Correct pronunciation of Chimera?

[Scarogoth]

A little joke...

Indeed, and also the letter v should be pronounced as a w which makes the famous "I came, I saw, I conquered" into "weni widi wiki"

For those that don't know the old joke... Once the Britons overheard Caesar in his tent describing them as "Weeny, weedy and weaky" they lost heart and gave up the struggle. Boom, boom.

And the English (as opposed to American) pronunciation would have it:

Ki ("i" as in sit) [the most correct, though many would now go for "kai" (to rhyme with "eye")] - Mere (to rhyme with "clear") - Ra (a very short a -- a Brit saying "*A*-moeba".) I guess we don't really have any certainty about how the Ancient Greeks said it, but certainly no "Ch" as in "church".

 

[Mercule]

And while we're on the topic, I'll throw out that the "ch" in "chasm" is a hard sound, also. So: "kasm". I presume it has a similar origin (Greek/Latin), but I'm not sure of the etymology of the word.

I just know that everyone I game with says it the English phoenetic way and it hurts my ears every time.

 

[WayneLigon]

Yep, initial C is usually a hard K sound in Greek. "Centaur", for example, really ought to be pronounced "KEN-tar", but most Americans say "SEN-tar", taking their cue from words like "century".

No, they pronounce it that way because that's the way the English word is actually pronounced (or 'sen-tor' as the yourdictionary link pronounces it) whether you're American or not. It's from the Latin centaurus from the Greek Ke`ntayros.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

I usually pronounce it as : Kai-mare-rah

From what I understand about Greek words, the "ch/c" is pronounced as a "k": thus Kay-os for "chaos," Kro-nus for "Cronus," etc.

However, I wonder if the vowels are supposed to be more "continental" in pronuncation (that is, pronounced more like they are on the European continent & not as English-speakers pronunce them due to the Great Vowel Shift). Thus, with the "ch" pronunciation rule in mind, shouldn't chimera be pronounced like this?

Kee-may-rah? or Kih-meh-rah?

The short versions of the vowels should stay the same, but a long I should be pronounced as "eee." Long vowel E should be pronounced as it is in the word "hey." Logn vowel A should be "Ah." Just unsure of where the stress is placed properly on the word to determine if it should be a long or short vowel.

On a side note (Djeta pronounced Jay-ta): So, the "dj" sound is sorta like the "dg" in "judge," right? So its sorta spelled with the phonetic letter rather than with the alphabetic letter, right?