PRONUNCIATION of Camera names?

[Gene McCluney]

Chamonix...is it Shame-on-ix, or Shame-on-a?

Sinar....is it Sigh-nar, or See-nar?

just curious.

[BrianShaw]

Retina: Rhet-teen-ah; Rhet-tine-ah; or Ret-in-a?

[Michael Graves]

Can't help you with Chamonix, but Dean Collins always pronounced it See'-nar in his videos.

My questions is this. Is it reh-buhl ex-tee or peace uv krap?

[David A. Goldfarb]

Americans usually say SIGH-nar, but I suspect in French it's see-NAR, and in German SEE-nar.

[tim atherton]

Brits tend to say Ni-kon (short "i" as in sit) N. Americans tend to say Niikon (long "i" as in eye)

[Daniel_Buck]

Interesting thread, I was wondering about two myself: (being that most of what i learn is either read, or figured out myself and rarely ever spoken to in person or on the phone)

Linhof: is Lin pronounced LINE? or LIN with a short i? (like lint) is hof pronounced OFF or HOFF with the H, or OF like the word of?

Tachihara: is it Tak-eh-hara? Is the CH pronounced as K or as CH or SH? I assume the I isn't pronounced EYE, but rather as a soft i?

[john collins]

I believe that it's Sham o nee.

[Bob Salomon]

What is your mother language? It makes a big difference in how it is pronounced.

Take Gepe. Gepe is the name that is formed when the founder's first and last initials are joined together into a word. His initials are G.P.

Depending on your mother language this results in many different pronunciations. He is Swedish.

[Rakesh Malik]

Being a French name, Chamonix would be pronounced "shah mo ni" as mentioned in the previous post (just confirming, I studied quite a bit of French language in high school ).

The "ch" in Tachihara would be hard, as in "chi." Japanese is relatively easy to Romanize because it's phonetic to begin with, so there is a character for "shi" and a different character for "chi."

[Ken Lee]

According to my native German-speaking neighbor, Sinar is pronounced see-nar.

Zeiss is pronounced like tseiss.

Jena is pronounced Yay-na.

So Carl Zeiss Jena is more like Car-el Tseiss Yay-na.

At fault here is the English language, which has a random assortment of spelling "rules".

Give me Sanskrit any day. A Aa E Ee U Uu...