Bode Plots come from Hendrik Bode... Whose name is pronounced.......

[Smokey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode#cite_note-Van_Valkenburg-1

"Van Valkenburg, M. E. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "In memoriam: Hendrik W. Bode (1905-1982)", IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. AC-29, No 3., March 1984, pp. 193–194. Quote: "Something should be said about his name. To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed, the pronunciation is boh-dee. The Bode family preferred that the original Dutch be used as boh-dah."

It doesn't rhyme with "Mode" or "Code".  Just saying

::EDIT::
Damn, I just realized I posted this in the PCB CAD section.  No idea how that happened.  Should probably go in general.  Sorry everyone.
Who's != Whose.  Thanks.

[EEVblog]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Wade_Bode#cite_note-Van_Valkenburg-1
"Van Valkenburg, M. E. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "In memoriam: Hendrik W. Bode (1905-1982)", IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. AC-29, No 3., March 1984, pp. 193–194. Quote: "Something should be said about his name. To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed, the pronunciation is boh-dee. The Bode family preferred that the original Dutch be used as boh-dah."
It doesn't rhyme with "Mode" or "Code".  Just saying

 

This comes up every year without fail.
Van Valkenburg is wrong, or at least not fully correct.
"generations of engineers that have followed" do NOT universally pronounce it "boh-dee". You might very well do that in the United States, but the US is not the centre of the universe.
If you were raised as an engineer in Australia then you would pronounce is "Bowed" (as in "code"). That's what is used in industry here and how you are taught to pronounce it.
Welcome to the world of global language evolution.

People who say "Bowed" is "wrong", are clueless or deliberately ignorant about language evolution in the rest of the world.
Anyone who wants to be anal about it had better damn well start saying it "boh-dah" with original Dutch intonation (if any?) or STFU.

[Monkeh]

but the US is not the centre of the universe.

Wait, WHAT?! This cannot be.

[Smokey]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

[Smokey]

Here is another interesting bit of word history, which is actually relevant to electronics since the word shows up a lot with reference to sticking parts in holes.  We have probably all seen both spellings used.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/how-thru-turned-into-through

The difference is that thru-hole parts were not named after Mr. Jonathan Thru.

[EEVblog]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

Happens every single time I mention it in a video. People trot out Wikipedia like it's the golden tablets.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

That's what it is to him, everyone else is free to pronounce it however they like. When a persons name becomes more than just their name by virtue of it becoming an industry term that everyone learns in engineering school, then you can't stop it evolving over time. We are talking the 1930's here, more than 4 generations!
[/i]Perhaps you support the C-16 bill in Canada where people will be forced by rule of law to address people with the correct pronoun?

I will continue to pronounce it the way I was taught and the way it's said by almost everyone in the industry in Australia and many other countries. I don't expect the Yanks to change to "boh-dah", just as no one should expect Australians and others to change from "Bowed"

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

Great, your choice, more power to you, just don't expect others to.

Rout vs root anyone?
Vi-Ah vs Vee-ah?

[Elf]

[...] To his colleagues at Bell Laboratories and the generations of engineers that have followed [...]

[...] You might very well do that in the United States, but the US is not the centre of the universe. [...]

No comment on the pronunciation of the name, and the U.S. certainly isn't the center (or centre) of the universe, but the old Bell Labs should sure make the short list of places that could be! It seems like the pure volume of innovation that came out of that place is almost singlehandedly responsible for the world of electronics and communications as we know it today.

Telephone networks with mechanical through electronic switching, leading into computer networking, all the Shannon/Hartley/Nyquist information theory stuff, UNIX, C/C++, the transistor, lasers, CCDs, solar cells; almost an endless list.

[scatha]

I don't know, I went to Uni in Oz and everyone pronounced it boh-dee including the control and system identification guys. It probably didn't hurt that Point Break had just come out, though. Booooodhiiiiiii!!!

[Noize]

 All things being said, it doesn't bode well for us.

[mtdoc]

It probably didn't hurt that Point Break had just come out, though. Booooodhiiiiiii!!!

Then there was the Buddhist satellite communications engineer who spent a lot of time with his network analyzer.  He liked the Bode-Sat-View....

[Smokey]

Every year?  While there are plenty of posts about "aluminum" and the letter "Z", I did a forum search and didn't see anyone else with this particular bit of info about Van Valkenburg quote about Bode's name.

