How to pronounce NIKON (tm)?
Hi, please tell me which is the correct way to pronounce NIKON (tm)?
JC Wells' Longman pronouncing dictionary has ['nIk@n], but people seem to pronounce it ['naik@n]. Should I trust this dictionary or follow the rules set by users?
many thanks
In the US, Nikon is pronounced with a long I.
It's a Japanese company. Therefore I'd say, if there is to be any "correct" way of pronouncing it, then it would have to be the Japanese way. That would be [nikOn] (in X-SAMPA).
The closest thing in (Commonwealth) English phonology would be (AusE) /nIkOn/, (RP) /nIkQn/ or (GenAm) /nIkO:n/.
Ignor the "Commonwealth" bit above: I forgot to delete it after adding GenAm.
The Japanese seem to have a nasal in there, the way they pronounce it.
Yeah, that'll happen when you've got an [n] following: /nikon/ ==>> [nikO~n].
Jim,
I'm a native Japanese speaker, and in the standard Japanese accent, we don't have a alveolar nasal stop at the end. Instead we simply have a nasal vowel [o~] or a uvular nasal stop [o~N] following it.
It's a common mistake to have [n] instead of [N] in such words (often by English speakers), and it's usually okay because they're not contrastive themselves when they're at the end of speech, but there are many minimal pairs when they're followed by a vowel.
hon o /hoN o/==>>[hO~N O] book (objective)
ho-no /hono/ ==>>[hOnO] "of canvas"
men o /meN o/==>>[mE~N O] noodle (objective)
me-no /meno/==>>[mEnO] "of eyes"
so how the hell do u say NIKON then ?
So in Japanese,
nikon /nikoN/==>>[JikO~N]
and the dialect of American English I speak,
nikon /ni:kA:n/
In American English, Nikon is NOT pronounced with a long 'i' ([iː] or [ɪː]; it is pronounced with a diphthong, namely, [ɑɪ̯]. They are not the same thing, despite many books that confuse them.
Vowel length is not phonemic in English. In order to avoid confusion, it's best not to refer to it when identifying phonemic vowel sounds.
Give up on IPA. No one can read those phantom squares or bothers/knows how to enable their browsers to read them. Stick to X-SAMPA.
No, stick to IPA so no one bothers with your posts which are often erroneous anyway. e.g. "In American English, Nikon is NOT pronounced ...[i:]" and "Vowel length is not phonemic in English".
Ni like in "nee_d" and kon like in "kon_g"