Pronunciation Please

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missgecko
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Pronunciation Please

Post by missgecko »

This is a somewhat airy fairy question, but it runs through my mind quite a bit when I'm on this site and it actually frustrates me. How do you pronounce photomacrography.

Is it photo-macro-graphy like 'photo-backhoe-taffy'
or
is it photo-macro-graphy like 'photo-macfrog-graffee'.

Cheers
Sam :D
Sam

'To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.' William Blake

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

I vote
foe toe ma(h) crog graff ee :D

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Evidently you pronounce things as you like, provided you are understood. Some of the purist English professors in the UK a decade ago said things should be pronounced as their basic roots dictated with the syllables split in the correct place, unlike some modern usage.

Whilst others just claimed they should be pronounced as in common usage. For instance "macrography" would be pronounced as in photography (ma-crography) rather than as "macro-graphy" as it's roots would dictate, since photography is not pronounced as in it's roots "photo-graphy". Therefore I would go with "photo-macrography", being the common usage, with the last part rhyming with photography.

I had this argument with a person from Kew over the plant name "maritima" meaning "by the sea". Many people were pronouncing it "mar-it-ima" whereas I maintained as it's root was "maritime" it should be "marry-time-a". His comment was a plant name was just a handle and it was OK if it was then pronounced differently to it's original roots.

You get different pronunciations (why is that not pronounce-iations from it's original roots, since you pronounce not pronunce? :P ) in different countries, but as long as we all understand each other it does not really matter. To quote from Stearn's "Botanical Latin":-

Pronunciation

"Botanical (and zoological DaveW) Latin is essentially a written language, but the scientific names of plants often occur in speech. How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood by all concerned."

However Stearn then goes on to illustrate two different pronunciations of Latin, "Reformed Academic" and "Traditional English". Botanists also caution never to get a traditional Latin scholar or doctor to write plant descriptions since botanical/zoological Latin, just as with medical Latin, has now become a language of it's own.

DaveW

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

"of its own", you mean, Dave :wink:

puzzledpaul
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Post by puzzledpaul »

<< foe toe ma(h) crog graff ee >>

Similar to above

foe toe ma(h) crog raff ee ...

... but I invariably end up writing it down on a bit of paper :)

I'd also add your / you're to the various 'its' as examples that readily annoy + another special one associated with another interest of mine elsewhere on the net ... use of 'vertice' rather than vertex.

pp
Boxes, bottlebottoms, bits, bobs.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I use the pronunciation that is shown at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photomacrography .

That page is nice because they provide a speaker icon Image that you can click on to actually hear the word.

As for phonetic spellings, well...

At http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photomacrography, they spell the pronunciation as
pho&#8901;to&#8901;ma&#8901;crog&#8901;ra&#8901;phy &#8194;/&#716;fo&#650;t&#601;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi/ [foh-tuh-ma-krog-ruh-fee]

This is almost but not quite the same as what is shown in the Oxford English Dictionary: (&#716;f&#601;&#650;t&#601;&#650;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi) [ref]

Quite frankly, I find all of the phonetic spellings to be rather less than satisfying. By the time I think I have figured out what might be meant by italics, boldface, or all those odd symbols in &#716;fo&#650;t&#601;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi, I've half forgotten what it was I really wanted to know, and I have no confidence that what I've read is what the writer intended. Give me a "Hear It" button any day!

--Rik

Edited to add: If you're curious about the origin and meaning of the word "photomacrography", see the long discussion in this thread. I finally ran across the original definition, which is shown near the bottom of the second page of postings, HERE.
Last edited by rjlittlefield on Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Yes I usually get it wrong like many English people Chris who are told you use an apostrophe when a letter is missing, comes of leaving school at 15 I guess, since of course both are correct spellings so the spellchecker does not pick them up, just as with there and their:-

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/di ... s/its.html

Although using American based spell checkers they will also try and correct properly spelt English words too. See:-

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 126AAT0Oh1

Never could punctuate anyway and English is an evolving language with the meaning of words changing every day, such as fabulous for instance now meaning very good rather than simply meaning a fable or something not true.

I should know better since our society is always telling people that cacti is plural not singular when they keep telling us they "have a cacti". So if you cannot say cactus's you cannot say cacti, therefore it is "a cactus".

Wicked Man!

"(&#716;f&#601;&#650;t&#601;&#650;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi)" Is that the Greek spelling Rik? I find such dictionary phonetic spellings more confusing that the actual spelling itself ! :?

DaveW
Last edited by DaveW on Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

DaveW wrote:"(&#716;f&#601;&#650;t&#601;&#650;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi)" Is that the Greek spelling Rik? I find such dictionary phonetic spellings more confusing that the actual spelling itself ! :?
I believe that's supposed to be IPA -- International Phonetic Alphabet.

