Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 December 2

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December 2

Why do so many mis-pronounce the newest variant?

Watching and listening to the news recently, I noticed that many people mis-pronounce the latest COVID variant as Omnicron, as opposed to the correct Omicron. This includes such luminaries as many news anchors, the President of the U.S., and myself. (I really thought it was pronounced Omnicron until I looked it up.

A quick search found that "Omnicron" was used in a movie name, but I couldn't find any other uses.

Does anyone have any ideas of why this might happen? The only thing I could imagine is that some people might think it Greek for "All Crons". Uh, forget that. I have no idea what a cron is. Bunthorne (talk) 06:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you actually expect accuracy in news reporting? 2603:6081:1C00:1187:45A9:90E5:D977:B574 (talk) 06:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Omni- is a fairly standard prefix (omnipotent, omnivorous), so it's not all that surprising that people who don't know one Greek letter from another might think this is another case. Except, if they thought for a second, they'd realise that no letter could mean "all-something". Except, our global decline into cultural idiocy means they don't think, but just spout what they thought they heard/read (and in some cases, what they actually heard/read). If they understand that Greek has two letters called o, omicron and omega (little o and big o), they wouldn't make this mistake. But expecting the great unwashed to understand this is probably like expecting DJT to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election. It ain't gonna happen. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Just mentioning that 'omni' is not even Greek, but Latin. --T*U (talk) 07:24, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

An omni-cron might come in handy. clpo13_(talk) 07:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

And this cron even better. No such user (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe omicron's name means "small O"; it was named to differentiate it from "omega", which means "big O". But, what was omicron called before omega was added to the end of the Greek alphabet?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

But unlike with the Big O, a variety of pronunciation, of the first vowel, seems possible: /ˈoʊmɪkrɒn, ˈɒmɪkrɒn, oʊˈmaɪkrɒn/; Martinevans123 (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Georgia guy:. The article Omega, in the history section, states "in Classical Greek, the letter [omega] was called ō (ὦ), whereas the omicron was called ou (οὖ).". --Jayron32 16:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Originally the vowels written by the two ancient Greek letters were pronounced differently, so each letter had its name the vowel sound which it wrote. But in the middle ages, the two vowel sounds fell together in pronunciation, so that "mega" and "micron" were then added to the disambiguate the names of the two letters. "Psilon" was added to the names of some Greek letters for similar reasons... AnonMoos (talk) 22:07, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

If I heard right, the new variant was initially named "mu" or "nu" — far more confusing. Doug butler (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

"Mu" was the previous new variant. The WHO rejected "nu" because it would be confusing. --184.144.99.241 (talk) 04:56, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Ha! That would have been hilarious! "The new nu variant.." Was there a xi variant? 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:A19B:E835:C1A:979B (talk) 07:56, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I feel highly honoured that I might catch Classical Greek COVID... Martinevans123 (talk) 20:39, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

If you go with the classical pronunciation shouldn't the the "i" in omicron be pronounced like the "e" in me? -- Q Chris (talk) 09:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Omigosh, yes.  --Lambiam 12:21, 4 December 2021 (UTC)}

It's not just that "omnicron" thing (probably said by those who say "nucular"), there's also the question of whether it's OH-micron or AH-micron. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:27, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Neither oh as in go nor ah as in arse, but o as in Bod. DuncanHill (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Because they didn't pay attention to Futurama or Star Trek. —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Orson Welles's last film role was the planet-sized robot Unicron: evidence of -cron as a sci-fi name component, similar to the excressences found on the outside of spaceships in Star Wars and elsewhere, that is, having no known meaning but seeming to belong there anyway. (Edit: I refer to greebles. Couldn't remember the name because I get them mixed up with nurdles and grawlixes.)  Card Zero  (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

We can't even agree on the first vowel in Covid, so asking us to agree on omicron is a bit of a stretch. DuncanHill (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't take away as much from this discussion as I might since I'm not au fait with the IPA and often the location of the stress is omitted. Writing in the Daily Telegraph of 30 November Jennifer Rigley says:

It is the linguistic equivalent of the epic siege of Troy: how to say "omicron", the new coronavirus variant.

Classicists say it should be "oh-MY-cron", the closest to how the ancient Greeks would have said it. But the BBC disagrees, as does the World Health Organisation - which is responsible for naming variants - and most of modern Greece.

They instead think it should be "OH-me-cron", with the emphasis on the first syllable.

