Create Digital Music » Music Tech Pronunciation Guide

Jun 24 2009

Music Tech Pronunciation Guide

Pronunciation of some common music tech terms has been a source of debate. Generally, though, there’s only one right answer. I had hoped to kick off a pronunciation guide yesterday or today, but now I really can’t resist – not with none other than Tegan & Sara getting together to debate the right way to say Moog.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cows, and the sound “moo.” I suggest if you have something you want to name Moo, you should, like your own MooVerb max patch or something. However, here goes, a few of my favorites:

Moog: Rhymes with “brogue” or “rogue,” not the sound a cow makes. Don’t say “Moooooog” unless you want to get funny looks from synth nerds, or if you’re teaching synthesis to livestock in a dairy.

Monome: The community-based, (partly, at least) open-source controller rhymes with “MA gnome,” not the Spanish-sounding “Ma gnome ME.” You should not be able to use it in a couplet with paper mache. Get it? Two syllables. Sure, this pronunciation varies, but the two-syllable version is what the device’s co-creators call it.

OSC: Pronounce the letters of the open communications protocol, as in “O.S.C. / oh ess see”, not “osk” – though that would have been kind of cool. Think, “Rah, rah, rah, Give me an O! Give me an S! Give me a C! What’s that spell? Better than MIDI! Time-based messages, higher resolution, transport-independent high-speed networked communication with auto-discovery, gooooooooooOOOOO O.S.C.!” (People sometimes say this site is geeky. I have no idea what gives them that impression.)

And for now, O.S.C. stands for Open Sound Control, even though in one spot on the JazzMutant website it’s called “Open-Source Control.” Just get ready for this to change – because OSC really isn’t specific to sound, it may need a new name, like Open System Control. (A recent paper suggests dropping the “sound” in the name.)

MIDI: Rhymes with G. Gordon Liddy, or P. Diddy, or Tweetiebird saying “Piddy.” And, actually, it occurs to me I’ve never heard anyone mispronounce this. Fascinating – an acronym that’s actually intuitive. Oh, but “C.C.” stands for “Control Change,” NOT “continuous controllers” — look at the CC specs; most aren’t continuous. There. I got to be anal about something anyway. Updated: consensus is actually that “mee-dee” is a mispronunciation for native-English speakers, but likely makes more since than “mi-dee” in other languages — particularly if you speak French. So, in other words, it’s an acronym, and makes the most sense to pronounce in the natural way you would in your native tongue. (For English speakers, who knows what vowel sound is appropriate given how screwy our language is, but the creators of MIDI all say middy.)

Maschine: Native Instruments’ drum machine software and controller is German-engineered, so say “muh SHEEN uh,” three syllables, as if you grew up in Berlin. Now, granted, Maschine’s own promotional videos — outsourced to the US — anglicize this to “machine” / “muh SHEEN”, but the engineers and product folks who built the thing use the German pronunciation and think you should, too. And, anyway, it sounds cooler, just as I have to admit a currywurst is tastier than a Nathan’s dog.

I’m sure this is only a small selection of potential mispronunciations. Other candidates? We’ll have to release a full pronunciation guide soon.

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88 Comments

Matthew Davidson

I habitually use CC as continuous controller, but only because I can’t spell continuous.

June 24, 2009 @ 6:34 am

JDSampo

How about ASIO? Is it “AZ-eee-oh” or “A.S.I.O.” or “Ass-eye-oh”? Inquiring minds want to know. :-)

June 24, 2009 @ 6:40 am

Chuck Bergeron

I’m still confused about timbre. Tim-ber, Tahm-ber, Tame-ber. That’s gotta be one of the most annoying musical words. Everywhere I look and everyone I talk to pronounces it differently.

June 24, 2009 @ 6:41 am

Peter Kirn

Ah, good questions:

ASIO I’ve only ever heard pronounced “AH-zee-oh”. Canonical source for that, though, would have to be Steinberg — anyone from Steinberg in Germany out there?

Timbre is confusing because both pronunciations – “TAM/ber” and “TIM/ber” (yes, really, like the tree) are technically correct, though the former seems far more common.

June 24, 2009 @ 6:44 am

Lost

Tahm-ber. That one’s in the dictionary.

June 24, 2009 @ 6:45 am

Peter Kirn

Oh, and bonus, having really very little to do with music tech except that we use it every day on CDM:

* MySQL is pronounced “My S.Q.L.” “My Sequel” is fairly common and not entirely wrong, but generally “sequel” refers to the older IBM database and not the structured query language per se, so technically MyS.Q.L. is the preferred database pronunciation.