Happens every single time I mention it in a video. People trot out Wikipedia like it's the golden tablets.

While language can evolve, and groups of people are free to refer to things in whatever way they want, sometimes there's one right answer.  If something is named in honor of a real live dude, and that dude pronounced his name a certain way, then that's what it is. 

That's what it is to him, everyone else is free to pronounce it however they like. When a persons name becomes more than just their name by virtue of it becoming an industry term that everyone learns in engineering school, then you can't stop it evolving over time. We are talking the 1930's here, more than 4 generations!
[/i]Perhaps you support the C-16 bill in Canada where people will be forced by rule of law to address people with the correct pronoun?

I will continue to pronounce it the way I was taught and the way it's said by almost everyone in the industry in Australia and many other countries. I don't expect the Yanks to change to "boh-dah", just as no one should expect Australians and others to change from "Bowed"

And I'm totally committed to saying "boh-dah" now

Great, your choice, more power to you, just don't expect others to.

Rout vs root anyone?
Vi-Ah vs Vee-ah?

I will apologize in advance for keeping this going since it most certainly is arguing over nothing.. but that's what the internet is for right?

So in this case the Wikipedia page actually sites a reference, so it's not just some random dude writing stuff on the interwebs it's actually a primary source with information about how the dude pronounced his name.  Don't try to discredit the primary source just because we got there through a Wikipedia page.

And this has nothing to do with legal requirements or language evolution, it has to do with respect for the guy that created something.  The thing was named in honor of a real guy and therefore to honor the guy you should pronounce his name correctly (or at least recognize you are pronouncing it incorrectly).  You don't have to do it, and if you don't do it you can still use his creation and people will probably know what you are talking about, but you are disrespecting Bode a bit by saying it doesn't matter at all.

Dave is the king of admitting he can't pronounce people's names, so I'm not sure why he's taking such a hard line on this.  Every time you say "Bode" you are pronouncing a dude's name.

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't really care what is correct, but I want to argue against a flip "well it is just language drift".  Simple language drift is why Italians and Spanish and French no longer speak Latin and can't talk easily with each other.  Engineers should be able to speak with each other.

So rather than voting to support the drifted pronunciation in the US or Australia or wherever, the choice that is hardest to argue with on any basis other than "my way is better than yours" is the pronunciation of the name.  I will try to do that henceforth.

[Alex Eisenhut]

who's = who is
whose = belongs

[timb]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

That said, it's not really a big deal. I mean, I pronounced it as Bode (rhymes with code) for many, many years, because the first time I was exposed to it was in books as a kid. It wasn't until much later that I decided to investigate these mysterious Boh-Dee Plots and find out if they were related to Bode Plots!

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

[Alex Eisenhut]

So... Next up: Gauss.

[The Soulman]

Don't know what the fuzz is all about.
It's bode in dutch and that appears to be correct way of pronouncing it. 

btw: my son is called Hendrik   

[helius]

You're fighting a losing battle. Most people couldn't pronounce "Vincent Van Gogh" if they wanted to.

[sleemanj]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

[Neganur]

Buddha plot imho 

usually defuses the discussion with a smile

[EEVblog]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

 
You mean the way his family pronounced their own name, or the way that generations of Americans have butchered it into Boh-Dee?

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

No, you don't, you are simply pronouncing it the American way. You are NOT pronouncing it the way his family pronounced their name.

You have absolutely no position to argue from here. Either you have to pronounce it the way his family did or you have to accept all evolutions of it.

[EEVblog]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/don't-reply-just-vote-please/

Ooh gee, looks who's winning! 

[Smokey]

It's 2am in part of the world.  Let the morning people vote before you call it over!
and... If you are wrong, just because everyone else may be wrong too doesn't make you less wrong...

Boh-dah for the win!

[EEVblog]

It's 2am in part of the world.  Let the morning people vote before you call it over!
and... If you are wrong, just because everyone else may be wrong too doesn't make you less wrong...

It doesn't matter who "wins", the point is that the Boh-dee fanboys think it's THE way to say it and it's how "everyone" says it.
Even if the results ends up 20% of community pronounce it Bowed/Boud that's still a huge number of engineers.
The poll backs up similar results from years of having debated this, it's ballpark half and half.
The Yanks get quite emabarresed when they realise the rest of the world is bigger and different than they are 

[Smokey]

The whole point of the thread was that no one is winning because everyone was wrong... boh-DUH!  This fun fact turned out not so fun I guess.

