Can someone explain the sounds all the diacritics make.

[clawgrip]

Kind of unrelated, but what the hell. The original Japanese word boke can mean lacking in visual focus, but also lacking in mental focus, like stupid, silly, senile, etc. It's also the standard term for the funny man in comedy double acts (the straight man being the tsukkomi).

[gach]

Bokeh might be a bit silly word when loaned into the vocabulary of photography but I think that's mostly because the people who go on and on about it tend to be obnoxious themselves. And I wouldn't expect non-technical photographers using a term like "out of focus point spread function".

I actually have to say that I prefer the use of final <eh> instead of <é> as the use of diacritics in English has always seemed a bit random to me. The best solution though would be using plain <e> and let the final silent <e>s slowly pass into history.

Most cameras produce hard polygons

Many people might be in the know already, but you can actually use a little bit of spherical aberration in the optics to smoothen the edges of the background point spread patterns. The drawback is that as a consequence the foreground out of focus pattern becomes a chaotic mess. You might also run into problems if you want to use such optics in astronomical applications where you just want a perfect focus at infinity.

[linguoboy]

I actually have to say that I prefer the use of final <eh> instead of <é> as the use of diacritics in English has always seemed a bit random to me. The best solution though would be using plain <e> and let the final silent <e>s slowly pass into history.

Of the two kludges, bokeh lands people closer to the original Japanese. Boké invites the pseudo-French pronunciation /boːˈkeː/.

[Salmoneus]

I don't think so - how many people even know that French accents the last syllable? And we don't get that problem with 'café' and so forth.

[linguoboy]

I don't think so - how many people even know that French accents the last syllable? And we don't get that problem with 'café' and so forth.

I suppose, as usual, "we" here means "a rarefied subset of British English speakers". In the USA, café is pronounced with final stress (as any halfway decent dictionary would tell you).

I stand by my statement.

[finlay]

For once he means British English speakers, not his local community in a faceless suburb of London.

[Nortaneous]

we don't have that problem with 'sake'

[linguoboy]

we don't have that problem with 'sake'

"Sake" isn't generally spelled with an acute any more. If it were, I'd wager we would. (Animé, being trisyllabic, is a slightly different case. Cf. canapé, résumé, etc.)

[Drydic]

we don't have that problem with 'sake'

"Sake" isn't generally spelled with an acute any more. If it were, I'd wager we would. (Animé, being trisyllabic, is a slightly different case. Cf. canapé, résumé, etc.)

I think Nort was talking about the stress, actually.

[zompist]

The AHD informs me that sake is pronounced /saki/,which makes me think the acute wasn't such a bad idea.

[Drydic]

Americans...

[linguoboy]

we don't have that problem with 'sake'

"Sake" isn't generally spelled with an acute any more. If it were, I'd wager we would. (Animé, being trisyllabic, is a slightly different case. Cf. canapé, résumé, etc.)

I think Nort was talking about the stress, actually.

Yeah, I get that. I'm saying that if it were normally spelled saké, American English speakers would be likely to give it final stress as they do with café, rosé, José, outré, etc. Consider the case of forte (where etymologically the e was silent), which gets hyperforeignised to /fɔrˈteː/ often enough for that pronunciation to be listed in the AHD.

[Nortaneous]

The AHD informs me that sake is pronounced /saki/,which makes me think the acute wasn't such a bad idea.

That's standard unstressed vowel reduction, which used to be pretty regular but is dying out. (cf. Ohio [əhai̯ə], 'taters')

Also the stress shift is a result of the word looking French, which is not at all a problem for a word like 'boke'.

[finlay]

we don't have that problem with 'sake'

"Sake" isn't generally spelled with an acute any more. If it were, I'd wager we would. (Animé, being trisyllabic, is a slightly different case. Cf. canapé, résumé, etc.)

Anime is never spelt with an acute ime...

[Nortaneous]

it used to be

the acute used to be used for japanese loanwords but now we're familiar enough with them that it's no longer considered necessary -- and in the case of 'anime' it's a definite outgroup marker to anyone who'd be talking about anime

[zompist]

The AHD informs me that sake is pronounced /saki/,which makes me think the acute wasn't such a bad idea.

That's standard unstressed vowel reduction, which used to be pretty regular but is dying out. (cf. Ohio [əhai̯ə], 'taters').

