I tried to post the following to this group, but it failed:

On Sunday, April 30, 2023 at 10:41:11 AM UTC-6, Aleli Nic wrote:

I've been searching for sources on the internet but I haven't found a concrete answer. I looked the pronunciations up on youtube and Merope and Taygete for example, sounded wrong?
Of course, I likely could be wrong myself so I wanted to ask the opinion of you guys.
PS I'm new

You are, of course, referring to:
Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope.

The first thing to understand is that these are all Ancient Greek names. English spelling
is not uniform; many words from foreign sources are pronounced as they are in the
language they came from - but spelled as the foreign language spells them as well,
and _not_ in the way normal English words that sound that way would be spelled.

This applies to Latin words. And Greek words are converted to our alphabet the way
the ancient Romans did it.

Maia is not much of a problem; it's pronounced Meigh-a.

Electra also is no problem; E-lek-tra.

Taygete begins to be a little bit of a problem; one must remember to pronounce every
letter, and not to form any dipthongs from pairs of letters. But that doesn't necessarily
include "ay". Basically, just remember that g is always a hard g, and never a j sound.

Alcyone - the temptation is to pronounce it Al - see - own, but it's really pronounced
Al-say-o-nay.

Celaeno - Se-la-ay-no by that rule.

Sterope - Ste-ro-pay, once again, the e on the end is not silent like in "rope" or "Europe".

Merope - Once again, Mer-o-pay, the e on the end isn't silent.

John Savard

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sunday, April 30, 2023 at 6:39:11 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

I tried to post the following to this group, but it failed:

On Sunday, April 30, 2023 at 10:41:11 AM UTC-6, Aleli Nic wrote:

I've been searching for sources on the internet but I haven't found a concrete answer. I looked the pronunciations up on youtube and Merope and Taygete for example, sounded wrong?
Of course, I likely could be wrong myself so I wanted to ask the opinion of you guys.
PS I'm new

You are, of course, referring to:
Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope.

The first thing to understand is that these are all Ancient Greek names. English spelling
is not uniform; many words from foreign sources are pronounced as they are in the
language they came from - but spelled as the foreign language spells them as well,
and _not_ in the way normal English words that sound that way would be spelled.

This applies to Latin words. And Greek words are converted to our alphabet the way
the ancient Romans did it.

Maia is not much of a problem; it's pronounced Meigh-a.

Electra also is no problem; E-lek-tra.

Taygete begins to be a little bit of a problem; one must remember to pronounce every
letter, and not to form any dipthongs from pairs of letters. But that doesn't necessarily
include "ay". Basically, just remember that g is always a hard g, and never a j sound.

Alcyone - the temptation is to pronounce it Al - see - own, but it's really pronounced
Al-say-o-nay.

Celaeno - Se-la-ay-no by that rule.

Sterope - Ste-ro-pay, once again, the e on the end is not silent like in "rope" or "Europe".

Merope - Once again, Mer-o-pay, the e on the end isn't silent.

The pronunciation af astronomical objects has always been full of conjecture. A lot of these names are from ancient languages that we have no chance of pronouncing since we don't know hpw they were pronounced "back then".

However, sooner or later we must pick a pronunciation and stick with it. Here is a web page that offers phonetic pronunciation for a great many object, and what they have to say is up to each of us to accept or reject!

https://starrynighteducation.com/resources_pronunciation.html

Understand that there are still a lot of names that are not on the list.

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