And why does it have to be a nationalistic thing?  No one was bashing Australia here.  Australians have just as much a right to mispronounce a guys name as Americans do. 

[timb]

I do tend to agree that Dave is on the wrong side of this one. It's someone's name, so there is one correct pronunciation: The way they said it. Period.

 
You mean the way his family pronounced their own name, or the way that generations of Americans have butchered it into Boh-Dee?

Now I pronounce it the correct way. It's still a hard habit to break.

No, you don't, you are simply pronouncing it the American way. You are NOT pronouncing it the way his family pronounced their name.

You have absolutely no position to argue from here. Either you have to pronounce it the way his family did or you have to accept all evolutions of it.

By correct, I meant regionally correct.

Actually, after thinking about it, my pronunciation is actually closer to Dah than Dee. I think the Dee is simply an effect of the typical American accents and speech patterns, as is quite often the case with foreign words. I've heard it pronounced several ways in between the two, generally based on regional accents.

Anyway, my point was that, in this case, technically there *is* a correct answer, and we all *should* make an effort to pronounce it correctly since it *is* a proper name. Practically, it comes down to the evolution of language and various accents and speech patterns.

So, technically you're (we're) wrong, practically it's fine.

[EEVblog]

Anyway, my point was that, in this case, technically there *is* a correct answer, and we all *should* make an effort to pronounce it correctly

Really? After 4 generations of engineers calling it either Bowed or Boh-dee you expect everyone to change? Because, well, some people read it on Wikipedia four generations later and they now want everyone to make some sort of moral change?
Very people people call it Boh-dah, but hey, feel free, more power to you, you can make a difference.
But if you want people to use the original Dutch pronunciation (as you should, because it is his name), then you'd better well get the correct Dutch pronunciation with all the right intonation. Don't go half arsed at it and think you know!

Practically, it comes down to the evolution of language and various accents and speech patterns.

Bingo.

So, technically you're (we're) wrong, practically it's fine.

I'm glad an american can admit they are wrong, even if they did have to put it in parenthesis as if they are less wrong

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't care how many generations have been doing it one way or the other.  I want this generation to pick a universal way to say it.  Then pass it on.  I once wasted quite a while with a group of German engineers who really spoke English quite well.  The time waster?  Recognizing that "zafeer" and "safire"  (sort of phonetic spellings) were the same substance.  Or actually recognizing that when I said Sapphire I meant the material they knew as Saphir.

This forum, being quite international is a great medium for normalizing our technical jargon.  It encourages me and others of my countrymen to change the way four generations of engineers have been doing things and use the metric system.  There are other ways it brings the worlds community of electronic geeks together.

I suppose we could use the results of the poll and pick that as a winner, but that is the tyranny of the majority.  Which is why I recommended the Dutch name pronunciation as kind of neutral ground.  Yeah, Dave who is set in his ways would have to change.  But so will I and hundreds of other people.  Some of whom are also set in their ways.  But in the end we will have made the next generation a tiny bit better.

[Smokey]

Interesting... So you are saying that if a mistake is made for 4 generations then there is no need to fix it? Is it exactly 4, or is there a tolerance on that?  Is it when the 4th generation child is born, or when they get their engineering degree?  Since Americans still don't know that a switchblade isn't a knife, how many more generations before it actually becomes a knife? 

If it really doesn't matter, and it really isn't important to honor the guy who created the thing (and as a nice side effect have a consistent way to refer to something so technical people can actually share information effectively), how about we just rename it a "gainy-phasey-logy plot".  That's way more accurate and descriptive than some dutch guy's name that isn't worth the effort to even try to pronounce right.

I actually really do have a frequency response I need to plot this week, but I'm thinking about putting it off until I take a trip to the Netherlands.  Anyone know a good Dutch speech tutor?

[helius]

I'm sure you could say something to folks from New Orleans or Terre Haute about their pronunciation, but don't expect a friendly response...

[EEVblog]

I don't care how many generations have been doing it one way or the other.  I want this generation to pick a universal way to say it.  Then pass it on. 

Not going to happen for linguistics reasons.
Also, most people don't care.

[EEVblog]

If it really doesn't matter, and it really isn't important to honor the guy who created the thing

Oh please.
We honour the guy every time we use the word. The pronunciation nazi's need to get over it.

[Cerebus]

We honour the guy every time we use the word. The pronunciation nazi's need to get over it.

