How do you pronounce "Meme"?

Reply 20

Kvothe the Arcane

20

I pronounce it as if it rhymes with theme.

You'd never make it on English stack exchange.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 21

Rum Ham

20

I pronounce it as 'mem'

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 22

JoshDawg

20

You pronounce it so it would rhyme with cream, so "meem"

meem

Original post by jeremy1988

Meme comes from Greek, not French. If it were a French loanword, you would have been correct. To be specific, it's based on part of a Greek word, but it was coined by a British biologist named Richard Dawkins, so it uses English phonetic conventions.

Loanwords retaining the original spelling is part of why English pronunciation is a mess. Many other languages would have just localised a word like Jalapeno into Halapinyo or something. As things stand, you have to be able to identify a word's origin and know the phonetic conventions of the original language to be able to pronounce half the words in the dictionary properly. At the very least, you need a rudimentary ability to pronounce things in French and Spanish for the great majority of loanwords. Greek and Latin come up frequently as well, but because our Alphabet is Roman, that's not as much of a stretch.

And because we don't have the same letters in our alphabet, it makes it worse. Jalapeño as opposed to jalapeno.

@OP
The 'e' at the end of 'meme' means that you pronounce the first 'e' as how you'd say the letter when you recite the alphabet: 'ee', rendering the second 'e' silent.

Reply 25

IFoundWonderland

19

erm

What's wrong with knowing about etymology?

Reply 26

cambio wechsel

20

There's a structural irony attaching to the prescriptivism here "it should be pronounced to rhyme with cream".

Reply 27

Asolare

20

Uhh I think 'me me' but I've never actually had to say the word.

Emem?

.م

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 30

the bear

20

i guess the pronunciation has ermm

Spoiler

م

Meem

"mem - ay"

To be honest "meem" sounds a bit weird to me.

Reply 34

It's****ingWOODY

20

Original post by jeremy1988

Meme comes from Greek, not French. If it were a French loanword, you would have been correct. To be specific, it's based on part of a Greek word, but it was coined by a British biologist named Richard Dawkins, so it uses English phonetic conventions.

Loanwords retaining the original spelling is part of why English pronunciation is a mess. Many other languages would have just localised a word like Jalapeno into Halapinyo or something. As things stand, you have to be able to identify a word's origin and know the phonetic conventions of the original language to be able to pronounce half the words in the dictionary properly. At the very least, you need a rudimentary ability to pronounce things in French and Spanish for the great majority of loanwords. Greek and Latin come up frequently as well, but because our Alphabet is Roman, that's not as much of a stretch.

Good post. The whole thing stems from a desire by the British to appear sophisticated and cultured, an idea which likely held value in times past but not so much now :lol:

Reply 35

Masih ad-Dajjal

5

It rhymes with cream

Anyone who says may-may is a jackass

The word was coined by Dawkins to denote a set of behaviours or ideas which are passed on and either selected for or against in the same way gene variants are.