This morning’s Morning Joe began with clips of Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci mispronouncing “omicron” yesterday by inserting an extra “n” after the “m,” which is understandable given the common prefix “omni” in our language.
May I suggest that we think of this variant as the “OMIGOD!” variant, which will get you closer to the correct pronunciation, or will at least not get you plastered on the news for mangling the word? The first letter, as I understand it, is really pronounced in English as more like “Ah” than “Oh” but I believe that “Oh-my-cron” (like saying it “Oh, micron”?) will be acceptable.
If this is more “factual questions” than “cafe society” then, Mods, please move. Or maybe “politics and elections”?
I haven’t heard the “omni” pronunciation, but the chief difference I’ve been hearing is whether that first “o” is what is called in English a “long o” or a “short o.” /oʊ/ or /əʊ/ vs /ɑ/ or /ɒ/.
That’s always how I’ve heard any English speaking person pronounce it. I suspect the OP’s “OMYGOD” is pronounced more like “O m’ God”. I’ve definitely heard “OMYGOD” pronounced that way.
I don’t have any issue with people who choose “AH-mih-kron” either (as @pulykamell mentioned). But since omicron is a partner letter with omega (meaning small O and big O, respectively), I tend to think it makes more sense for the first syllable to be pronounced the same way in both. And no one says “AH-meh-guh.”
Not small and big O, but short and long O. Omicron is a short O as in ‘hot’ or ‘on’, while omega is a long O as in ‘tone’ or, um, ‘omega’. Both omicron and omega have upper and lower case forms.
I think that’s already been mentioned a couple of times. Yes, O + micro(n); O + mega. But, so what? “Short o” and “long o” don’t mean the same thing in other languages as they do in English. We’re a bit idiosyncratic in what we call short and long vowels. And, besides, it’s “small o” and “big o.” The Greek omicron is pronounced [o] and omega is pronounced [ɔː], neither exactly corresponding to our “short o” and “long o” but more like an “oh” without sliding into a diphthon and somewhere between an “oh” and “aw.”
Listen to the pronunciations here: To my American ear, both “omicron” and “omega” sound closest to “OH” in the first syllable than “ah.”
If they’re pronounced differently, then you can just call one letter oh and the other letter aw. Since they had to disambiguate them, that tells me they said them the same.