I don't quite get why you've got such a bee in your bonnet about this. It's a bit over the top to call people "pronunciation nazi's" (sic*) just because they disagree with you. If anything, a prescriptivist 'because that's how we say it' is closer to the autocratic implied by 'Nazi' than any argument I'm hearing from other quarters.

A man's name is a man's name and there is only ever going to be one strictly correct way to pronounce it, the way that man does. I've always been taught that it's polite to try as best one can to get the pronunciation of a foreigner's name right and so I'm opting for the Nederlander 'Bo-dah' version.

I certainly don't buy the 'generations of engineers got it wrong so now it's right' argument. As for a 'linguistic drift' argument, well it just doesn't cut it for proper names over less than a few hundred years and Bode's lifetime isn't very different from my father's and I can assure you that they didn't start pronouncing my father's name differently in that short a period (the real Nazis might have called him a few things other than his given name but that would have been for different reasons).

*Couldn't resist; the incipient grammar Nazi in me can't let a missed capital and a greengrocer's apostrophe go unmarked. The laws of grammar now mean that I will spot a spelling error, a literal, a misplaced punctuation mark or a grammar error immediately after I have hit "Post".

[EEVblog]

I don't quite get why you've got such a bee in your bonnet about this.

Because as a content creator I hear it over and over and over again, hundreds of times, every time I say the word in a video. That's been happening for the last 7 years. I don't expect non content creators to understand this.
I could delete the comments, or I could ignore the comments, or I could try and educate people so they hopefully stop doing that. I foolishly chose the latter.
I'm done.

[Excavatoree]

One of my professors claimed it rhymed with "no day."   I haven't heard anyone else assert that.  (If it's in this thread, I apologize for missing it.)

As for the debate, well, I'll sit this one out.

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't quite get why you've got such a bee in your bonnet about this.

Because as a content creator I hear it over and over and over again, hundreds of times, every time I say the word in a video. That's been happening for the last 7 years. I don't expect non content creators to understand this.
I could delete the comments, or I could ignore the comments, or I could try and educate people so they hopefully stop doing that. I foolishly chose the latter.
I'm done.

I guess you have a lot in common with our recent President Bush.  I cringed every time be talked about "nucular weapons".  People chided him all the time.  But he was the content creator, and the decider.

[Smokey]

Every working engineer is a "content creator".  Videos on the interwebs are just one type of widget.  When it comes out of your head and you present it to someone else, you are creating content; be it in a studio, an office, or your garage.  The communication part is important, and that requires an effort for common language.  Sometimes all answers are not equal.  Being a content creator is exactly the thing that rightly opens one up to criticism, not making one exempt from it.  That's how humans filter knowledge.  No one wants to live in North Korea with their state confirmed unicorn cave that they're not allowed to deny.

Facts... Some people say "Bowed".. Some people say "Boh-dee".. and as it turns out then there are some people who are actually objectively more correct that say "Boh-dah".  This isn't a "toe-may-toe", "toe-ma-toe" thing.  It's a dude's name.  How is that a threat to the content creator?  It's not like someone made a montage video of all the times Dave said "Bowed" with the intent of pointing and laughing. 

...however much past or current presidents might like to think so, being president doesn't make everything you say correct or acceptable.  Bush was just wrong about "nuk-u-lar".

[helius]

Now where have I heard this argument before...

[Cerebus]

I don't quite get why you've got such a bee in your bonnet about this.

Because as a content creator I hear it over and over and over again, hundreds of times, every time I say the word in a video. That's been happening for the last 7 years. I don't expect non content creators to understand this.
I could delete the comments, or I could ignore the comments, or I could try and educate people so they hopefully stop doing that. I foolishly chose the latter.
I'm done.

Ah, thaar's ya problem. I think you're confusing correctness and style. I was a tech journalist for a number of years and subject to the whims of the style guides of the various publications that I wrote for. I got used to phrasing things the way the editor(s) wanted rather than how I might naturally put it - basically some corners got knocked off. Some things are always going to be a question of style, like whether to split infinitives or not. You're always on a hiding to nothing if you choose to go down the route of defending a stylistic choice as a correctness choice.

The giveaway here is your choice above of the word educate. If you had framed it as "That's how I learned it and I'm going to stick with it; it's a question of style", I think you'd have little argument from most people, certainly not from me. Framing it as "that's the only way to say it" is inviting an argument, especially in a room full of barrack room lawyers engineers.

