Just a small niggle.
I constantly interchange between the two pronunciations of methyl, and my chemistry teacher favours the former. Since I am an annoying stickler for
grammatical correctness, I wondered what other people on the board say, as, every time I say butyl, propyl, methyl or ethyl, I always wonder whether
I'm doing it right. Opinions welcome!Ax165Xj - 11-4-2014 at 09:28
I always use the second pronunciation but as an American, there isn't really an option. If I ever pronounced it the first way, my chemist friends
would think I was having a stroke.DraconicAcid - 11-4-2014 at 09:58
Methyl rhymes with my great-aunt Ethel.Magpie - 11-4-2014 at 10:04
What about meta? Is it may-ta or meh-ta?DraconicAcid - 11-4-2014 at 10:11
As in, "I meta girl last night".eidolonicaurum - 11-4-2014 at 11:31
Much like you, I interchange between the two. Though I tend to favour "meeth-isle". Another one is phenyl. I say "fee-nile" to distinguish between
phenol => fee-nol
(I think)
[Edited on 11-4-2014 by eidolonicaurum]DraconicAcid - 11-4-2014 at 11:33
Much like you, I interchange between the two. Though I tend to favour "meeth-isle". Another one is phenyl. I say "fee-nile" to distinguish between
phenol => fee-nol
Phenol is fee-NOL. Phenyl is FEN-ill (just like fennel).DrAldehyde - 11-4-2014 at 12:54
Ok, how about acetyl?
I hear
Ass ee TULL
Ass UH teel
Ah set ill
I use the first one, but I hear people say it the other ways, discuss.
DraconicAcid - 11-4-2014 at 13:19
I say a-SEE-tull. Biologists seem to say assa-TEEL for some reason.DrAldehyde - 11-4-2014 at 14:19
Ok, another one, not exactly organic groups. I graduated from college in 1984, the computer age was barely waking up, we learned to pronounce giga
(gigahertz) as jig-a, I know it's now pretty universally pronounced as gig-a. But I do run into the rare sole who also says jig-a. Anybody else taught
to say jig-a. Probably one of those gif-jif things.weeksie98 - 11-4-2014 at 14:52
I checked various dictionaries. It seems that meeth-isle, along with eeth-isle, is the British pronunciation, and the other is American.
As for phenyl and phenol, I always find myself saying fen-ol and phee-nile.
Just seems logical.thesmug - 11-4-2014 at 16:45
I say Ah set ill sometimes, but more like uh set ul (like di-uh-set-ul). Most of the time I say Ass ee TULL.
[Edited on 4/12/14 by thesmug]eidolonicaurum - 12-4-2014 at 23:04
Out of the options for acetyl, I say none! I say asee-tile.
Also, how do you pronounce the uranium cations, uranous and uranyl?confused - 13-4-2014 at 01:13
U-ran-us and U-ran-il
i usually say as ee tileunionised - 13-4-2014 at 04:18
Also, how do you pronounce the uranium cations, uranous and uranyl?
Reluctantly.Eddygp - 13-4-2014 at 04:30
AH-suh-tate, but a-SEH-tic and a-SEE-tillS.C. Wack - 13-4-2014 at 10:47
I think there's a difference (at least for methyl) between the UK (perhaps including European languages) and the US. It might be interesting to
compare old editions of Webster's and Oxford's dictionaries to see how far back this goes.
The lack of any large definitive chemical pronunciation dictionary has surely compounded the problem. The ACS committee on pronunciation has to be the
lamest committee in the history of lame committees. Students may have one professor pronouncing one way, others otherwise.
Words have changed in my lifetime, most prominently (on the news) ephedrine. Gould's 1923 Pocket Pronouncing Medical Dictionary has f uh drin, Fieser
(1960 and pre-meth) f uh dreen, but since meth it's uh fed rin. And if you pronounce it any other way now, you're a total idiot who doesn't know shit
from shinola, which is often ironically mispronounced in the process.
[Edited on 13-4-2014 by S.C. Wack]Etaoin Shrdlu - 13-4-2014 at 11:36
I tend to pronounce chemicals the way I think they should be pronounced based on spelling and similar chemicals, which gets me some very odd looks at
times if I've only run across the name in print. (Is catechol CAT-eh-kahl, CAT-eh-chahl, cat-eh-CHAHL, cat-eh-KAHL, CAT-eh-kool, cat-eh-KOHL,
cat-eh-CHOHL, KATE-chohl...oh, there are so many potential variations. At least 36, by my calculations.)
The one individual from the UK I've worked with said METH-ill, but he was somewhat Americanized by the time I'd met him.Texium - 13-4-2014 at 17:15
I say METH-ul for methyl, uh-SEH-til for acetyl, fee-nol for phenol, and FIN-ul for phenyl to name a few mentioned on this thread.
I blame being from Texas for the predominance of "uh" sounds.DubaiAmateurRocketry - 17-4-2014 at 04:39
The abbreviation of Journal of Analytical Chemistry is J.Anal.Chem. hehe
