How do you pronounce Pleiades?

On Fri, 9 Jun 2017 05:55:24 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

Obviously, when one looks at the sequence of letters "Pleiades" in English, the
first pronounciation that comes to mind is "Plee-aydz".

That is, of course, wrong. Since "Pleiades" came from Greek, it needs to be
pronounced according to Greek rules rather than English ones, since that is the
standard practice of the English language with regard to borrowed rules... and the
reason why English spelling is so atrocious in a phonetic sense.

I call utter and complete rubbish on that assertion.

The correct way to pronounce something is determined entirely by
convention. How it was pronounced in its original language is almost
entirely meaningless.

On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 7:32:01 AM UTC-6, Mike Collins wrote:

And on the subject of Greek pronunciation here beta is beeta but for you
it's probably bayta.

Of course, these days it's veeta or vayta in Greece. Which is why in Russian B is
the letter V, and the letter they use for B is a funny-looking sort of B.

John Savard

Quadibloc:

Obviously, when one looks at the sequence of letters "Pleiades" in English,
the first pronounciation that comes to mind is "Plee-aydz".

And that is one of the widely used pronunciations. Play-a-dees is
another.

That is, of course, wrong. Since "Pleiades" came from Greek, it needs to be
pronounced according to Greek rules rather than English ones, since that is
the standard practice of the English language with regard to borrowed rules...
and the reason why English spelling is so atrocious in a phonetic sense.

That is, of course, nonsense. Do you pronounce Cairo "Al-Qahira?"
Bangkok as "Krungthepmahanakhon?" Greece as "Ellinikí Dimokratía" and
its capital as "Athena?" I thought not.

So it might be pronounced "Play-a-dess" or "Play-a-deez". We would have to
start
from Î*λειάδες and apply Ancient Greek pronounciation rules to find out.

The pronunciation of this word in the English-speaking world owes very
little to ancient Greek. Their pronunciation was valid for them, ours
is valid for us.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Mike Collins:
And on the subject of Greek pronunciation here beta is beeta but for you
it's probably bayta.

Quadibloc:
Of course, these days it's veeta or vayta in Greece. Which is why in Russian
B is the letter V, and the letter they use for B is a funny-looking sort of B.

I would have expected you to say "...that is, of course, wrong. Since
"beta" came from Phoenician, it needs to be pronounced according to
Phoenician rules..." It means "house" in the semitic languages and it
derives from a pictogram of a house.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 11:28:44 AM UTC-6, Davoud wrote:

That is, of course, nonsense. Do you pronounce Cairo "Al-Qahira?"

When I'm playing "Ticket to Ride: Sails and Rails", I do, because that's what's
printed on the map.

Seriously, though, while English does take some foreign words and place names
and subjects them to transmogrification - Athens is not Athina, nor Vienna Wien
- the rule for many borrowed English words is indeed that pronounciation rules
from the original language are applied to their spelling.

Thus, Penelope is not "Pen-eh-loap" but "Pen-eh-lo-pay", following Greek
practice.

I am not kidding when I say this is something English does - a lot. No, it
doesn't do it, or indeed anything else when it comes to English spelling - with
*universal consistency*.

John Savard

Quadibloc wrote:
On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 11:28:44 AM UTC-6, Davoud wrote:

That is, of course, nonsense. Do you pronounce Cairo "Al-Qahira?"

When I'm playing "Ticket to Ride: Sails and Rails", I do, because that's what's
printed on the map.

Seriously, though, while English does take some foreign words and place names
and subjects them to transmogrification - Athens is not Athina, nor Vienna Wien
- the rule for many borrowed English words is indeed that pronounciation rules
from the original language are applied to their spelling.

Thus, Penelope is not "Pen-eh-loap" but "Pen-eh-lo-pay", following Greek
practice.

I am not kidding when I say this is something English does - a lot. No, it
doesn't do it, or indeed anything else when it comes to English spelling - with
*universal consistency*.

John Savard


Pen ell oh pea

On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 8:47:19 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, June 8, 2017 at 3:29:42 AM UTC-6, Mike Collins wrote:

I could never get on with Patrick Moore's ridiculous pronunciation of
Uranus which should obviously sound like Uranium.

In order to avoid having it sound... objectionable (as in "your anus")... and
since "ur" as in the Babylonian city or the German word for "original" is hard to
justify... using the fact that it came from Greek, and saying "Ouranos" instead is
an entirely reasonable expedient in a desperate situation.

"Urine-us" sounds scatological as well, maybe worse. Urine.

My interest in astronomy began at about 8 years old, and I learned
the names of the planets then, and to show just how young I was
I didn't realize there was anything scatological about the
pronunciation of Uranus (as in uranium).

On Friday, 9 June 2017 20:35:25 UTC+2, Quadibloc wrote:

I am not kidding when I say this is something English does - a lot. No, it
doesn't do it, or indeed anything else when it comes to English spelling - with
*universal consistency*.

John Savard

Had you thought it through, you would realize how rough your generalizations truly are when clustered on the bough. De we not cough borough our conventions as we plough straight through linguistic history as we ought not, to? ;-)