A final point, just because I'm an evil bastard. For amusement, try re-reading your last comment and substitute your favourite figure of derision in place of "content creator" - "pommie", "vegan", "millennial snowflake", whatever floats your boat. What does it sound like now?

[Excavatoree]

For the younger folks who weren't around, US  President Carter also pronounced "nuclear" as "nukular."   

[madires]

It's bode in dutch and that appears to be correct way of pronouncing it. 

I fully agree with you. I can't remember that anyone in Germany ever pronounced it boud. And for an independent expert's opinion on this matter we should ask someone with a strong Scottish accent after he has escaped from a voice controlled elevator

[Cerebus]

It's bode in dutch and that appears to be correct way of pronouncing it. 

I fully agree with you. I can't remember that anyone in Germany ever pronounced it boud. And for an independent expert's opinion on this matter we should ask someone with a strong Scottish accent after he has escaped from a voice controlled elevator

So that would be "whuzzafackabasa! Gay mee ann AXE, NU!".

[CatalinaWOW]

It just occurred to me.  Bode developed his plots in 1938.  Assuming they were picked up instantly in Australia, that is just under 80 years ago.  And according to Dave four generations of Australian engineers have been pronouncing it one way.  You Ozzies go through generations like rabbits!  Much of the world thinks of a generation as roughly 30 years.

[Bassman59]

The pronunciation nazi's need to get over it.

The apostrophe Nazis are horrified.

[Bassman59]

For the younger folks who weren't around, US  President Carter also pronounced "nuclear" as "nukular."   

And he actually knew what he was talking about.

[Bassman59]

So... Next up: Gauss.

And waiting in the dugout: Fresnel.

[vodka]

For the younger folks who weren't around, US  President Carter also pronounced "nuclear" as "nukular."   

And he actually knew what he was talking about.

You are wrong according Homer J. Simpson the correct pronounciation of  "nuclear" is nucelar (nu-ce-lar) 

https://youtu.be/BbdRpNnP3Hs?t=9s

[IconicPCB]

And while we are frenetically awaiting Fresnel, let us talk Putin.

[Nerull]

I hope everyone in this thread also says Voult and says Celsius with a swedish accent.

[SeanB]

How about this pronunciation....

[Feynman]

Every German Engineer i know pronounces Bode like its written. Meaning the "e" sounds the same like the first "a" in "again" or the "e" in "the".

[Kjelt]

Enough said, I would't trust the americans (Haarlem -> Harlem) nor the ausies (van Diemensland -> Tasmania) with correctly pronouncing Dutch words. And I thought this was an electronics forum 

[IconicPCB]

Very true...

Anybody who can not pronounce "G" the way the Dutch do it should not get involved in a discussion involving Esperanto expertise.

[Jim from Chicago]

Are we disrespecting Alessandro Volta because we don't refer to units of electrical potential as "voltas" in an 18th century Italian accent? Are we disrespecting Michael Faraday because we don't refer to units of capacitance as "Faradays" in a 19th century English accent? (it would be something more like "fah-wuh-day" than the American "fair-a-day"). Lots of physical units and technical terms in science are named after dead people, and we pronounce virtually all of the names "wrong" or modify them.

Wanting to respect how the guy pronounced his own name is virtuous. But when names get repurposed as technical terms, they are no longer really functioning as a person's name anymore. They become something... else.. and it's unlikely that we even truly know what the original accent sounded like.

Ultimately I don't think it's disrespectful or wrong if the person's name is modified or pronounced differently as it gets used as technical jargon. The person is still honored insofar as their name is the "linguistic root".

With "Bode" we haven't reached a linguistic consensus comparable to "volt" or "farad", etc. Practically speaking, if you pronounce Bode so that it ryhmes with "code" or "mode", people will probably understand what you mean. If you say it like "Boh-dee" that will also probably be understood. Other pronunciations than those are less common and less likely to be understood.

[TimFox]

By the way, there is a unit called the "Faraday".
It is defined as the charge in a mole of electrons, i.e. 6 x 10²³ times the electron charge, approximately 96,500 Coulombs.

[Smokey]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Here is another reason to go with "boh-dah".  Right now there are a handful of ways engineers say it, but there is only one way, the guy's actual name pronunciation "boh-dah", that has any rational.  All the others ("bowd", "bo-dee", etc) are only justified with "because I say so!", or "we have more people saying it this way than you do!". 