* Linux, we have Linus himself to correct us on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

Planned follow up, by the way, is how to pronounce people’s names. And perhaps Sigur Ros, if we’re feeling advanced. :)

June 24, 2009 @ 6:47 am

Peter Kirn

@Lost: unfortunately, not the case, because even the dictionary accepts the variants. Even Merriam-Webster, which usually doesn’t go into much detail on these things:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/timbre

June 24, 2009 @ 6:47 am

Barry Wood

I figured out the pronunciation of Moog way back when the Rogue came out, it had to rhyme or it would sound really odd.

@Peter: just last night I was on wikipedia and listened to the pronunciation of Sigur Ros :)

June 24, 2009 @ 6:52 am

Peter Kirn

What, you mean the Moooog Roooog? ;)

June 24, 2009 @ 6:53 am

Foosnark

I don’t get why OSC is “O.S.C.”; it seems wrong to me. Like the days when my mom insisted on pronouncing DOS “D.O.S.”

JDSampo, everyone at my workplace pronounces it “A.S.I.O.”

Chuck, yeah, I hate that word for that very reason.

June 24, 2009 @ 6:54 am

Foosnark

Oh, and I can’t help but pronounce SQ8L as “skwaytel.”

June 24, 2009 @ 6:55 am

nylarch

I think the big problem is DAW. Saying “daw” sounds ridiculous to me. Saying “Dee Ay DoubleU” is a mouthfull.

June 24, 2009 @ 7:09 am

Peter Kirn

@nylarch: Yep, and I think both of those are correct. Daw/rhymes with law seems to be more common. But again, no canonical pronunciation, other than, perhaps, “this is a stupid and meaningless term.” ;)

June 24, 2009 @ 7:11 am

JDSampo

@Peter: FWIW, in every shop I’ve worked in (I’m a programmer) everyone has pronounced it “sequel”.

“A.S.I.O.” is too much to pronounce. Of course it’s not something I find myself needing to pronounce much. In my head it’s “ah-see-oh” since it looks so much like “asiago”. Or maybe I just want it to be asiago since a cheesy bagel is much more interesting than an audio driver. Or I’m getting hungry.

June 24, 2009 @ 7:12 am

Peter Kirn

@JDSampo: My S.Q.L. is the officially-recognized pronunciation. The use of “sequel” actually seems to be a legacy of IBM – and reveals how influential that company has been over the decades. But MySQL says they don’t take issue with other variants, which, really, you have to accept if you have a project used all over the world.

Asiago is a better name than ASIO. I don’t normally hear people pronounce the entire acronym though.

June 24, 2009 @ 7:16 am

alexei michailowsky

In Brazil, everyone says something like “mooooooogee”. Trying to speak the company’s name correctly would make people act like: “Wow, are you crazy?” or “Gee, what a pedantism”.

June 24, 2009 @ 7:31 am

4lefts

lots of people say tahm-ber, but does anyone say “multi-tahm-bral synth”?

June 24, 2009 @ 7:38 am

pretzlcoat

if i hear one more person call a monome a mono-me im gunna flip shit

June 24, 2009 @ 7:54 am

sharaab

I teach audio production and I cannot tell you how many times students mispronounce “Neumann”.

June 24, 2009 @ 8:05 am

Peter Kirn

Ah, yes, right, good addition — Noy – mahn, and Neutrik = “Noy trick.”

And, naturally, Behringer = Bear injure, Buchla = Boo kluh, etc. Any others?

Of course, I think now that we’re a global community connected online primarily by text, we do have to anticipate some mispronunciation. On the other hand, those of us (ahem) lucky enough to have our native mother tongue used by everyone else can probably invest the time to get a few words right. (And if anyone has tips on good ways to learn German…)

June 24, 2009 @ 8:14 am

Stuart

It’s funny you mentioned that you’ve never heard anyone mispronounce “MIDI.” One thing that stuck out to me in the video introducing Melodyne Direct Note Access last year (other than the amazing technology, of course) was the narrator’s prominent pronunciation of “MIDI” as “mee-dee.” Skip to around the 3:45 mark on this video to hear several examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY

June 24, 2009 @ 8:38 am

clockart

maschine is def. muh-sheen-eh

ASIO – ah-see-oh in 1 word (but with an open a as in “haha” and not like “hay”)

buchla would be “boo- ‘hiss like a cat’ – luh” ;)

