How to pronounce these photography terms? (not right or wrong thread!)

Yes, I think Japanese and German are pretty close, and apart from US English, in the pronunciation of German/Japanese camera equipment. E.g. we say Neekon in Germany...

PS: I thought of some French equipment. Here's a good one: Angenieux. I know exactly how it's pronounced but can't transscribe it into English for the life of me...
 
kossi008 said:
Yes, I think Japanese and German are pretty close, and apart from US English, in the pronunciation of German/Japanese camera equipment. E.g. we say Neekon in Germany...

PS: I thought of some French equipment. Here's a good one: Angenieux. I know exactly how it's pronounced but can't transscribe it into English for the life of me...
Click to expand...

yes, impossible without proper phonetic transcription...
 
kossi008 said:
PS: I thought of some French equipment. Here's a good one: Angenieux. I know exactly how it's pronounced but can't transscribe it into English for the life of me...
Click to expand...


How about "An-zhe-nyu"? :)

The French introduced photography to the world. They must have made a lot of photographic products. Daguerre?

How about the Frères Lumière who made the Cinematographe, Autochrome colour plates, and other films?

Or Dufay.

Or the 35mm FOCA cameras?

DARLOT and HERMAGIS lenses... GAUMONT....GITZO...BALCAR...:)
 
OK, I'm not a complete Luddite. Nikon uses the North American pronunciation in their TV commercials here. They must figure that it's so ingrained, why fight it.

Example
 
OK (now that pretty international) here's an oldie and my apoligies to any germans without a sense of humour for the non PCness.

The European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

The Germans were initially reluctant to accept this but conceded after negotiations with Her Majesty's government.

The agreement was that the English spelling had some room for improvement and it was accepted that a five year programme of change would be done to implement these spelling changes in a new "EuroEnglish".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a realy sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand each ozer.

Finali ve hav von!
 
You need to get a classically trained voice teacher in here to employ the IPA ( International Phonetic Alphabet ) ....

( Can't volunteer, as I never learned the IPA, myself...)

Here's my "poor dumb basso" stab it it...

"Leitz" = "Lights!"

"Leica" = "Like-a"

"Zeiss" = "Tz-ice!"

"Ikon" = "Ih-kahn"

V-lander = "FOkt-lender"

"Retina" = "REH-tih-na"

"Ihagee" =" ih-HAH-gee" (hard "G")

"Summicron" = "SOO-mih-crahn" ( actually a Greek word?)

"Summilux" = "SOO-mih-lucks"

As to "how to say it" ? Depends on where you are at the moment... as a card-carrying Yank, I tend to default to standard American pronounciation...

My American camera buddies would beat the gelatin out of me if I went around talking about my "NEE-kons" and "Tsice-Ihkahns"...

As for French,it usually sounds fairly different than it looks on the page... Robert Benchley, the early 20th century American humorist once commented that, " in French, every vowel is pronounced "onghhh"...

"Dufay" = dee-FIE ?

"Angeniueux" = ridiculously expensive (okay: AW(n)-zjuh-nyuh (nyer?)


Then there's all the regional variants that once existed...

(BTW, no offense intended at any given nationality...)
 
Since "Canon" name also came up, here is a bit of back story and weird "custom" about it.

Canon is not from "Cannon" in English. The name is from "Can-non Bosatsu" (Avalokiteśvara bodhisattva) a Goddess in Buddhism (I know there aren't really "Gods" and "Goddesses" in Buddhism, but please play along)

Their original camera brand name was KWANON, and that became the global company name Canon.

Now, we use regular pronunciation of Canon like Cannon in Japan (of course with flatter sound than English version), but when you write it, you are supposed write キヤノン, not キャノン which is supposed to be the right sound for this word. (difference is large YA vs small ya) If you actually read キヤノン, it should be Kiyanon, but we pronounce that as Canon (only applicable to this particular brand name, it's not a Japanese grammar rule). If some newbie asks a question like "I have this キャノン lens that..." with "small ya" on a forum, folks go nuts and correct him "NO IT'S キヤノン you noob!" LOL.
 
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well if its written in English then I pronounce it as written. i.e. I will speak it as I see it in English which IMO is the correct way to do it. Some people develop an affectation when trying to pronounce foreign words written in English. Invariably it doesn't work because of the required accent and different sound formations that the native language is spoken in don't exist in spoken english. i.e. there is NO correct english pronunciation for foreign words other than an english pronunciation using english sound forms as normal from written english. Anything else and you are bast**dising both the english version and the foreign word at the same time. If you want it to sound like german or japanese then speak it in that language.
And then there is Steve McClaren.:D
 
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I make my austrian cougar friend pronounce anything german I own. I copy her.

@tlitody you are correct. Emily Post rolls over in her grave every time someone tries to bring a foreign word into english.
 
tlitody said:
OK (now that pretty international) here's an oldie and my apoligies to any germans without a sense of humour for the non PCness.
…Finali ve hav von!…
Click to expand...

:D

It makes me mad, how Americans violently spell Porsche and BMW.
It is like buying these cars and screwing chrome bumpers and bull horns to them.
It's German - spell it German
 
menos said:
:D

It makes me mad, how Americans violently spell Porsche and BMW.
It is like buying these cars and screwing chrome bumpers and bull horns to them.
It's German - spell it German
Click to expand...


???? I don't get it ?

"Spell it German" ?

Last time I checked, with the exception of the umlaut and the double-S, Germans used the same alphabet as the rest of Western Europe...

Did you mean how we Americans "spell" these fine German cars, or how we pronounce them ?

As for the chrome bumpers and bull horns, well, that's another subject...;)
 
Try this site: www.forvo.com
It is a dictionary site that will pronounce the words for you so you can hear how they sound. I was turned on to this site when I was trying to learn the correct pronunciation for one of my favorite fountain pen inks: Herbin. So, I know it will handle words from languages other than English, as Herbin is French.
 
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