I share your thoughts. In fact when I diligently searched for what would be the audible difference between &#716;fo&#650;t&#601;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi and &#716;f&#601;&#650;t&#601;&#650;mæ&#712;kr&#594;gr&#601;fi, I failed miserably.

In the two different tables I checked, I couldn't even find &#601;&#650;, and I surely couldn't understand the instructions about how to glue vowel sounds together.

I've heard IPA described as "a language for linguists". I think that's a fair assessment.

--Rik

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Post by ChrisR »

The loudspeaker version sounds strange to a native English ear - slightly drunken and a bit west of mid-Atlantic!
Yes I usually get it wrong like many English people Chris who are told you use an apostrophe when a letter is missing
But there isn't!
His, its, hers, no "'"s!

I'm a hopeless speller so have to process everything with a long and customised macro (yes a macro..) in Word, to highlight things I'm likely to have wrong.

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

Yeah "it's" is one which gets me quite often, it depends on context. As Chris mentions if you say "the thing belonging to it" - "its thing" then there is no letter missing. If you say "this thing (it) is blue" - "it's blue" then you do need an apostrophe to note the missing "i" from is, at least I think that's right! :)

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

A non-anglocentric point of view of an Anglophile :D

Dave wrote:
Many people were pronouncing it "mar-it-ima" whereas I maintained as it's root was "maritime" it should be "marry-time-a"
No hard feelings, but I'd rather say it's the other way round: The root of the English word maritime is the Latin word maritima, -us, -um.

Dave quoted:
"Botanical (and zoological DaveW) Latin is essentially a written language, but the scientific names of plants often occur in speech. How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understood by all concerned."
Again, no hard feelings, but I wish to object: On an international, global basis, this is actually a problem: When people with different mother languages meet, they really have difficulties to understand each other when everybody pronounces Latin or Greek words as if they were just written in their own language.

English native speakers are in the lucky position that very many non-English mother-tongue speakers (like me) struggle to learn the English language, so the English native speaker can easily communicate around the globe, and as English being the language of science, can read scientific papers with no problem, at least as far as the language is concerned. All others either learn the English language, or they are excluded to a large extent.

Hence in return, it would be nice, if English native speakers would care a bit more about how to pronounce Latin and Greek words correctly. It's quite easy: They are pronunced approximately like, e. g., Italian or ...
... German. :)
In fact I have met English native speakers who do bother to pronounce Latin/Greek correctly, one e. g., was an American clergyman from the Vatican.


So let's start with lesson no. 1. :wink: :wink:
Quiet please!
Please pay attention!

maritima

is stessed on the first i, and sounds like in English it was written: mah-ree-tee-mah (with ah like in father, and ee like in fee).

Repeat please.
"mah-ree-tee-ma".
Excellent!
Thanks guys, well done!
No homework for tomorrow.

--Betty :D :D

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Post by rjlittlefield »

"mah-ree-tee-ma"
"mah-ree-tee-ma"
"mah-ree-tee-ma"

Got it. Or do I? I think I'm OK with the vowels, but that consonant "r" has me puzzled. Does the tongue stay in the floor of the mouth as I transition from mah to ree, or does it bounce off the palette, or does it matter?

--Rik

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Yes but what I was objecting to was mar-it-ima with accent on the "it" pronounced as in "it is", and "ima" as in "whimaway" in the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

I will see if I can copy Stearn's pronunciation, since as he says botanical Latin has often diverged somewhat from other forms. He also points out that probably in Roman times where Latin had replaced the native language of the conquered peoples they probably all spoke with regional accents and pronounced the sounds slightly different.

Just as Shakespeare was probably first played with a strong English regional accent rather that the "plum in the mouth" version adopted by modern thespians.

The truth is nobody now knows how the Romans actually spoke Latin since it is a dead language, although bits are embodied in many of our modern languages, but again probably pronounced differently in different dialects and countries.

Even modern English is not spoken the same around the world.

DaveW

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

I once worked in a Blast Furnace.
Being from southern England it's bla(r)st furnace
when most of the country would say bla(h)st furnace
but all the locals called it a blayste furnace. Who's right :? ?

Being born in an English speaking country is a birth defect, language neurons are reassigned to beaurocracy development. I managed French Spanish and German A levels but everyone else speaks English better, so now, what can I say? Das Verstehen ist weggegangen? I probably got that wrong because I don't have German spell checker. English is a struggle...

Eye halve a spelling chequer it came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques for my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight four it two say
weather eye am wrong oar write it shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid it nose be fore two long and eye can put the error write its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it eye am shore your please to no its letter perfect awl the weigh my chequer tolled me so.

Sauce unknown

missgecko
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Post by missgecko »

Thank you, I think, for your thoughts. :D

Cheers
Sam
Sam

'To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.' William Blake

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