June 24, 2009 @ 8:43 am

clockart

and now that im reading stuarts comment – ‘mee dee’ would be the natural way for us germans to pronounce midi

although i think i switch to midi like in ‘diddy’ when speaking engligsh

June 24, 2009 @ 8:51 am

zenzen

O.S.C. but not M.I.D.I.? No way, Peter. I will say “Osk” and will teach my children and grandchildren to say “Osk”. But then again I still pronounce Asus “Aces”; I will not dignify that company with “Ah-sous” since the 2002 motherboard debacle that ruined my… but I digress.

Also, GIF = Ghiff? or Jiff?

June 24, 2009 @ 9:05 am

vybeauregard

Does the ‘fooger’ from Moog’s Moogerfooger units inherit the Moog pronunciation?

June 24, 2009 @ 9:26 am

marc

in this video.. http://vimeo.com/700523
Timothy Preut likes to call the company that makes the program Live “ah-bull-tuhn”
and the minimalist controller “mon-oh-me”

June 24, 2009 @ 9:28 am

Peter Kirn

@vybeauregard – Everyone I’ve talked to works for Moog Music does indeed pronounce it “Moog” (rogue) – er – foog (again, like rogue) – er.

@zenzen: Well, OSC *is* an open protocol, so you’re free to do that. ;) I kind of like the sound of “osk,” I have to admit. Hell, you can call it “purple gorilla” if more people would just use it. ;)

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think if you’re not an English speaker, “mee-dee” actually makes some sense — including the French word to which it’s closest. So I stand corrected. Then again, it was introduced in California, so I take the American pronunciation as the dominant one. And again, you can call it whatever you want, so long as you use OSC. (sorry, couldn’t resist. Yes, I use MIDI every day. I’m sure it can handle the occasional pot shot, uh, so to speak.)

June 24, 2009 @ 9:35 am

Adam

@vybeauregard

You see this cat Shaft is a bad Mooger–
(Shut your mouth)
But I’m talkin’ about Shaft
(Then we can dig it)

June 24, 2009 @ 9:39 am

hollsa

bob moog said on his film documentary that his family name is pronounced both ways. he said preferred “MOGUE” because he thought it sounded cooler, or something along those lines, but he did say that, historically, MOOG and MOGUE are both accurate.

June 24, 2009 @ 9:45 am

Ernst

DAW should be pronounced “duh”. :-)

June 24, 2009 @ 9:45 am

daniel door

sigur rós by the way cleared pronounciation issues long time ago, see/listen to:

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/pronunci.php

until i saw this video of deadmau5 on the futuremusic dvd i really tried to pronounce it “deadmouth-ive”

growing up in bavarian countryside turns names like “placebo” and “massive attack” beyond regocnition…

June 24, 2009 @ 9:51 am

vybeauregard

@Adam
well done, sir.

June 24, 2009 @ 10:05 am

urbster1

I just pronounce ASIO by the letters.
What about SPDIF though? I’ve heard SPEE-dif, spuh-DIF, or just plain S.P.D.I.F.

June 24, 2009 @ 10:13 am

wi_ngo

@ 4lefts – I’ve never heard it pronounced any way other than “multi-tahm-bral synth” (to be specific – I’ve always heard/said “multee-tahm-bral”). I suppose it would also be correct as “multi-timm-bral”, but I never would have even thought of that. Interesting.

Also, I prefer to say OSC as “osk”, but for some reason it bugs me to say “daw” as a word, although I hear that all the time. I have no idea why the distinction in my head.

I’ve noticed that Monome users pronounce it a number of different ways (Mah-gnome, Mono-mee, Mono-may, Moan-amay, etc). There has been discussion on the forum as to what to say, and the general consensus seems to be that there is no “correct” way – which goes with the spirit of the community, I suppose. There is also no “correct” way to utilize the device. When I first got mine, I was having a conversation about it with Daedelus, and he kept saying “Mono-mee”. I figured that was “correct”, as he was one of the original users. That just stuck with me and now I have trouble saying it otherwise, but sometimes I do get odd looks from people, like I’m trying to be European or something.

June 24, 2009 @ 10:31 am

Richard Lainhart

Here’s an MP3 of Bob Moog pronouncing his name:

http://www.otownmedia.com/BobMoogSpeaks.mp3

Re MoogerFoogers: Bob pronounced it so that “foog” rhymed with “moog”, using the “mogue” pronunciation.

