Dude, there was a long living tradition of Greek and Latin scholarship. People in the 17th century weren’t “early scholars”, and didn’t have to guess at how syllables were stressed. They didn’t “deem” jack. When you say "okay, so we don’t say “ar IS to tle” of course you mean “Aristot?l?s”.
S?kr?t?s
Protag?ras
Your pronunciation of Callicles is correct
etc.
all cars that are plugged in start at -50
I pronounce it “Miles” per hour. Kilometers is a step towards socialism
Kill-ahhhhm-meter. Up in my parts anyways.
I’m expecting Andy Capp to come rolling by in a ball of brawling dust any minute now…
haha! Bush called Kanye West …Conway…as in the Twitty…so, don’t hold your breath my friend.
Enough already…
It is just simpler to recognize people in the USA do not speak English. We speak American, a derivative of proper English. They are different - with different pronunciation, words for the same things, spelling, etc. Some examples based on car themes:
Pronunciation: Battery, Garage
Word: Propeller (drive shaft), Boot (trunk), Bonnet (hood), Spanner (wrench), Car Park (parking lot)
Spelling: Colour (color), arguement (argument)
So - your teachers at Shool (ed: Carlin reference) have always intentionally miss-informed you that you are in an English class.
Sigh.
All languages evolve over time, eventually, American English may have its own name to distinguish it from England English (which also changes over time) just like Dutch spoken in the Netherlands and Afrikaan spoken in South Africa.
Afrikaans (note the “s”) is a Creole of Dutch and Zulu.
You’re right, it’s Afrikaans, I should have known.
I believe that Yiddish is a mix of High German and Hebrew.
Polish, Czech, and Russian are all Slavic languages and have many words in common.
For example 'beer’
Polish piwo
Czech pivo
Russian пиво
Spelled differently but spoken very nearly the same.
As I go down a top-of-mind list of words ending in “meter” I admit, I’ve gone both ways. I’ve got both -AHmeter words in my vocabulary and blank-o-meter words.
accelerometer barometer diameter electrometer hydrometer kilometer millimeter odometer parameter pedometer perimeter pyrometer speedometer tacheometer tachometer. thermometer…
Just a few from the list and most of these are pronounced AHmeter. Do the brits say these words with the meter separated? Odo MEter? Dia ME ter? Baro MEter? Peri MEter?
If it’s a blanket rule for pronunciation, lots of these words are up for relearning…
That’s nice. Have a cookie now with your milk.
As a graduating Linguistics major, I can tell you the answer is not as simple as saying the stress is on the antepenultimate syllable. Note these examples:
AC-tu-a-lly
ac-ti-VA-tion
en-ter-TAIN-ment
There are many factors that influence stress patterns in English, such as number of syllables, types of vowels (long or short, tense or lax), and even the etymology of the word or affixes. For instance, French-influenced suffixes like -esque or -ette usually carry stress, while Germanic root suffixes like -ing or -ness usually don’t. Incidentally, Latin suffixes like -ity or -tion or -meter generally cause the stress to fall on the preceding syllable (for 4-syllable words):
ce-LEB-ri-ty
ag-gra-VA-tion
ki-LO-me-ter
(note that -gram is originally Greek, not Latin)
Anyway, as I said, it gets very complicated, but the difference between kilometer and kilogram is related to both the type of suffix and number of syllables.
This site discusses some of the common stress patterns in English:
I wonder what the Modern Language Association (MLA) has to say. Yup, that’s right, we have an association of Modern Language that tells us what’s correct and what’s not. Where do they get their basis for the decisions? Who knows.
I guess that’s why I never did well in English. It’s all made up rules. I never cared if I dangled my participles…whatever they are.
No offense to those who saturate themselves with the rules. I’m sure they’re nice folks. I just can’t get into it.
I’m still trying to figure out why we are entertaining such a useless thread in a automotive repair and maintenance forum… Hey mods, can we transfer this to General Discussion or even the trash bin??
transman
transman618, 6:47PM
The thread started with a call in to the show, and you just posted to the topic “The Show”, not to “Repair and Maintenance.” If you’re saying the discussion doesn’t belong at the site, I’d say that the site wouldn’t exist without the show, and the show doesn’t solely address automotive repair and maintenance issues.
In Greek words, the stress can shift around within the last three syllables. Some English words of Greek origin have retained that feature. For example: atom, atomic, anatomy. That explains the Ki-LOM-e-ter pronunciation. KILL-o-me-ter is also acceptable. Language can’t be explained, but there is your explanation.
Instead of worrying about whether a word is pronounced two different ways, you should be worrying about people who pronounce two different words to sound the same. I had a chemistry teacher back in eighth grade who said “acidic” and “acetic” identically (“now you put in some acidic acid”).
I’ve known people who pronounce “Ceres”, “cirrus” and “Sirius” identically.
All you had to do was ax your teacher what he meant. Then write it down with your ink pin. No need to get tsurris over it.
When I studied ancient Greek we called the next-to-next-to-last syllable the praepenult - but my Webster’s has antepenult. English is ‘proparoxytone’, which is to say the antepenult is accented by ‘default’. This is why Indians pronounce develop ‘devil-up’ - we accent develop against our general rule. British and American English don’t differ, but have different exceptions. Note we both stress the preantepenult in millimeter.
The ‘default’ meter of English is iambic pentameter; an iamb is a foot with 2 syllables, the first stressed, the second unstressed. The English stress both the first and third syllables of kilometer, making it 2 iambs. The British hew to this tradition more closely, at least the more-educated, and they pronounce the ‘e’ in the first syllable of meter long, making one more likely to stress it. Note Americans pronounce the ‘e’ in the third syllable of millimeter long, but we pronounce it short in kilometer: think of how you would accent kilometer if you pronounced the first 'e ’ long. Think of you would pronounce millimeter if you accented the antepenult: bet you’d shorten the first ‘e’.