More likely, I think, is analogy, based on models like Nike, Penelope, recipe, catastrophe, simile, adobe, tamale, coyote.

[clawgrip]

The AHD informs me that sake is pronounced /saki/,which makes me think the acute wasn't such a bad idea.

That's standard unstressed vowel reduction, which used to be pretty regular but is dying out. (cf. Ohio [əhai̯ə], 'taters').

More likely, I think, is analogy, based on models like Nike, Penelope, recipe, catastrophe, simile, adobe, tamale, coyote.

All of those are examples of unstressed vowel reduction. They all have some version of [e] in the languages they come from, but in English /e/ is always long (i.e. it has to take primary or secondary stress) so it doesn't work well in these words; we convert it to /i/ since this can be shortened and unstressed.

This happens with karaoke as well. It didn't happen with anime for whatever reason, probably because it would sound too much like enemy, or because the people who introduced it to a wider audience were interested in preserving the original pronunciation as much as possible.

[Nortaneous]

or because english doesn't like two stressed syllables next to each other

[zompist]

All of those are examples of unstressed vowel reduction. They all have some version of [e] in the languages they come from, but in English /e/ is always long (i.e. it has to take primary or secondary stress) so it doesn't work well in these words; we convert it to /i/ since this can be shortened and unstressed.

Still not sure I buy this. Simile, recipe have the same stress pattern as resumé, exposé, dossier, macramé. Adobe, coyote have the pattern of al dente, andante. Nike, acme have the pattern of forte, padre, hombre, latte, essay, melee. So I don't see that English speakers have a great problem with final unstressed /e/. (I'll grant you it may be marked as foreign, as some speakers 'correct' the final /e/ to /i/.)

Analogy is often overlooked as a factor in various linguistic phenomena. Linguists love rules and tend to overestimate how much speakers use them.

Plus, it's perfectly normal for ME /e:/ to become /i:/, including at the end of the word-- e.g. contree country. Many of the earliest non-silent e's are Greek, and Greek borrowings are generally subject to the GVS.

[Drydic]

Simile might be a (partial?) exception to this, but just first glance at all the final [e] words they strike me as much more recent borrowings than the [ i ] words.

And I hear ["dAs.i.r\=] rather more often for dossier than ["dAs.i.e], for what that's worth (not that I hear it commonly.)

[zompist]

Yeah, it's very possible there's an era thing going on. Don't feel like looking them all up in the OED though.

[Qwynegold]

I've been writing a series of articlea about diacritics, but I need to do a little more before it gets truly usable.

The best solution though would be using plain <e> and let the final silent <e>s slowly pass into history.

I think it looks quite awful. :/

Considering all the difficulties under which my Glossary, the first work of its kind publisht in America, has cum into existence, as wel as the deplorabl fact that in its preparation I hav had no personal help whatever, I solicit the kind indulgence of those who use it, hoping at the same time that my humbl effort may be of sum value to the student of Germanic filology.

Oh, and speaking of cum and Japanese loan words: [bʊˈkɑːkɪ]. *blegh*

EDIT: Changed the phonetic representation a little bit, English is difficult to analyze.

[clawgrip]

I've been writing a series of articlea about diacritics, but I need to do a little more before it gets truly usable.

The best solution though would be using plain <e> and let the final silent <e>s slowly pass into history.

I think it looks quite awful. :/

Considering all the difficulties under which my Glossary, the first work of its kind publisht in America, has cum into existence, as wel as the deplorabl fact that in its preparation I hav had no personal help whatever, I solicit the kind indulgence of those who use it, hoping at the same time that my humbl effort may be of sum value to the student of Germanic filology.

Oh, and speaking of cum and Japanese loan words: [buˈkɑːkiː]. *blegh*

Also note that in Japanese this word is a normal word for splashing something on something else. For example bukkake udon, a food that involves pouring a sauce over the noodles just before serving.

[Qwynegold]

Also note that in Japanese this word is a normal word for splashing something on something else. For example bukkake udon, a food that involves pouring a sauce over the noodles just before serving.

Oh, I see. I thought it specifically meant to splash something on your face.

[zompist]

Also note that in Japanese this word is a normal word for splashing something on something else. For example bukkake udon, a food that involves pouring a sauce over the noodles just before serving.

That'd be a great example for my book, of borrowings with a narrowed meaning-- except, well, no. Fortunately I have other examples, like sake.