June 24, 2009 @ 10:40 am

astronout

Perhaps a different thread altogether, but can we talk about Autechre? is it “odd ic er” “ah tech ray” “ah tech er” or something else?

and what about Vangelis? is it “van gel ous” or “van jell ous” ?

June 24, 2009 @ 10:41 am

Dan

Moger foger! After all these years I finally get the joke.

I heard about a guy in a music store asking to buy an “M – one, D – one” once.

June 24, 2009 @ 10:55 am

Louis Muloka

re: Moog, I always think back to moogles… and i’d always call them moogs for short… and then when i saw that there were moog keyboards i was like all like “yo this is moog keyboard!” as in keyboards for moogles… maybe this is what Moog music is afraid of.

June 24, 2009 @ 11:25 am

Richard Lainhart

@astronout – I didn’t know for the longest time, but I heard a radio interview with Autechre a while back, and they pronounced it AW-tek-er, with the emphasis on the first syllable, and the “tek” almost sounding like “dek”.

I’ve always heard “Vangelis” pronounced with a soft g (van-JELL-us), but in Greek, “g” is always pronounced as a hard g, so I think that it should be Van-GEL-us.

June 24, 2009 @ 12:03 pm

Gustavo

Peter – about MIDI… when I did phone support for Opcode back in the mid 90’s, there were plenty of people that called in and asked “how do I get my My-die working?” or “I’ve connected my M-101 cable”.

Of course, on a slightly different topic – there was the one guy who called up and asked why the computer was telling him that “Millions are saved” every time he hit a key and had OMS open. ;)

June 24, 2009 @ 12:51 pm

dyscode

HI,

sorry but your “muh SHEEN uh,” sounds really odd to me, as a German.

For more natural sounding German MA-SCHI-NE pronounced with:
-”mA” like in “bArn” (agricultural building)” or “hArm”.
-”SCHI” is just like “She” grammatical 3rd person female.
-”NE” is like in “NEverland” or “NEst”

And for NI: even for a non-native English speaker, they sometimes sound rather “Denglish” to me, compared to natural sounding English.

So much for the inernational spelling. Now I need it to explain to my Japanese wife.

I hope I get MY english spelling correct

best :D

June 24, 2009 @ 12:57 pm

!INCLUDE

No way I’ll ever say OSC as Oh Es See. Let’s say Em Eye Dee Eye while we’re at it. Will never say Dee Aye Dubble U either…Yuck

My favorite all time is SPDIF – pronounced Spidd – if. How can that word not put a smile on your face?
Simptee is a close second

June 24, 2009 @ 12:59 pm

Bodhi

I believe Tehn wants you to say monome however you damn well please, so there is NO official pronunciation of it. I should dig up a link to support my case though.

June 24, 2009 @ 1:04 pm

Bodhi

which is pretty much what wi_ngo said earlier, although he said it much more elegantly!

June 24, 2009 @ 1:05 pm

Peter Kirn

@dyscode – yeah, sorry, without using the strange IPA characters, it’s hard to spell out pronunciation. But what you say here is much clearer.

As !INCLUDE says, S/PDIF as far as I know is in fact “spiddif!” And SMPTE is indeed “Simptee.” I miss SCSI – scuzzy. Best acronym pronunciation of all time. ;)

Monome… well, look, both Kelli and Brian say monome. And even if they don’t want to standardize pronunciation, it confuses people. It makes them afraid to say the name out loud. ;) So my vote is with “ma gnome,” like genome. It makes no sense in English not to say it that way.

But yes, that’s the interesting thing here — the real issue is actually now that we have people from different parts of the world saying things, which will indeed change pronunciation and make it hard to standardize. And that’s okay.

June 24, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

Atomic Zagnut

Wow! I’ve been saying Moog incorrectly, all these years. I’m surprised no one’s ever corrected me on that before. Thanks for the tip!

Also, a mispronunciation I’ve noticed, is saying MIDI as all four letters instead of two syllables.

This is a great idea, because I mostly read about computer music, so I make up most of the pronunciations on my own. Good to know what the conventions are.

June 24, 2009 @ 2:33 pm

stk

Here in Oz it’s AY-zee-oh, which conveniently enough is also the name of our (don’t laugh) Intelligence (as in spy) agency.

