Pronunciation: Let's start with Fresnel, Lavalier and Hirose

[Paul Mailath]

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.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

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"....

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

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...

[Steve Game]

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.

[Matt Davis]

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)

[Mark Watson]

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

[John Nantz]

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.

[Mark Watson]

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

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Matt Davis

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 .

[Derek Heeps]

Duplicate post

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Colin McDonald

How about Bose?

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 .

[Matt Davis]

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'.

[Paul R Johnson]

Originally Posted by Matt Davis

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?

[Jim Andrada]

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