Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Pronouncing Chemistry Vocab

Pronouncing Chemistry Vocab

ScienceHideout - 7-1-2014 at 10:50

I am pretty sure we have all been there. Many of us are self-taught chemists, and when we have an opportunity to speak with a professional we say stupid stuff that makes us seem unintelligent. Off the top of my head, I remember two really embarrassing instances. Once, I was presenting some personal research and I was talking about some different sugars I was using... long story short, I said di-ass-tree-o-mer instead of die-uh-stereo-mer. Another time I said hemee-ACEE-duhl instead of hemi-ASS-uh-TAHL.

I was wondering if there is any way to be certain of how to pronounce something correctly when talking about chemistry. I have tried typing it into google translate, but it sounds like it is getting read by Stephen Hawking and it lacks infliction. Most dictionaries don't include such technical words.

Any advice?

Thanks!
-SciHide

DraconicAcid - 7-1-2014 at 10:54

In my first year of college, I was taught organic chemistry by a Scotsman who pronounced carbonyl as "car-BON'l". It took me many years to join the rest of the world in saying "Car-bon-NEEL", even when I found out that even other Scottish chemists didn't use the former (I was always stubborn).

essbee - 7-1-2014 at 11:01

I always chuckle when I hear Americans talking about algae....so your problems with more dubious words are nothing to really worry about.

cyanureeves - 7-1-2014 at 18:23

americans saying algae?texans pronounce it ayl-jee.if it is pronounced all-jee or uhl-jee then there is no way i will call it that.i say algae pretty close to the way google translator says it.i thought the greek word cyanus was pronounced keeanus so i named myself cyanureeves.

Turner - 7-1-2014 at 18:39

toluene

BromicAcid - 7-1-2014 at 18:53

Toluene for sure, molybdenum, antimony, eutectric, lots of words have come up where I only realize after I botch the pronunciation that I have never actually spoken them before, only read them in a book.

Metacelsus - 7-1-2014 at 19:25

Same here (with carbonyl, in fact). I read organic chemistry related books for years before I took a formal course, and had always pronounced it as Draconic's Scottish professor.

Tdep - 7-1-2014 at 20:05

Erythritol I have said a million different ways, mostly with only three or two syllables. I'd read it so often, but when it came to saying it out loud, I had no idea how to say it

Zyklon-A - 7-1-2014 at 20:09

Antimony, like 5 different ways.

Mr_Magnesium - 7-1-2014 at 20:33

racemic and racemate

used to say race-mic..

Vargouille - 8-1-2014 at 06:53

I remember I used to pronounce "homogeneous" as "homogenous" because of the word "homogenized". There's probably a bunch of other words I'm mispronouncing just because I've never heard them said.

mkurek - 8-1-2014 at 08:24

My organic chemistry professor is a squeeky little asian woman and she pronounces nothing right so I don't feel bad for murdering the pronunciations myself.

Mailinmypocket - 8-1-2014 at 08:45

Toluene seems common, how are you guys pronouncing it? Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong. I call it "tol-you-eene"

I had a teacher who called nitric acid "nit-trick acid"

essbee - 8-1-2014 at 09:05

Aluminium is the worst....I hear the Collins dictionary are even going to drop the unpronounced 'i' soon...... Oh the poor 'English' language, ruined, ruined...or is it simply evolving like it has for the last 1500 years??

DraconicAcid - 8-1-2014 at 10:11

I used to have a friend who kept saying "tol-you-lane".

Night-rick, Nit-trick...doesn't matter, we all know what you mean...

Molybdenum is actually very easy to pronounce, as long as you mentally add the "nu nu, nu nu-nu" afterwards.

Just don't say "cation" to rhyme with "location", "ketone" as if it ended with a number, or "anion" as if it were "onion".

bismuthate - 8-1-2014 at 10:20

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbdctW5DEGE
Nitrid acid

!
(I'm not even going to comment on how bad of a video it was it was one of those videos that just makes you cringe ex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aZ1lBzmxE4 )

phlogiston - 8-1-2014 at 11:34

After many years of pronouncing 'reagent' with the 'ea' as in 'reason' someone finally made me aware (mid-presentation) it should be pronounced "re-agent".

Can a native speaker tell me how English-speakers pronounce 'eigenvalues' and 'büchner filter'.

[Edited on 8-1-2014 by phlogiston]

DraconicAcid - 8-1-2014 at 11:38

I-gun-values and book-ner (or byook-ner) filter.

FlashDelirium - 8-1-2014 at 12:43

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary provides audio for its words, although there is a not-quite-human quality to them.

Here is diastereomer. Here is toluene. Here is molybenum.

This might not be foolproof, but perhaps it is better than mere guesswork.

[Edited on 1/8/2014 by FlashDelirium]

phlogiston - 10-1-2014 at 03:36

Merriam-Webster's audio for nucleic acid sounds like 'nu-clee-ic'. Am I currently incorrectly pronouncing it as 'nu-clay-ic'?

Thanks draconic.

[Edited on 10-1-2014 by phlogiston]

confused - 10-1-2014 at 04:37

I and some of my lecturers pronounce it as "nu-clay-ic" acids, since no one seems to be correcting me, i'll stick with it untill someone does

hyfalcon - 10-1-2014 at 04:47

Even that link has the alternate pronunciation. "nu-clay-ic or nu-clee-ic" either one.

vmelkon - 10-1-2014 at 07:07

Fluorine, chlorine, bromine are pronounced as fluoreene chlorreene.

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

I have no idea about astatine.

Then there is dysprosium. I use to say dees-prosium.
Then I heard Carl Sagan say dye-sprosium.
The same for neodymium.
I thought it was neodeemium.

Praxichys - 10-1-2014 at 07:37

I have trouble with amines.

Is it Ay-meen?, like the ay in "hay"
It is Ah-meen?, like the a in "and"
Is it uhmEEN?

What about "terephthalate"?

Is it "ta-rep-tha-late"?
It is "tear-ee-thall-ate"? (tere-phthalate, like tere- is describing the type of phthalate?)

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

confused - 10-1-2014 at 07:39

i pronouce it as
Ass-ta-teen
dis-pro-si-um
neo-dee-nium

well, as long as you get the point across, theres not much need to get overly concerned about how it's pronounced

i pronounce toluene as tolulene...dont know why, picked it up from somewhere

[Edited on 10-1-2014 by confused]

DraconicAcid - 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.

Quote:

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.

vmelkon - 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......

Mailinmypocket - 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.

Brain&Force - 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 Etymol ogy Man is leaning towards ala, but it just looks weird.

phlogiston - 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]

HgDinis25 - 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

Brain&Force - 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?

phlogiston - 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.

HgDinis25 - 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]

Metacelsus - 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.)

HgDinis25 - 22-3-2014 at 05:02

Yes I wanted to write down portuguse, no idea why I wrote Spanish.

Texium - 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]

froot - 22-3-2014 at 23:03

Stoichiometry!