How do you say metamerism?

[Lisa Nikodym]

Of course it's met-AB-olism and meta-BOL-ic.

Good point.  "Metabolism" and "metadata" are pronounced inconsistently.  It just goes to show what a messy and inconsistent language English is.  Why do so many people around the world speak it as a second language?  Spanish, which is easy and consistent to pronounce, would make much more sense.  It's sadistic of us to try to inflict our messed-up language on everyone else.  

Lisa

[jani]

Good point.  "Metabolism" and "metadata" are pronounced inconsistently.  It just goes to show what a messy and inconsistent language English is.  Why do so many people around the world speak it as a second language?  Spanish, which is easy and consistent to pronounce, would make much more sense.  It's sadistic of us to try to inflict our messed-up language on everyone else.

Which Spanish are you talking about?

[Ray]

It just goes to show what a messy and inconsistent language English is.  Why do so many people around the world speak it as a second language?  Spanish, which is easy and consistent to pronounce, would make much more sense. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=59897\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Well, the Americans have done their best to iron out a few inconsistencies. Tomato and potato, color and colour etc. However, when it comes to language difficulty, the Chinese have got us all stumped.

I was married to a Chinese lady once. We're still friends. However, I confess I never did get very far at all learning Chinese. But I recall my amazement when I first discovered that all literate Chinese can communicate through the written script even though verbally thay can completely misunderstand each other. There are hundreds of dialects in China, some as different as English and Spanish. However, if you've learned the Chinese ideograms (ie. you are literate) you can communicate with anyone else who's also literate, through writing.

It's always seemed to me that that's an extraordinary advantage. It would be like the whole of Europe having a common written language,

[AJSJones]

I think this is one of those words that appeared in print before anyone actually ever tried to pronounce it  , so everyone can only guess, including the first person to make up the word. Ergo there is no "correct" way, only a consensus (or not) which arises either from which pronunciation is "easiest" or by analogy with a word they do know (did you learn about metadata or metabolism?).  While we're at it, think about heliCOPter : roots are helico (spiral) and pter (wing), but it's difficult to imagine anything other than heliCOPter

Interestingly, it's usually the other way round - everyone knows how to say a word and the argument, ahem, discussion, is over how to spell it.  

[Ray]

Actually, I say HEL-i-copter and my dictionaries seem to agree with me   .

[AJSJones]

Of course you're right   It was late but I wasn't capitalizing the COP to mean that's where the (only) emphasis went, but to mean that there isn't a break as in helico-pter, as the roots might suggest there should be.

[vgogolak]

I think it is pronounced

INK-jet

 

[From an admitted dye sub bigot!

Victor

[TomTom60]

However I say it, I say it in the voice of a robot.

Damnitt...this thread is really getting on my nerves. could someone just take howitzer and blast it right off the board.