RE: Autechre – I, and the whole two other people I know who like ‘em, say or-TEK-uh.

Regarding OSC – I think it’s a long way til anyone cares how to say it ;p

June 24, 2009 @ 3:39 pm

stk

moge/mooog: I actually enjoy pronouncing it wrong to obvious synth-nerds, just to watch them squirm and get all steamy in the spectacles.

I’m going to start telling people I code Pfffffp and Skwil for a living..

June 24, 2009 @ 3:44 pm

dyscode

Just let me make a point as a general approach to it. Acronyms are no ´ethymological words´ they have no history of meaning or pronounciation by themselves. Which means the pronounciation of acroyms are mostly derived from way you write it or the inventor like it to sound if here cares for that anyway.

Dots/punctuation are ´seperators´ meaning that something ´completely different´ will/can follow. While dashes and are ´binders´, indicating that they distinguish each entitiy but tie them together to a new meaning.
Slashes are ´Alternators´ where different entities can be chosen to complement
the meaning.

The problem that arises here is that these technical acroyms and thus their spelling are mostly made by technicians how don´t know or give a shit about how natural language works, resulting sometimes in the most obscure outcomes like this:

take a domain like http://www.funky-music.com
how do you pronouce that?
I don´t know about the rest of the world but in Germany lost of people say like
http://www.funky ´minus´ music.com
What is funky minus music supposed to convey?
it´s a DASH! (exclamation mark) for heaven´s sake. It´s a `binding-sign´!

It´s also in language economics that spelling erodes quickly if used often becoming a common expression. Meaning the correct writing of FBI would be F.B.I.,according to the pronounciation but nobody say ´fibi´etc.

My Point is, that some of the Acronyms here may be just too new or to special to determine their pronounciation ultimately here and now.
In linguistics you made an successful act of communication when your conversation partner feels he understood you. Mission accomplished.

So best you can do is take your best guess and hope it becomes a common notion. As language is made by the people not by the dictionaries, that only can make a retrospective of what´s going in spoken language.

And the real fun begins when acronyms become names or dialectic expressions.

So far for the short linguistic field trip into Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) who´s name is pronounced like ´purse´ (like wallet) or ´curse´

sorry, if I bored you!
:D

June 24, 2009 @ 6:22 pm

dyscode

supplement:
by technician I don´t mean technician as a job but
people ´trying a superimpose one set of rules onto another´ that does not fit.

sorry

June 24, 2009 @ 7:44 pm

koalaboy

SPDIF should be S P Dif. At least in my world ;) I can’t be doing with ‘Osk’, so that’s O.S.C.

What’s up with the world today – first KVR discussing apostrophes for multiple VST and VSTi, and now this.

June 24, 2009 @ 8:14 pm

Birds Use Stars

I’m awful with this sort of thing. When I started getting into digital music I scanned over the word and can’t break the habit of pronouncing ASIO “Eye-So”. I’m a native English speaker, I apperantly just don’t “read” “words”…

I just wish it was pronounced Mooh-G though really. I love saying it! MOOOOOOOGERFOOOOOOOOGER!!!!

look, I don’t know, maybe it’s a New England thing, I know a few people that pronounce “Mix” like “Makes.” As in “I have to Makes these eggs for my omlette.” or “Check the makes-ture”

I find that pronouncing OSC as a word instead of O-S-C makes it sound like you are just abreviating “oscillator” which is a bit confusing.

One more thing, can someone phoneticize “doepfer”? I’ve been saying it Dough-Ep-Fur for some time.

June 24, 2009 @ 8:35 pm

dyscode

@Birds Use Stars

doepfer = döpfer
“ö” is about quite complicated to explain. I was trying for the last ten minutes to find an english word suitable to explain and I came up with this:

´ö´ is comparable to the
´Er´in ´mErchant´. It´s like a ´o´ deep in the throat wandering continuosly up to the ´e´close to your teeth. but stopping just after your palate.

For all others how don´t want to injure their tongue and throat just to play cool cheer up.
It´s totally OK to say ´DOPe´-´Fer´ (´fer´ like in cipher).

June 24, 2009 @ 10:55 pm

Birds Use Stars

@Dyscode

well, I’m going to have to work on that one, but thank you.