So unless we all like doing the "I need a "bo-dee", "bowd", whatever phasey-gainy plot thingy, you know what I mean, ya that.." dance, or the "My way is better because there are more of us and we say so!", we can actually standardize on the only objectively justifiable pronunciation, and respect the dude at the same time. 

(....that should get everyone riled up again... )

[Kjelt]

Since he was born american you do what you want.
Still might be interesting to know his last name original in dutch is a profession.
A bode is a messenger. We still have postbodes which are postmen delivering mail which is also delivering a message but by post.
En that is pronounced "boduh" type it in google translate in dutch and press the speaker, the short female version is how we pronounce it.

[mikerj]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Good for you, just don't expect this kind of pointless hand wringing to modify the way the vast majority of engineer pronounce it.

[Smokey]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Good for you, just don't expect this kind of pointless hand wringing to modify the way the vast majority of engineer pronounce it.

I don't.  They can all continue to be wrong

[JohanH]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Good for you, just don't expect this kind of pointless hand wringing to modify the way the vast majority of engineer pronounce it.

I think the wast majority of languages except English would pronounce the name Bode in a similar way to "Boh-dah" (if we must use an English phonetic transcription). So you probably mean the vast majority of English speaking engineers here.

For an international audience, it's not so productive to use English letters and spelling to describe how to pronounce an uncommon word or a sound, because you will get as many variations of pronunciation as there are languages out there. Non-native English speakers have a very hard time pronouncing words in the numerous descriptive ways English speakers try to use their written language in when trying to express a sound in writing.

The best way is to use the international phonetic alphabet. This is a bit hard, because it's not easy to write and people have to look up the pronunciation, unless they are already familiar with it. The next best way would be to use a simplified Latin script. If you know how to pronounce Latin letters (plus maybe a few more), you will be able to pronounce most of the Germanic written languages (and a few other) and get the pronunciation to such a level that much of it will be understandable to a speaker of the language (even if you don't understand the language yourself; it will sound a bit strange to a native speaker though). This includes Italian, German, Spanish, Norwegian, even Finnish and to lesser extent Swedish, Dutch and Danish (I'm sure there are many other; e.g. Welsh is also pretty much phonetically written). But English and French are lost causes. For them correlation between written language and spoken language will soon be like Chinese, sorry!

[Smokey]

...
The best way is to use the international phonetic alphabet.
...

Ok, so what does "Boh-dah" look like in the international phonetic alphabet?

[TimFox]

Q:  How does one pronounce the name of the country where the last World Cup was held?
A:  Incorrectly.

[JohanH]

Ok, so what does "Boh-dah" look like in the international phonetic alphabet?

For this particular name Bode, it would be [bodə], [boːdə] or [boʊdə], depending on language. The first one would be a pretty easy and good approximation.

If you want to know roughly how it sounds, I think google translate doesn't do it too badly (press the speaker symbol to listen):

[bodə] or [boːdə] pretty much https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&text=Bode&op=translate

[boʊdə] would be about https://translate.google.com/?sl=nl&tl=en&text=Bode&op=translate

[EEVblog]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Good for you, just don't expect this kind of pointless hand wringing to modify the way the vast majority of engineer pronounce it.

I don't.  They can all continue to be wrong

Sodder 

[Smokey]

Nice.   I thought about this thread the other day when I was looking into some SMPS stability analysis.

I've been saying "boh-dah" since I made this thread in 2017.

Good for you, just don't expect this kind of pointless hand wringing to modify the way the vast majority of engineer pronounce it.

I don't.  They can all continue to be wrong

Sodder 

Named after William Henry Solder in 1852.  He made the discovery while installing sheets of pre-cut grass in his yard.  But everyone just called him by his nickname, "Flux"

[Smokey]

Q:  How does one pronounce the name of the country where the last World Cup was held?
A:  Incorrectly.

Those are the guys that make those killer keyboard instruments, right?

[vk6zgo]

Snooties like to pronounce "Moët" in "Moët & Chandon" (the wine company) as "Mow-ay", but when SWMBO & I visited the Oz subsidiary the person conducting us through the winery pointed out that the pronunciation was actually "mo-et", because the original M. Moët pronounced it that way.

From Wiki:-
"Moët is pronounced with a "t" at the end (IPA: [mɔɛt]) ('mo-et') as the French-born founder's surname is of Dutch origin."