How do you pronounce "centaur" and why?
How do you pronounce "centaur" and why?
My wife pronounces it three different ways, each of which she can support. I pronounce it one, but other than that it's the way I've heard it I can't support my pronunciation even after some searches. What's yours and why?
Kai-tawr, obvs
sen-tor
As in taurus, which rhymes with torus.
This is how I pronounce it in Canada
That's one of my wife's answers.
You're very prompt.
That's how merriam webster pronounces it! I'd pronounce it like that as well, got curious, so I googled
Cent-aur.
Correctly, smugly and pretentiously
Nice.
Cen-toor
ken-tavr, I think that's similar to how it pronounced in a lot of languges around here, it's also pretty similar how original greeks did it (kένταυροι)
Solid.
Like the other commenter I pronounce it sen-tor. Just like the word "dinosaur" I would pronounce die-no-sor if that makes sense. Both words end in "aur".
...though now you've got me curious about how you and your wife pronounce dinosaur :)
Dino-saw. That's just because of how the DNA molecule character pronounces it in Jurassic Park, and it cracks me up.
I always heard it as dina-sour in Jurassic Park, can't shake that mental reference haha
Can’t are
I pronounce it "Phil". And he would appreciate it if you would stop staring at his missing eye.
If it’s in a Greek or ancient Latin context I pronounce it with a hard C, but if it’s a general English context I pronounce it with a soft C.
I’m not sure what the third way would be.
Man, English is a mess.
Be fair. We inherited most of that mess from the French.
You're not wrong.
sen-tar
"sen-" like "cent" (like 25 cents), and "-tar" like "a tar pit"
Scent-ore
Simply "englishified" from French where I’ve ever heard only one way, Centaur (100 tor).
Kenta-kun thsnks to a Japanese dota 2 stream
sen-tar.
i could see sen-tor.
tsen-taür, where ü is not an umlaut, but a diaeresis meaning that you pronounce the second vowel in a row, like in naïve or coöperation.
I come from Poland and we read in a consistent way.
The way shit's written \s.
Such a question would make no sense in Polish.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis
Ken (as the name) - ta (with a hard T and A as in catapult) - ur (with an u like in Vonnegut's name)
tho I'm from europe speaking a weird ass language
Danish?
that's weird, too, but no
Sin tar is the usual way, though it'll sometimes come out more sin tawr, where the au is a bit more drawn out.
Sin tore is a fairly common one.
However, sin tar is more common, at least with what I've heard in meat space. That's a fairly limited thing though, since most of the people I have talked to over my fifty years have been fellow southerners. We do tend to use softer vowels in most cases, and tar is softer than tore in the way we tend to do vowels.
However, with the latin and Greek origins of the word, I'd argue that the tar or tawr would lean closer to that than tore, just because of similar words. When an au is present in medical terminology (which is where almost all of my latin and Greek comes from) it usually gets pronounced aw or ah, not oh.
But, I never hear anyone pronounce the initial C as a K, and that's the way it would have been in both of those languages originally. The Greek version is spelled with a K, when written with the usual alphabet rather than Greek. Kentauros.
Which is an aside.
Wikipedia lists the two I did as the usual pronunciations, fwiw. And all the dictionaries with audio options are either those two, or slight variations of them, where the au sound is rounder or flatter than the norm.
Thing is, it's a word in a living language. Whatever the original English pronunciation may have been, that can change, so supporting a pronunciation is kind of meaningless. What matters is consensus over time, and by location.
So, a regional accent that sounds more like cent-ur is just as valid in that region, it just isn't standard. So would any other variant be, if there's enough people using it to be called a consensus.
Personally, I say sen tore.
According to my classics professor ~20 years ago, we can't know how "au" would've been pronounced in the greek.
He told us that ancient greek diphthong pronunciation is just made up. Apparently it's much harder to reconstruct those sounds confidently, but that didn't stop past classicists from claiming their reckonings as incontrovertible facts. Oxford and cambridge used to expell students for following the diphthong pronunciations of the other, but both are basically guesses.
