I hit a bit of an awkward moment a while back. Since I was but a tiny little thing, amateur dramatics, film school, work experience et al, Fresnel lamps were called 'FREZ-nel'. And now I'm finding people who say 'fre-NELL' - WTF? Yes, of course. The latter is probably correct.

Let's skip on a decade and what I called a 'tie-clip' mic has now been renamed according to US conventions as a 'Lavalier' or 'Lav' mic - which of course causes much mirth for us Brits - Lav! So scatalogical.

But hold on - is it 'Laval-EAR' or 'La-VAL-ear'? My Francofone friends would probably say 'La-VAL-ee-yeh' - I'm all for applauding American pronunciation for preserving C18th English, but right now I'm thinking 'tie clip' as we can be agreed with the pronunciation and the positioning.

So, talking about microphones, I hit another 'Boggle' moment today, regarding our dear connection friend, the humble Hirose connector.

Since before I can remember, Hirose was pronounced 'High Rose'. Becuase I am a UK based person in the South East of the UK, Richmond Film Services is a regular haunt, and they talk of 'High Rose' as do all people I have met in UK and European trade shows.

So, what's with this 'Hee-ROSH-ee' thing? Never heard this until today. I checked on the all-knowing ever-trusted Google, and also heard 'HEE-ross-ee'.

Any other words we can't agree on how to pronounce?

Sachtler. :)

Yup - So many say 'SATCH-ler'

I'm in the CH = Loch (as in Loch Ness) camp rather than CH = Match... but I'd say Paris is 'PAR-is' not 'pah-REE' so that destroys that argument. LOL

La Cie or Lacey?

Le-vin or Li-vin ;-}

Nikon. Lots of people say Nigh-kon, but it's actually knee kon...the name originating from Nippon Kogaku. Here's the correct pronunciation spoken by a Japanese person.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Nikon.ogg

Karaoke. It's kah rah oh keh, not carry okay.
http://itsdifferent4girls.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/how-to-pronounce-karaoke.mp3

It's as disconcerting a mess as the fact that the same device or cable can be commonly referred to by one name on the US East Coast and have a different common name on the West Coast!

Groups commonly morph pronunciations - and even fundamental meanings of technical terms - all the time.

I get that Lavillier comes from the jewlery the French king gave his mistress, Mme. LaVallier - and that in french her name was obviously said as La-val'-eee-ay. But when it hit the US, it became lav-uh-leer to us. And since hereabouts "lav" caused exactly no one to think about the bathroom - it simple made sense to shorten it.

I live in the southwest US where so many terms derive from cross cultural exchange from south of the border that we just understand that Gila is "Heel-la" and NOBODY really knows or cares whether Coyote comes out as Kai-YOTE-ee or is Kai Yote - (like vote)

I remember one dear friend from New Jersey who came out here - and after a couple of years, took one free class at a local museum when a professor was lecturing and then tried to correct me that the indian spirit dolls widely known as Kachinas that every single person in my family after two generations in the southwest had called (Ka-cheen-ahs) were actually supposed to be pronounced Cat-Seen-ahs.

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and sigh. The pronunciation might be "technically correct" on a strictly linguistic basis - but it STILL marks you as a total OUTSIDER if you insist that you're more correct than the standard and practice of the specific community you're working inside.

At some point, you just say it like you learned it and if somebody pushes back - you smile, shrug, and just keep working.

My 2 cents anyway.

Here's a piece on pronouncing tomato: Tomayto or Tomahto? (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/tomayto-or-tomahto/)

You do get other pronunciation variations, both within a country and internationality, another word that comes to mind is scone.

I've pronounced Hirose as "Hih-ROH-See" for 20 years--occasionally I hear it as "Hih-ROH-Shee" but never as "High Rose". I would have never realized that was the same connector if I had heard it pronounced that way. The easiest way to avoid all of it is to call it an HRS connector!

Yes, Tomato is a good one.
You do get other pronunciation variations, both within a country and internationality, another word that comes to mind is scone.

And with regard to the scone, we have Victoria, Canada, just a few miles to the north. A great sailing destination just a hop across the Strait of Juan de Fuca (better get that last word pronounced correctly!) with the first port of call in front of the Empress Hotel. To celebrate a good crossing we have to have English "Tea". Ah, yes. And one doesn't have "tea" without some scones.

Besides the proper pronunciation, there is the proper way to put your clotted cream and strawberry jam on. The majority say they put the cream on first and then the jam but there are some that are adamant that the jam goes on first. Including my Mum. (And you don't argue with your Mum! )

Then there is the pronunciation of the word "dog". Huh? What's so difficult about that, you say? Well hang on!


