just wrong. I’m sorry if that throws everything you thought was real into question. However, to make a mistake is human. You really had no way of knowing. It doesn’t help that evidence sort of suggested otherwise.
What I mean is that while Kate-Sith is close to what you’d expect the phonetic pronunciation to be, there are other ways to base the pronunciation.
For example, a good source is the original Japanese, where the character is named ケット シー or Ketto Shī. That would be pronounced “Ket-to Shee” or “Kate-to Shee.” That throws things off, because while you could still argue that the first word is simply pronounced “Kate” because of the way Japanese pronunciation work (vowel sounds are often informally dropped in actual speech), “Shee” isn’t all that close to “Sith.” Though, really, a Japanese approximation would likely be “Shissu,” because of the lack of a “see” or “th” syllable sounds. So, maybe close to the English translation, but maybe not.
However, it’s often been argued that the name Cait Sith is a reference to “Cat sìth,” a creature from Celtic folklore. That is often pronounced “Ket-Shee” or “Cat-Shee.” By the looks of things, that’s what the Japanese pronunciation is trying to approximate.
But regardless of whether or not you consider it to be a mispronunciation, it is now the official mispronunciation. As far as that goes, it means it’s a reality within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Unless we one day get a Final Fantasy VII Re-Remake that alters the pronunciation to be closer to Celtic, then the fact is that Cait Sith is pronounced “Kate-Sith” in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