@Meditation
I am intreagued and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

June 24, 2009 @ 11:39 pm

andy page

it is indeed possible to mispronounce MIDI. I was working at a music shop in tasmania when i was 15, and a guy came in and asked for a keyboard with “M-one-D-one”

June 25, 2009 @ 12:09 am

tim

i love hearing people mispronounce words, especially if they are consistent regardless of being around ‘correct’ pronounciation – i have a friend who has always pronounced ‘digital’ as though it is spelt ‘digikil’ and its great, its like he has a whole other secret take on the meaning & intent of the word!
i also remember a french speaking friend use the word ‘unbeautiful’ to describe a ghastly bit of mixing & i interpreted it as something other than ‘ugly’ – its all an endearing aspect of living in a world with multiple languages AND dialects. God forbid we should all end up speaking & pronouncing words the same, especially if its speaking ‘american’

June 25, 2009 @ 12:43 am

gwenhwyfaer

To my delight, NMPTE is also an acronym. :)

June 25, 2009 @ 12:58 am

quantize

Everyone please continue to mispronounce them.

F the nerd Nazis.

June 25, 2009 @ 2:09 am

grammarjew

tldr: grammarnazi

June 25, 2009 @ 2:38 am

jp

You are all wrong, including the people at the company. This is obviously because you are all under the age of 30, live in New Yawk New Yawk and, at least in that “video”, have impossibly trendy, albeit shiny, hairdo’s. The following is how I learned the correct way of pronouncing the term, so listen up grasshoppers and GET OFF MY LAWN!

In 1972, before your parents were born, I was, like all of you, under the impression that the instrument I had purchased on time for what was then the price of a new car (not kiddin here)was a Moog Synthesizer (model D, nice tuning drift, especially after taking it out of the trunk of my 1966 Ford Fairlane on a hot day in its “case” which really was a case, a pillow case). One night, after a set (btw, this was called the “afterset”) of engaging fahnk at The Ridgeland Club in Chicago, I was yammering about my new instrument to an interested audience member, who was clearly impressed and clearly under the influence of what was then called “pot”. At the end of the conversation, he asked me what the freight was (chicago-ease for “price”) and I said, “of what?”, and he replied, “you know, that thing you play, that Mood Sympathizer.”

Ever since then, even if it wasn’t the Mood brand(which it isn’t these days) it has ALWAYS been a Mood Sympathizer. If you think about it, it’s a much friendlier, mo’ descriptive term, and Bob aside, maybe what it actually should have been named in the first place.

Feel free to use the term, I am issuing it under a CC 3.0 attribution license.

June 25, 2009 @ 3:27 am

Stan9FOS

“SMPTE” = Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers. Around our house, SMPTE also = Get Me Another Beer. (As in, this one is empty!)

June 25, 2009 @ 3:30 am

nick kent

I prefer VCOs myself ?
umm… then again in the context of Japanese speech “VCO” tends to be pronounced like Bee-Shi-Oh.

June 25, 2009 @ 3:46 am

zenzen

Great story, jp! And thanks for the lingustics lesson, dyscode. I love “funky minus music” (that’s the kind of sounds I’d make with my Mood Synthesizer).

June 25, 2009 @ 4:37 am

rucyl

thank. you. for. posting. this.

June 25, 2009 @ 5:38 am

Peter Kirn

I completely forget why I thought it was a good idea to post this story in the first place, but…

This is one of the best *comment* threads ever. Huge bonus points go to jp and dyscode.

The only actual mystery is how this post could be attracting spam. (now deleted)

June 25, 2009 @ 5:39 am

runagate

GUI = gooey will always be the hardest for me to say aloud.

June 25, 2009 @ 5:56 am

Peter Kirn

GUI’s nothing. How about “WYSIWYG”? Wissywig sounds like some character in an English children’s book.

June 25, 2009 @ 5:58 am

JRice

…A little late to the party, but I’ve often wondered if the Mono/Poly was supposed to be “Mono, Poly” or “Monopoly”.

June 25, 2009 @ 6:21 am

JRice

Oh, and Alesis. “uh-LAY-sis” or “uh-LEE-sus”, or something else?

I tend to go for the latter, but don’t trust myself.

June 25, 2009 @ 6:28 am

JRice

You could also do a “reminder” bit for artists. You know, it would be nice to see a clip that explains Jan Hammer, Jean Michael Jarre, and Kalus Shultze. …For a few examples. Sure, these are names, so they aren’t up for debate, but they are mispronounced often!

June 25, 2009 @ 6:30 am

Peter Kirn

uh-LEE-sis, pretty sure on that one.

Definitely taking artist nominations.

