EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: Smokey on February 21, 2017, 01:45:19 am
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There are plenty to list just sticking with science and engineering....
"Foo-cult"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault
"You-ler"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler
::Cough::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
Keep it going....
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Am I famous? I don't know, but many people can't pronounce my last name!
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I can't think of any scientists. All that comes to mind is the actor, Bumblefoot Crimpysnitch.
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I can't think of any scientists. All that comes to mind is the actor, Bumblefoot Crimpysnitch.
Why is it always the Australians?? :)
http://imgur.com/gallery/Zs23wTJ (http://imgur.com/gallery/Zs23wTJ)
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Watch the 10,000 reviews of the new pathetic Ghostbusters movie and watch everyone try and pronounce Paul Feig's last name.
His now has now officially evolved to Paul "However the F you pronounce it" ;D
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Robert Moog the famous synth designer and builder. Moog rhymes with vogue not Moooog like a cow.
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Frezznull
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel
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Halley's Comet / Edmond Halley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Halley
Short 'a' like Apple, not like 'hay' (eg, Bill Haley and the Comets)
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Eugene Wigner
Antonin Dvorak
A lot of these are pretty understandable since pronunciation rules vary from language to language.
I recall an ep of The Amp Hour where the pronunciation of "Nissan" came into question, and Chris declared something to the effect, that he and Dave were probably both wrong, but he (Chris) was closer. Correct on both accounts.
How to pronounce "Nissan" like the Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9SgZzBHqK0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9SgZzBHqK0)
Not sure if you're required to say it with a tone of defeat like that... :-\
NB: Nissan commercial in the US pronounce the final "n".
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keeping in the electrical engineering genre, I have always been stymied by Oliver Heaviside. What sayest thou oh forum members?
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Anyone French.
Laplace, Fermat, Descartes, the composer Saint-saens. French names usually look like they should be pronouncable to an English-speaker, as they lack any weird characters or pairings and are not laden with Zs everywhere. But they are not pronounced at all like an English-speaker would.
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I got another one...
"Scot-Key" ... "Shot-key" ... "Sk-hot-key" ... ???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Schottky
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I got another one...
"Scot-Key" ... "Shot-key" ... "Sk-hot-key" ... ???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Schottky
Since he was German I would say it is "Shot-key"
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I got another one...
"Scot-Key" ... "Shot-key" ... "Sk-hot-key" ... ???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Schottky
I'm Shot-key man.
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William
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William
Will-yam (but you have to say it fast)
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How to pronounce "Nissan"
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Not sure if you're required to say it with a tone of defeat like that... :-\
NB: Nissan commercial in the US pronounce the final "n".
just like in italian :D
yes the tone of defeat is required for their (modern) crappy cars.
I always pronounced it David Bawi :palm:
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Seen Canary - a shite for shore eyesh...
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lol, I was thinking "will.i.am (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will.i.am)"... Come on dude. Just accept that your name is William :-DD
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How to pronounce "Nissan"
[...]
Not sure if you're required to say it with a tone of defeat like that... :-\
NB: Nissan commercial in the US pronounce the final "n".
just like in italian :D
yes the tone of defeat is required for their (modern) crappy cars.
I always pronounced it David Bawi :palm:
I always pronounce it like "Dat.sun"...
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Will-yam (but you have to say it fast)
That sounds like how they speak in the Black Country (Wolverhampton). "Will yam gaw tu the keetchin and get moy a cuppa tie?"
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"Don Coyote"
Don Quixote
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Physicist Louis de Broglie
Inventor Ernst Siemens
Physicist Heinrich Hertz
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Socrates
(a lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed)
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I did read as "Forum people whose.." :-- :-//
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and a few more names.....
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lol, I was thinking "will.i.am (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will.i.am)"... Come on dude. Just accept that your name is William :-DD
Except in France
http://9gag.com/gag/awrD4EW/on-french-tv-they-translate-will-i-am-s-name (http://9gag.com/gag/awrD4EW/on-french-tv-they-translate-will-i-am-s-name)
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Nyquist.
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Inventor Ernst Siemens
Yes, this one is a mouthful... It's been my experience most people dislike ending up with a mouthful of Siemens! *Rimshot*
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German names are difficult for americans? There was this (famous) singer that sings "Danke Schön" and he prenounces it as sheeen instead of sheun it sounds so wrong as if someone calls Trump, Tramp.
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English speaking people seem to have problem with German names - can't understand that.