Even English has wide variations in how diphthongs are pronounced. I'm living in southwestern England, and the old boys pronounce the sounds in diphthongs almost separately: "boy" is two syllables: "bwooey." But like regional dialects everywhere, that's fading in the younger generation.
Yeah, it's an issue for sure.
I see that your dialect pronounces "pen" and "pin" the same. Midwestern US?
Southeast.
¢-aur — I'm not sure why I pronounce it that way; it's just how I've always pronounced it.
Sen-tar. I used to say sen-tore as a kid (as in taurine) but I think it sounds better the other way. Also easier to say in my opinion.
Sehn-tar, because I am American and that's how I learned to say it. How am I meant to justify a common pronunciation?
Senn-torr
The "taur" is probably the same root as in "Taurus" and "el Toro"¹, which I've only ever heard said like torr, so I say it the same. The first part I don't think is ever said anything other than "senn" right?
¹I can't back that up, since they mean bull not horse and I have no sources. We do see the same root pop up in "Minotaur" from the same language though, and that is a part bull part man.
Tauros in greek is bull, yeah. The minotaur was the Bull of Minos. It may link back to the pre-greek people of crete, known for bull-leaping.
The "ken" in "Kentauros" is thought to mean piercing, but why is a piercing bull a half man/horse? There's no obvious explanation.
I love the idea of -tauros coming to mean a monstrous combination, like franken- in english. But if there were any evidence of that some very excited nerds would've told us, I'm sure.
I love the idea of -tauros coming to mean a monstrous combination
That is a great theory and until an excited nerd tells me otherwise it's what I'm going to choose to believe (albeit without telling anyone else just in case)
Sen-towr
sin-a-tar just because it seems right, even though the spelling clearly indicates otherwise.
Well, it seems not a single other person agrees with me on my choice of pronunciation, but it's nice to not be the only one whose answer isn't based on the spelling!
Thank you for the answer.
The most incorrect pronunciation i can come up with is probably ken-TAH-oo-ur
Well, apparently my answer ("sen-chwar") is also very incorrect. Someone else in this thread also answered "sen-a-tar." I would argue both beat yours for incorrectness, as they don't fit the spelling.
I thought mine was based on something French, based on almost nothing, but another person in the thread has corrected that theory.
That's like the most correct one if there even could be a 'correct' way to pronounce a word of foreign origin in most languages.
In English, it's a matter of honor to mangle foreign loan words, unless you're the kind of twit who pedantically pronounces foreign words as though you're not speaking English, but the language of origin. That's most common with French loanwords, since French was once considered higher-prestige than English. But I've even heard people attempting to pronounce Arabic words like that, despite having no idea of Arabic phonology or case inflection, with ridiculous results.
the Greeks in here are saying that's basically correct.
Cent as sent + taur as tor. We pronounce most greek c's as s in english as is cicero or cent being pronounced with an s sound instead of a k sound. Tor is the same as in taurus. Mine is not the only correct pronunciation, my explanation is just the justification for my specific pronunciation
Wait you’re telling me it’s Kickero? 🤯
Back in his day, yes. In modern greek it is sisero and in modern latin it is Chichero. Similarly, in Julius Caesar's day, his name would have been pronounced Kai-zar and in modern latin and italian, it is Chai-zar.
There are no Greek C's. With Greek loanwords into Latin, "k" was mapped to Latin "c." Then the pronunciation of "c" diverged, with the Catholic Church adopting the Italianate pronunciation of the letter "c" in the Middle Ages, which was not the preferred pronunciation in classical Latin. We know how Latin was pronounced because the Romans actually wrote guidebooks for newly-assimilated Romans on how to speak proper Latin. That's also how we know that "r" was trilled or rolled-- the guidance was "make it sound like a dog growling."
centower