While I was working my way through school I had a summer job with a co-worker from Tennessee, pronounced, if I remember it correctly, TEN-a-see. This was quite some time ago so the memory has faded a bit. Kinda like the neighboring state of Meh-sur-UH.

This was about our second day on the job and we were on a country road in the mountains near Lake Tahoe. I was driving and he was a passenger in the co-pilots seat.

Here we are, a late spring day traveling down a country road, brilliant sunshine and blue sky (its California, not Washington), the wild flowers are blooming, the pine trees have their young growth started, snow on the mountain peaks, what could be nicer. All of a sudden my partner shouted "Watch out fur dat dawg!"

I swerved and missed the dog, then after a pause I asked "What's a dawg?"
He replied, "A dawg (pronounced like a question, kinda like dow-UG?) is a .. fur .. legged .. critter." (longer space/time between the words to provide emphasis)

Me, thinking….. I've had a couple days of this now so I think I've got him this time.
"Okay, … How do you spell dawg?"
He replied, "Dawg? (pronounced as if it is were a question, see above), is D-A-W-G. Dawg!"

The whole summer went like that. It was a good summer.

Us Brits and those in the states have had very different views on pronunciation and spelling for ever, it seems.

Even going to the manufacturer doesn't always work. I can live with most manglings, but the one that causes me awkwardness is the lighting manufacturer Robe. Robby, robe (as in the cloak) are common, but the manufacturer uses the clearing the throat noise - huggghhhhhh-obay. I must admit to doing verbal gymnastics to avoid any pronunciation of this make.

For Fresnel and Lavaliere it seems rude to not pronounce it as the French would.

For Fresnel and Lavaliere it seems rude to not pronounce it as the French would.

LOL! +1 on that, but that does include a bit of catarrh/mucus for Fresnel, a merest hint of glottal flapping on the 'r' sound. All for that.

On the other hand, always liked 'Freznel' and its ilk for being a bit 'Fred Dibnah'.

How about Bose (http://www.bose.co.uk/GB/en/index.jsp)?

Since I can't afford their stuff myself, (and always quickly change the subject when friends who can are about to talk about their latest Bose acquisition), I have rarely, if ever, actually heard how other people think it should be pronounced. I imagine that since it is expensive stuff, nothing short of "Bos-é" would seem proper.

It all reminds me a bit of the Bang & Olufsen hype in the 1960/70s but perhaps I have missed the point.

As an ex-performing arts teacher, I was always hard on people who misspelled Fresnel, and anyone who pronounced it frez-nell got a short sharp verbal slap. I still visit schools who put stuff on the walls spelled wrongly! Grrrr.

I worked with a pro narrator a few years ago who could not pronounce nuclear as I've heard it all my life.

Which would be new-klee-ur. I think it's common in Texas to say new-cue-lar, and we spent 15 minutes on a single word... which hurts when you're laying down a 15-minute script in a planned one-hour session.

Did I mention pro - he really was, pro narrator, AFTRA member, etc. But it was almost impossible to get him to say "nuclear" as the rest of the country (world?) would understand it.

I think I heard the same pronunciation from Pres. Bush the younger. But when you're president, it comes with a few privileges, and I don't think he was called out by anybody on it.

I try to go back to the origin of the word but give up sometimes

I had a debate recently over De Bortoli Wines so we called the winery and the young aussie receptionist answered "good Morning deb ortli wines - I hung up in disgust.

I've pronounced Hirose as "Hih-ROH-See" for 20 years--occasionally I hear it as "Hih-ROH-Shee" but never as "High Rose". I would have never realized that was the same connector if I had heard it pronounced that way. The easiest way to avoid all of it is to call it an HRS connector!

But wouldn't that be an "Aich-ehr-Ess" connector? I always find it fun to hear pronunciation differences, even down to letters.... from "Aye to Zed"....

anyone who pronounced it frez-nell got a short sharp verbal slap. I still visit schools who put stuff on the walls spelled wrongly! Grrrr.

Slap the teachers! LOL

I'm really knocked sideways about the Hirose thing - a teaspoon of research, and one finds that it's like Hoovers. One can even purchase a Hirose XLR socket. M'kay...

Ooo - thinking of Hoovers, 'pet peeve' time: vacuum... Not vac-YOU-m, but VAC-You-Um, like the space-time continoooom - erm, continuinunum. Whatever.

But there's a rather nasty soft underbelly to all this pronunciation (pro-NUN-sea-ayshun, not pro-NOUN-sea-ayshun) thing for us Brits, which I guess gets a bit lost to our friends over the pond. Like accent, pronunciation can become a rather crude signal for socio-economic group (aka 'Class') rather than location within a given country. But then we get into 'The Great Vowel Shift' and the BBC...