Dr Armand D'Angour, an Oxford professor of classical languages, clears things up: "In ancient Greece, they would have said oh-mee-kron. In English, that became a long i, so that's why we see microscope and micron, and 'oh-my-kron'. But in modern Greek they have dropped that central i or ee, and so it makes sense to me to say oh-me-cron, as the modern Greeks do."

Others agreed, including Aris Katzourakis, an Oxford professor who is not only a leading voice on the evolution of Sars-coV-2 but a London born Greek speaker, thanks to his Greek parents.

References

-- 12:45, 7 December 2021 87.75.36.211

87.75.36.211 -- Ancient Greek did not have stress; it had a kind of pitch-accent system which mostly does not influence the choice of syllable to stress in modern English pronounciations of Greek words. How to pronounce the "i" vowel in English depends on whether you view "omicron" as a kind of compound of o + micron, or whether you view it a consolidated three-syllable word (the latter is more traditional). AnonMoos (talk) 20:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Is the word kidnap a portmanteau kid and napping?

kid means a small child napping means take a sleep in the noon.2404:8000:1005:DE4A:4D80:9BB7:4D3F:79A3 (talk) 08:24, 2 December 2021 (UTC) please somebody answer my question immediately.

The second element appears to be a variant of nab, "to snatch away". Cheers <x> _hugarheimur 08:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

If only there were a free online dictionary where one could look up such things! --ColinFine (talk) 12:54, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Not the original poster, but thanks. I've been wondering about this age-old question since Kindergarten. Explodicator7331 (talk) 14:32, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a compound. It could be a portmanteau if parts of the components were lost. —Tamfang (talk) 04:39, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Why is OED available only by subscription?

Why are many pages in the Oxford English Dictionary available only by subscription? Why aren't all OED's pages available for everyone? --40bus (talk) 09:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

It is a subsidiary of Oxford University Press and unlike Wikipedia, actually employs people to write their articles and has physical offices, all of which need to be paid for. They use the surplus for a wide range of educational endeavours, including recently publishing technical data relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and a free e-book for African school children on mental wellbeing. Their annual report is here. Alansplodge (talk) 10:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Anyone resident in the UK can get full access with the number from their local authority library card, which is issued free. Anyone else can ask at WP:RX. DuncanHill (talk) 14:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Alas, not anyone. It is only available if your local council library has paid for their subscription. In these days of austerity, many do not, including both libraries I belong to.--Verbarson (talk) 10:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@Verbarson: I am so sorry to hear that. Have you written to the local paper, your MP, and the Oxford University Press? I will gladly sign a petition to restore your reading rights. I get quite upset by that sort of thing. DuncanHill (talk) 23:46, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

When addressing OUP, consider also advocating for similarly deprived non-UK residents, of which there are a whole lot more.  --Lambiam 09:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Alas, I have not made any attempt to stir up OED-mindedness in the libraries. In fact, given the parlous state of UK local government finances, I am very grateful that both local authorities have continued to provide a library service, one of them without closing any libraries. I would rather that remained the case, than have them decide that libraries - and their subscriptions - are just too expensive to maintain.--Verbarson (talk) 19:35, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

My local library has also discontinued its subscription, which I made use of for many years. How much is it anyway? Hopefully you don't live in Nottingham, where the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre is part demolished, the central library is up for sale and the books are in storage awaiting transfer to the new library which is part built, the council having run out of money. 87.75.36.211 (talk) 12:11, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Five-minute bus ride to West Bridgford, where the library is lovely: but the question of where the Central Library's huge stock of books will actually live is alarming, yes.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Just noting that public domain versions of OED are pretty good and available online for free on the internet archive, just more difficult to search and less updated (I may be biased in this regard, because I find words that are less than a century old boring, OED3 looks like a quite ambitious project). That said, if you have some money to spend, the subscription seems to be far from the worst destination for it. In case your question wasn't meant in a rhetoric sense, it looks like the online version of the OED started already as a subscription based thing, guess some causes/reasons could be found in a more capitalistic approach to knowledge/culture, but that’s a pretty loaded opinion and I couldn't find much to substantiate it (also older versions simply weren't available online, so a direct comparison is difficult in this case, modern free online dictionaries for other languages would be a better fit, assuming a comparable scope and/or limiting to languages that are as widely used). In this case I feel particularly compelled to apologise for my poor English, in case it’s noticeable; also, wherever you are, do your best to keep local libraries running and as accessible as possible, that's the good stuff. 176.247.149.96 (talk) 05:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)