It depends on were you come from - except you come from somewhere near the Eyjafjallajökull
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Socrates
(a lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed)
"So-Krates"
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/fc/01/90/fc0190fbe82300772d22bd74b1c879a2.jpg)
dust..... wind... DUDE!!
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Not all of us do, but then I come from a German background. I know exactly what song you are referring to - Wayne Newton. And it sound wrong to me, too. I think what throws native English speakers is the IE and EI letter combinations. In English how you pronounce works with those letter combinations is an "it depends". Auf Deutsch, alles ordnung and it's always spelled whichever way it is said. None of that "I before E except after C or when sounded like a as in neighbor and weigh" which is not 100% accurate itself, but it's what we teach all the kids, or used to anyway. Now I think they don't care how kids spell words if it's close. It's the result of so many different languages going into the makeup of what we call "English". Want a real challenge, look at Old English and Middle English.
Note my analysis is based on what I learned in 5 years of studying German in school. Can hardly relate my family background as we a PA Dutch and compared to proper German grammar the way my family spoke (and everyone else I knew that spoke PA Dutch) was akin to the ebonics version of English. I learned to understand purely for the ability to snoop - my grandparents would speak dutch (German - silly English heard 'Deutsch" and said, oh, yes, Dutch, got it) with relatives when they wanted to have a conversation without little ears hearing anything. They did like to complain about my uncle and his family a lot. :-DD In my immediate family it ended with my Grandparents my Mom and Uncle both could understand but not speak it. There is a local college that offers a course in speaking PA Dutch, which I keep meaning to do but never seem to have the time. It's truly dying out as the older generations are no more.
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Speaking of Greek names - my exe, who is a teacher, when she first read the Harry Potter books, asked me how you pronounce Hermione's name. Which sort of blew my mind because her mother's name is Penelope - pronounced the proper way, not "Pene-lope"
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my grandparents would speak dutch (German - silly English heard 'Deutsch" and said, oh, yes, Dutch, got it)
Actually this was explained around Christmass on one of our radio channels. The cause of the question was that in our national antem there is a sentence that states that our kings great great great .....great father the Prince of Orange was from german blood (duitschen bloed). But this was also wrongly translated, it should have said from Dietsen bloed.
Now Diets was the general language in Holland and Belgium from 1200 to around 1550. It had nothing to do with German besides it came from the German language even much longer before that.
In the 17th century it was all mixed up and so the English weren't that bad, they just could not pronounce Diets, so they made it Dutch and unfortunately even our own people made it Duits which is German so it is in our national antem.
Oh well in the mean time our passed Queen mother and former Queen both married a German so who cares.
no english wiki for this page unfortunately:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diets
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The PA Dutch though are mostly Germans. Many from southwestern Germany, but plenty from other areas. In my particular home town, mostly from Moravia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch)
The Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities may be the only ones left where kids are taught German dialect. I don't know anyone of my generation who is a fluent speaker and my understanding is only limited, and I'm not sure my boys actually know the silly jokes my grandfather taught me. My Uncle had a project going where he was going around to his aunts and uncles while they were still alive having them speak dutch and recording it along with repeating what they said in English. Since he passed I don't know what became of the tapes.
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Ah ok now I understand, that dutch was the interpretation of deutsch, thats an interesting part of history.
I am not very familiar with that part of history, what I saw sometimes on documentaries that some groups there still live as in the 19th century, like no computers or cars etc.
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Ah ok now I understand, that dutch was the interpretation of deutsch, thats an interesting part of history.
I am not very familiar with that part of history, what I saw sometimes on documentaries that some groups there still live as in the 19th century, like no computers or cars etc.
Yes, that would be the Old Order Amish. There are also Old Order Mennonites, which hold similar beliefs.
In fact, we have some Old Order Mennonites where I'm at here in Virginia and they seem like good people. My parents actually hired a group of them to build a barn on their property last year and man can those guys build! They got it finished in a weekend. By hand. (As in no power tools.)
I've got to say, I admire being able to live that kind of lifestyle in the face of all our modern comforts.
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English speaking people seem to have problem with German names - can't understand that.
I've known quite a few German people with exactly the opposite problem. I used to have a colleague, Jan Czmok*, who would insist on pronouncing my name, Ian, as "Aye-An". The same man had no problem pronouncing "e-mail" in English but even when I suggested he called me "e-Jan" and sped it up a bit, he still couldn't get it right.
If it gets too bad I just tell Germans to call me Jan; "Ian, wünschen sie noch ein bier?" and "Jan, wünschen sie noch ein bier?" both sound close enough that it'll usually get my attention.