Well done Matt, you've mentioned the UK elephant in the room. Apart from insisting that normal good grammar is practiced on all its broadcasting channels*, it has for many years defined the 'correct' pronunciation for most commonly used English words. This includes nouns and particularly place names. Classic ones that come to mind are:
Shrewsbury - Pronounced 'shroesbury' not 'shroosbury'
Plaistow - Pronounced 'plarstow' not 'placestow' (Alf Garnett always said it correctly!)
Then there's Parliament pronounced 'par-li-a-ment' not 'parliment'
but I agree with others that nuclear is a two syllable word not pronounce as new-cular' or 'new-killer' (which is what it has functionally become in war)

It seems that standards are slipping, particularly amongst journalists who with their degree education, should know better. The instances of 'could of' and 'should of' as well as getting pronouns for singular and plurals mixed up.

Anyone know why, in the UK, medicine is pronounced 'med-sin' (which still sounds a bit 'effete' to me) rather than the absolutely logical, serviceable and perfectly pretty-sounding 'medih-sin' from the US? Yes, I know: petty, petty, petty; but when working with our dear clients in the pharma industry... (and therein lies a quagmire of pronunciation)

Met this Texan and he would use the term "y'all" which I knew was short for "you all". But he'd say it when it was just me standing there. Thought I'd stump him so one day I asked him what the plural of y'all was. He said that would be "all y'all". Of course it would.

Down in Australia they have an alloy type metal that seems to be exactly like our aluminum, but the way they pronounce it, sounds like some totally different stuff. Al-you-min-ee-um, or some such.

Was eating in a Vietnamese restaurant and the waitress asked me, "Would you like a f##k?" Surprised at her offer I replied, "Here, now!?" She took away my chopsticks and handed me a fork. Oh, a fork, well that would make more sense.


Mark Watson

Hey Mark - isn't it "a hoot" the way south-en-ers talk? I get a real kick out of listening to 'em. I'd like to chime in with 'em some time but it's too hard. It does sound pretty cool, though.

Now those guys from Baston … I worked with a guy who had 52 acres up near Petersham, and he had moccasins and all kinds of wildlife. He'd come to work on occasion with cameos. This one day late in the afternoon he was running around the office franticly asking in a loud voice "Where's my carcass? Where's my carcass?"

And here I was trying to visualize some stuffed animal he shot. Was I wrong! He was looking for his CAR KEYS.

One thing is good, though, we're from the West Coast so we don't have an accent!

Talk about pronunciation and accents though, now here is one. We were in an import-distributor shop last week and I was talking to this employee gal who was from China. It was a plumbing shop in Vienna, Austria, but she spoke absolutely excellent English with a Western US "accent". Figuring she must have gone to school in the US I asked her where she learned to speak such good English. She said "In China."

Now I was even more impressed. She said that their company has offices in several locations throughout China and since there are so many kinds of Chinese dialects they can't understand each other so they speak English.

So now when an Englishman is talking about his Bonet, a guy from Boston wants his carcass, or a Kiwi talking about the good looking birds, we can smile to ourself and feel good because we don't have to speak something else. I almost said French but decided not to.

Yeah John, it can get entertaining at times. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest... I mean, The Great Pacific Northwest! (Ever see that bumper sticker up there "Earth First - We'll Log the Other Planets Later"?) So true.

After living in various southen states, now when I meet new people they ask me what part of the south I'm from, because I apparently picked up some sort of accent. I hear that enough that I guess it's true. I blame Tennessee, but lived in Texas, S. Carolina and New Orleans as well. I had just driven cross-country to take a job in New Orleans and had to fly back to Seattle the next day. On the way to the airport I stopped at a 7-Eleven to ask directions. I was asking this 20-year old Vietnamese guy behind the counter and when he started talking it just got weird because he had a real heavy Cajun accent, not a hint of Asian. I couldn't understand the part where he said "...take the hooypeelong..." After several times repeating the directions I gave up and had no clue what that dude was talking about. Got down the road a ways and saw a sign for the Huey P. Long Bridge. That's a common thing in the south, running a bunch of words together like they were one.

Had a Hispanic guy stop by my work to chat once in awhile and one day he comes in and greets me with, "Hey es-ay." Maybe I don't get out enough, but I told him, "You can just call me Mark, besides my initials are MW, not SA." He went into some explanation about how it meant "friend" in Spanish. So now I know. My Thai wife and I still have some language issues. I called home to tell her I was getting out of work early due to the typhoon. She told me she needed to come to my work and get some of that, then asked if it going to be inside the building or outside in a booth. Huhhh? Turns out she thought I had said we were going to have "Thai food". Asked her to make me a tuna fish sandwich, which I knew we had several large cans of, and she reports that we don't have any tuna fish in stock, only this canned chicken. I went to check the kitchen and she was pointing at all the tuna cans, but the label said "Chicken of the Sea". Actually had to look close to see the smaller print where it said TUNA. She wanted some explanation about why the can said chicken. It always made perfect sense to me until then.

