kitchen table math, the sequel: Pronouncing "zoonoses"

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Pronouncing "zoonoses"

I see Google Master has a question about students pronouncing "zoonoses" -- I still cannot, to this day, remember how to pronounce zoonoses ... and I'm pretty sure I've been pronouncing it wrong since the day I first encountered the word in Arthur Whimbey's book.

Plus now, on top of that, I have no idea how to pronounce "zoonotic."

The most recent pronunciation look-up I've done for "zoonoses" tells me to pronounce it ZOH-noh-sus (sort of like Jonas's except with a Z), but I can't bring myself to pronounce "zoonotic" ZOH-nah-tick.

How is "zoonotic" pronounced, anyway?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I prefer "zu o NO seez" and "zu o NAW tik".

Of course, I've always been irritated by the standard American pronunciation for "metastatis" as well, preferring a pronunciation that preserves the original morphemes "meh tah STAT ik" (though I don't use that pronunciation in my classes, but use the standard, mangled "meh TAS tah tik").