My surname seems to be problematic for many Germanic speakers too; "Mason" often comes out sounding like the German surname Meisen or Meissen. There are Germans out there who think that, despite being British, my name is Jan Maurer as I've sometimes just given up and adopted a German name.
*Yan Schmock in English orthography.
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The PA Dutch though are mostly Germans. Many from southwestern Germany, but plenty from other areas. In my particular home town, mostly from Moravia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch)
The Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities may be the only ones left where kids are taught German dialect. I don't know anyone of my generation who is a fluent speaker and my understanding is only limited, and I'm not sure my boys actually know the silly jokes my grandfather taught me. My Uncle had a project going where he was going around to his aunts and uncles while they were still alive having them speak dutch and recording it along with repeating what they said in English. Since he passed I don't know what became of the tapes.
My ancestors come from that region. It is my understanding that speaking Pennsylvania Dutch died rather suddenly during the great unpleasantness of the late 1930s and early 1940s. No one wanted to do anything that would associate them with the little Austrian.
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Anyone French.
Laplace, Fermat, Descartes, the composer Saint-saens. French names usually look like they should be pronouncable to an English-speaker, as they lack any weird characters or pairings and are not laden with Zs everywhere. But they are not pronounced at all like an English-speaker would.
They write words with similar spelling to Italian words,but unlike them,have half the word "silent".
Another thing is,where people try too hard to pronounce names in a "French way".
Moet,as in "Moet & Chandon" is often pronounced "Moh-Ay" by such folk,where in real life,he was a Flemish bloke & pronounced it as it was written.
Where there are thousands of people with a given surname,they are unlikely to all pronounce their names in the same way.
"Captain Mainwaring" in "Dad's Army" wanted to be pronounced "Mannering",but the late AFL Football player Chris Mainwaring pronounced it as it was spelt.
Some distant relatives of mine rejoice in the name "Death".
The older generations pronounced like the end of life,but others opted for "D'Ath".
Featherstone-Haugh doesn't look at all like "Fanshaw".
There are a lot more plain old Fanshaws in the phone book.
Our PM in the 1950s,Bob Menzies,made the comment that his last name really should be pronounced "Mingas".
This was regarded as incredibly pretentious by the general public,who promptly nicknamed him "Ming The Merciless"! ;D
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certainly, Bob Widlar comes to mind.
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Jeeeez, so many.
Mostly French and Dutch
To give one; Christiaan Huygens
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Some distant relatives of mine rejoice in the name "Death".
The older generations pronounced like the end of life,but others opted for "D'Ath".
Featherstone-Haugh doesn't look at all like "Fanshaw".
There are a lot more plain old Fanshaws in the phone book.
I once knew a man with a broad Yorkshire accent who rejoiced in the name Jack Death; there's something so prosaic about "Th' name's Death, Jack Death" delivered in that accent, that it completely takes the sting out of the name.
I used to share a house with a Terry Featherstone who pronounced it as you would read it, bit of bird, bit of rock.
Our PM in the 1950s,Bob Menzies,made the comment that his last name really should be pronounced "Mingas".
This was regarded as incredibly pretentious by the general public,who promptly nicknamed him "Ming The Merciless"!
It's just the normal Scottish pronunciation (whence the name comes), sounds closer to "Mingis" to my ear. Mingin' Menzies is the obvious Scot's schoolboy nickname - Minging being Scot's for "Gosh, what an awful smell" as in "Youse futball kit, that's mingin' that is".
There's something about the tendency of certain classes of the British to "posh up" names by using alternative pronunciations that really annoys me. Ralph Fiennes ("Raif Fines") is a case in point. Timothy Spall also named his son Raif, but had the good grace to spell it the way it was intended to be said. First case, terribly, terribly posh parents; second case, gor-blimey Londoner like m'self.
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Just remembered: Pierre Bézier, "inventor" of the ubiquitous Bézier curve. I never knew whether it was "Bay-zeer" or "Buh-zeer" or "Bee-zeer", so I asked someone who speaks French (after mispronouncing it for two decades). It's "Bay-zee-A (long A)". Huh. Would never have guessed!
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Just remembered: Pierre Bézier, "inventor" of the ubiquitous Bézier curve. I never knew whether it was "Bay-zeer" or "Buh-zeer" or "Bee-zeer", so I asked someone who speaks French (after mispronouncing it for two decades). It's "Bay-zee-A (long A)". Huh. Would never have guessed!
I, for one, aren't quite sure what your intent is there. By "long A" do you mean the letter "ay" or the phoneme "aah"?