Mark

I hit a bit of an awkward moment a while back. Since I was but a tiny little thing, amateur dramatics, film school, work experience et al, Fresnel lamps were called 'FREZ-nel'. And now I'm finding people who say 'fre-NELL' - WTF? Yes, of course. The latter is probably correct.

Let's skip on a decade and what I called a 'tie-clip' mic has now been renamed according to US conventions as a 'Lavalier' or 'Lav' mic - which of course causes much mirth for us Brits - Lav! So scatalogical.

But hold on - is it 'Laval-EAR' or 'La-VAL-ear'? My Francofone friends would probably say 'La-VAL-ee-yeh' - I'm all for applauding American pronunciation for preserving C18th English, but right now I'm thinking 'tie clip' as we can be agreed with the pronunciation and the positioning.

So, talking about microphones, I hit another 'Boggle' moment today, regarding our dear connection friend, the humble Hirose connector.

Since before I can remember, Hirose was pronounced 'High Rose'. Becuase I am a UK based person in the South East of the UK, Richmond Film Services is a regular haunt, and they talk of 'High Rose' as do all people I have met in UK and European trade shows.

So, what's with this 'Hee-ROSH-ee' thing? Never heard this until today. I checked on the all-knowing ever-trusted Google, and also heard 'HEE-ross-ee'.

Any other words we can't agree on how to pronounce?

Well , my take on it is that a fresnel has a silent 's' , but it is a type of lens rather than the lamp ( which happens to use a fresnel lens inside it ) .

I too call a body worn miniature mic tie- clip or lapel mic , even if it is attached elsewhere , and take it from BBC teaching ( surely the ultimate authority ) that a Lavalier mic is suspended round the neck ( the pronounciation rhymes with Maurice Chevailer ) .

As for Hirose , I have always said hee-rose .

Duplicate post

How about Bose (http://www.bose.co.uk/GB/en/index.jsp)?

Since I can't afford their stuff myself, (and always quickly change the subject when friends who can are about to talk about their latest Bose acquisition), I have rarely, if ever, actually heard how other people think it should be pronounced. I imagine that since it is expensive stuff, nothing short of "Bos-é" would seem proper.

It all reminds me a bit of the Bang & Olufsen hype in the 1960/70s but perhaps I have missed the point.

Being Scottish first and British second , we have nothing to be ashamed of with makes such as Linn , Michell , Rega , Quad , Sugden , Radford , KEF , IMF , Rogers , Tannoy and many others to be proud of .

I wouldn't give Bose equipment house room over my Michell , Quad , IMF based system and , having ran a hi-fi shop in the 1970s/80s would classify B&O ( which was mainly Philips kit dressed up in fancy cases ) in much the same class as Bose . Sort of like comparing a Rolls-Royce to a Mercedes 600 (W100) : one was very posh and fine for posing around in but not much of a driver's car , but the other was an extremely competent car in every sense whilst just as exclusive .

Thinking about audio - some more pronunciation. These are probably easier for being a bit odd (and famous):

'Neumann' - often a shibboleth for soundies. As is...

'Schoeps'

And whilst we're at it, is it a peculiar habit of the South East of England, or maybe GB in general, that tends to indulge in rampant acronymification with the alphabet soup of product names - Take the COS-11 from Sanken for example. Americans will spell out 'Sea-Oh-Ess One One' whereas most Soundies I've worked with call it the 'coz eleven' - not even 'cos' but the warmer, cuter 'coz'.

Anyone know why, in the UK, medicine is pronounced 'med-sin' (which still sounds a bit 'effete' to me) rather than the absolutely logical, serviceable and perfectly pretty-sounding 'medih-sin' from the US? Yes, I know: petty, petty, petty; but when working with our dear clients in the pharma industry... (and therein lies a quagmire of pronunciation)

It rather depends where you are, and how posh you are doesn't it?

In Suffolk and Norfolk, they mispronounce loads of common words, but oddly medicine is pronounced correctly. However they mangle many others badly!

Coo = queue
Vu = view
Heron = Herring
filem = film

the list goes on

I've never had medicine down as a tricky one, and had to search my brain, and even say it out loud to get examples of that one. I have heard people say it, but I suspect it's regional and clustered.I'm away at the moment, so asked the person at breakfast, and she said med-sin - and I'm wondering if it's London centred?

Hirose = Japanese family (or place) name pronounced as He-Row Seh and meaning "Wide (He-Row) Shallows (Seh)" as in a shallow part of a river, bay, etc

Usually written as 広瀬