June 25, 2009 @ 6:36 am

JRice

Lastly, on pronouncing “ö” (As in Döpfer)…

First, say “DAYP-fer”. Like “nice day”, but with a p at the end.

Now say “DOEP-fer”, like “doe, a deer”, wit a p at the end.

The answer lies in the middle. So how do you get there?

Well, you tongue should be in the same position for “DAY”… namely, toward the front of your mouth, but not too close to the roof of your mouth.

Now round your lips without moving your tongue. If you look in the mirror, you should look like you’re saying “Oooooh!” But in your head, you should be thinking “eeeeeeeeeeeey” (like in “day”).

It feel awkward at first, but after a few times, it makes sense.

NOW… if you *really* want to get accurate, take off the “y” from “day”.

That is, in English, we tend to end vowels with what’s called a “glide”. In the case of “ey”, we start with what linguists would write as an /e/ (pronounced like ‘day’, again), but we end with a sound that’s very close to what linguists would write as /i/, as in “bee”.

You can notice this when you say the word in reeeeeaallllly sllllloooooowwww moooootionnnnnn: “daaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy”. There are two vowel sounds there.

But not so in German. The first syllable of “döpfer” would actually not “glide” that way. It’s not /döypfer/. There’s no ‘y’, no glide.

For a really spot-on “döpfer”, you want the *first* sound, not the second one. It will feel like you’re cutting off the syllable at first. Like you’re saying “DAY” but dropping the ‘y’. But, again, you get better at this with practice.

…By the way, there’s a really interesting but way-too-long story about why /e/ is like ‘day’ and /i/ is like ‘bee’ and /u/ is like ‘boo’ and so on… in short, English went through something called “The Great Vowel Shift”, where our writing system stayed the same, but we changed with way we pronounced all the vowels. …And, even more interestingly, if you can learn these differences, you get MUCH better at pronouncing all sorts of foreign languages, because their writing systems still use the “old” pronunciations of the vowels. But I’ve totally digressed, at this point.

Okay, this was probably a useless post. Sorry. ;)

June 25, 2009 @ 6:52 am

JRice

Not so sure about Alesis… if it’s a Spanish name (which it often is), it would be “LAY”. :)

The company’s American, of course, so it’s up in the area.

Crazy Americans.

June 25, 2009 @ 6:58 am

Verbos

Bad news @Peter Kirn

Since Behringer is a German company, with a German name, it does not have a soft G. Sorry. Americans like to pronounce it your way, but the people who named it pronounce it “Beh Ringer.”

You have followed German pronunciation for Neutrik though.

I had a good laugh in Germany talking about model names with letters and numbers in them. “Casio arr zed eins” huh? ;)

June 25, 2009 @ 9:53 am

Peter Kirn

@Verbos: Ah, yes, good point. “Beh Ringer” is a good way to spell that out.

June 25, 2009 @ 9:56 am

Verbos

When he first started it Grant Richter referred to his synth company, Wiard, as “weird.” Then, someone who’s family name is Wiard, informed him that they pronounce it “wired” and he has done so ever since!

I guess he just got lucky that both seem relevant to his products.

June 25, 2009 @ 9:57 am

gwenhwyfaer

The “Beh” may possibly be pronounced “dead”. ;)

June 25, 2009 @ 10:21 am

jp

Look, it’s FAHNKY minus music. Several people in den Hague will back me up on this!

By the by Peter, where do I cash in my extra bonus points? I need one of the valuable and useful prizes I see here..maybe an O-Rang amp.

June 25, 2009 @ 11:15 am

Foosnark

Uhbik? I always pronounce it like the beginning of “ubiquitous”, ignoring the H.

Ogun, I pronounce the u like “oo” as in the figure from Yoruba myth. But then they came out with Autogun and confused the issue.

June 25, 2009 @ 11:19 am

dyscode

@jp “Mood Sympathizer” I REALLY love that!
it really connects!

@Verbos,”Behringer”
that´s really funny because lot of people in Germany actually are used to say Behringer to rhyme with ´ginger´.
:D

June 25, 2009 @ 12:42 pm

Verbos

Wait, is it Kim “Bay-Singer” or Kim “Bass-in-jer?”

June 25, 2009 @ 1:23 pm

alansende

What about “Pat Metheny”? Here in Argentina all of us pronounce “Meh-teh-nee”, but I heard some people says “Meh-thee-nee” or “Meh-see-nee”. How do you pronounce his name?