I'd render my pronunciation of Bézier as beh-zee-ay.
An aside - For a while in England, the generation in school after mine were first taught to write in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and then transitioned to standard English spelling after they'd got the hang of things. On the surface this sounds like a stupid idea, even if you can grasp the underlying intent. However at times like this it would be really useful if there was wider understanding of IPA so that we could use it to describe pronunciations instead of using ad-hoc versions hacked largely out of English orthography.
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(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a3/4f/e5/a34fe5bb6589c8c6851a557ee7412cc9.jpg)
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I, for one, aren't quite sure what your intent is there. By "long A" do you mean the letter "ay" or the phoneme "aah"?
Really? Elementary school English. Long A - 'ay'. Short A - 'aah'. I wasn't sure how to "spell" the letter. "Aye" is pronounced "eye" and I couldn't think of anything else.
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Calling it "long A" will really get you into trouble when you get to Latin or Greek or study poetic meter. I suppose that explains why schools in England (still based around the Quadrivium to some extent?) would call it differently.
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Edsger W. Dijkstra
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Sean Spincther
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Raymond Luxury Yacht
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQvjKqXA0Y (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQvjKqXA0Y)
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One of my female professor who taught computation method always said she loves to eat salmon, only she always pronounced it as semen |O. It's hard to keep ourselves not to laugh. She worked at BPA (a US hydraulic power research center), and she always told stories how she caught "semens" near generator turbines.
Let me guess, she was from New Zealand? ;)
Same for cleaning your deck (dick).
Some Australian and South African accents also pronounce their vowels like that, but not as strong.
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I follow to think that the anglosaxons complicate themselves the life. That is more easy the spanish pronunciation,almost all the words always sounds as it writes.
An example of the diference of the vowels between Spanish and English.
Spanish English
A = a A=ei (with a consonant it can vary the sound randomly)
E= e E=i ("")
I = i I=ai (As somebody catches the sausage with the zipper )
O=o O =ou
U=u U =iu (For me sound as yu )
Certainly , that is very hard understand to english when you change the sounds of the letters randomly :-DD
One of my female professor who taught computation method always said she loves to eat salmon, only she always pronounced it as semen |O. It's hard to keep ourselves not to laugh. She worked at BPA (a US hydraulic power research center), and she always told stories how she caught "semens" near generator turbines.
Come on that there isn't diference sound between SE-MEN and SAL-MON.
So when she eats salmon is not allowed the presence the kids under 18 years :-DD :-DD :-DD
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Certainly , that is very hard understand to english when you change the sounds of the letters randomly :-DD
It's not random. There are rules that dictate how a vowel should sound, but there are many, many rules. Even native English speakers get it wrong many times.
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Sure there are rules - and every rule has another 5 exceptions. Might as well NOT have rules in the first place.
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I didn't know how to pronounce Kwisatz Haderach until I saw the movie...
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I had to take an writing class in college that was taught by an older Chinese woman who was born and educated in China, and spoke British style English. Now that was one tough accent to follow.
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... and spoke British style English.
No, that's just English. You only need to qualify what kind of English if you're referring to one of the bastardised versions. :)
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... and spoke British style English.
No, that's just English. You only need to qualify what kind of English if you're referring to one of the bastardized versions. :)
That's like when you get "French Onion Soup" in France, its just called "Onion Soup" :)
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At a company I worked at some years ago our illustrious GM hired a designer whose thick accent bespoke of somewhere in east Europe. One of the sales reps who called on us from time to time had the first name Ian. For several days this new guy would call up the supplier where the rep worked and repeatedly asked for "Mr. Yawn". You could tell the receptionist on the phone was getting short-tempered.
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Bode as in Hendrik Wade Bode originator of the famous plot. I've heard it as Boadeh, Boddy, Boad but never the correct Boady
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Bode as in Hendrik Wade Bode originator of the famous plot. I've heard it as Boadeh, Boddy, Boad but never the correct Boady
I guess you missed another topic? Lol
"The correct" is a very bald statement.
Seen he was Dutch, technically speaking "Boady" isn't correct at all!
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Halley's Comet / Edmond Halley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Halley
Short 'a' like Apple, not like 'hay' (eg, Bill Haley and the Comets)
Actually, both may be incorrect, in contemporary literature his surname was sometimes misspelled as Hawley, suggesting that this is how he pronounced his own name.
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Seen he was Dutch, technically speaking "Boady" isn't correct at all!
He was actually american but of Dutch lineage. I take his pronunciation from Wikipedia as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
and from the European profs I had in school. ;)