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Author: Subject: Pronouncing Chemistry Vocab
DraconicAcid
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[*] posted on 10-1-2014 at 08:35


Quote: Originally posted by vmelkon  
Fluorine, chlorine, bromine are pronounced as fluoreene chlorreene.

Iodine has 2 pronunciations for some reason. Iod-ine and iod-eene.

North American vs. British pronunciation.

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Then I heard Carl Sagan say dye-sprosium.


I grew up loving his book, COSMOS. When I found I could watch the TV version, I was ecstatic...until I heard his voice, and that accent. That accent. I had to turn it off.




Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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[*] posted on 10-1-2014 at 14:57


Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid  

I grew up loving his book, COSMOS. When I found I could watch the TV version, I was ecstatic...until I heard his voice, and that accent. That accent. I had to turn it off.


billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions......
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Mailinmypocket
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[*] posted on 10-1-2014 at 18:50


Quote: Originally posted by Praxichys  

And for the record it drives me nuts when people say "toluene" like "tolulene." Where did the extra L come from??


People insert imaginary letters into words all the time(and remove letters that should be there). When I worked with the public on a daily basis I lost count of how many times I wanted to slap somebody for saying "I AXED a question" or "let me axe you something" ugh.
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Brain&Force
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[*] posted on 11-1-2014 at 20:21


Not pronunciation, but what exactly is the plural of alum (as in several different kinds of alum)? Is it alums or ala? My internal Etymology Man is leaning towards ala, but it just looks weird.



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[*] posted on 20-3-2014 at 15:28


Here's another word I have doubts about how to pronounce: "Fiendish"
I am thinking either "fee-endish" or "feendish"

I was leaning towards the former being correct but Merriam-webster suggests the latter is correct. My intuition regarding pronunciation of English apparently needs some work.

[Edited on 21-3-2014 by phlogiston]




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[*] posted on 20-3-2014 at 15:33


I also have some vocabulary problems in translation. Most of the chemistry I read comes in English, so I learn the concepts in English. While I read, already in m head I'm trying to translate the conepts to portuguese, like Sodium = Sódio, Potassium = Potássio, Hydroxide = Hidróxido.
I remember that when I started studing titrations I thought the translation to portuguese was "titração". And one day, in a portuguese book I read "Titulação". Turns out everytime I spoke titration in portuguese I was saying it in the wrong way :D
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Brain&Force
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[*] posted on 21-3-2014 at 14:34


The funny thing about Portuguese (and many other Romance languages) is that there's a lot of methathesis between l's and r's within the Latin reflexes. So words like parabola change to palabra (Spanish), and sound change ruins some cognates while creating false friends.

In Russian most of the words come from Latin and Greek roots so they're easily recognizable. But one thing fascinates me - the word for arsenic is мышьяк, which comes from мышь, meaning mouse.

Pronunciation of Russian is easy but there is the okanie which reduces unstressed a and o to a schwa. This is not like Spanish or Italia where the vowels are consistent, regardless of stress.

How is the ão pronounced in Portuguese?




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[*] posted on 21-3-2014 at 15:01


Quote: Originally posted by Brain&Force  
In Russian most of the words come from Latin and Greek roots so they're easily recognizable. But one thing fascinates me - the word for arsenic is мышьяк, which comes from мышь, meaning mouse.


This brought back a memory.
As an undergraduate, I was doing a synthetic chemistry project in a research group that was very actively collaborating with a Russian university. They were studying mainly sulphur and phosphorous compounds. Interesting but smelly.
The lab was filled with bottles labeled in Russian, and while waiting for slow reactions and columns etc I tried to guess their contents. One particularly interesting bottle clearly contained some mystery metal. There was a russian handwritten label on it, and with the help of a russian dictionary (this was before the internet answered all your questions) I identified the part of the word that meant 'mouse', but that made no sense to me at all. Then I found the label was pasted over the original factory label, so I peeled it away, revealing the 'arsenic' label. Fortunately, I had been very careful in handling it. To my surprise and their credit, they let me have a small sample which to this day represents arsenic in my element collection.




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[*] posted on 21-3-2014 at 17:10


Quote: Originally posted by Brain&Force  
The funny thing about Portuguese (and many other Romance languages) is that there's a lot of methathesis between l's and r's within the Latin reflexes. So words like parabola change to palabra (Spanish), and sound change ruins some cognates while creating false friends.

In Russian most of the words come from Latin and Greek roots so they're easily recognizable. But one thing fascinates me - the word for arsenic is мышьяк, which comes from мышь, meaning mouse.

Pronunciation of Russian is easy but there is the okanie which reduces unstressed a and o to a schwa. This is not like Spanish or Italia where the vowels are consistent, regardless of stress.

How is the ão pronounced in Portuguese?


I don't know how to tell to a person who speaks English how to pronounciate the ão. The sound simply doesn't exist in English, AFAIK.
And "palabra" (Spanish) means "word" in English. In portuguese is "palavra".
I can give you a few interesting element traslations between English and Portuguese:
Sulfur - Enxofre
Iron - Ferro
Lead - Chumbo
Tin - Estanho
Silver - Prata
Gold - Ouro
Those are the ones that have more differences. Most of the other translations are easily predictable, like:
Sodium - Sódio
Lithium - Líto
Potassium - Potássio
Vanadium - Vanádio
Chromium - Crómio
And the list goes on...

[Edited on 22-3-2014 by HgDinis25]
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[*] posted on 22-3-2014 at 04:46


Those are to Portugese, not Spanish.

Spanish:
Sulfur: Azufre
Lead: Plomo
Tin: Estaño
Silver: Plata
Gold: Oro

The Spanish word for parabola is parábola. (It also means parable.)




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[*] posted on 22-3-2014 at 05:02


Yes I wanted to write down portuguse, no idea why I wrote Spanish.
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[*] posted on 22-3-2014 at 21:54


I used to think that trinitrotoluene was pronounced trin-i-trot-a-loon, before I knew anything about chemistry and saw the tri+nitro+toluene!

[Edited on 3-23-2014 by zts16]
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[*] posted on 22-3-2014 at 23:03


Stoichiometry!



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