Okay, so I have always assumed that if I’m reading about a biopic of a public figure, that it’s pronounced “bio-pic” (where bio is pronounced as in “biological” or “biographical”) as a sort of contraction of “biographical picture”
But twice in the past 3-4 days, I’ve heard the term pronounced “bye-ah-pic” (like “myopic”, but with a ‘b’).
Am I confused, or did I just happen to run across an ignorant DJ and person on TV?
I vote for this one.
I’ve only ever heard it as “BYE-oh-pick.” My money is on the OP hearing ignorant mispronunciations.
Yeah, it’s being mispronounced, not surprising in this new world of illiterates educated on YouTube and lrnd splng on twtr.
Was one of the places on SNL? If so, I heard it too. SNL is live and the performers read off cue cards, so I put it down to the performer either being unfamiliar with the written form of the word or just having a brain fart.
I’ll third that choice.
If by “ignorant,” you mean “phonetic,” then yeah, I agree. I used to see this written as bio-pic, which makes more phonetic sense. I imagine that the Hollywood press (which has the most occasion to use the term) collectively decided to drop the hyphen. The problem is that this changes the implied syllable emphasis to make “biopic” parallel with “bionic.” I have a hard time faulting anyone who pronounces it that way.
English is full of words that don’t follow phonetic rules, of course. But “biopic” is a neologism, so if there’s any ignorance involved, it’s the phonetic ignorance of those who spell it “biopic” but expect it to be pronounced “bio-pic.”
It’s probably more indifference than ignorance, I suppose. But still, people who pronounce the word as though it parallels “bionic” aren’t doing so out of ignorance; rather, they’re making a phonetically-correct guess at the pronunciation of a word that is often spelled in a way that hides its true pronunciation.
The first dozen times or so I came across the word, I pronounced it as bi-opic instead of bio-pic. I felt like I dumbass when I finally figured it out. I’m voting mistake, but it’d be interesting to me if the pronunciation at large is shifting due to mid-parsing the word. I haven’t noticed it as being an accepted or common pronunciation, though.
I heard the rhymes-with-myopic pronunciation a couple of days ago on the local news. It made me laugh out loud because I don’t remember hearing it that way before.
Yeah, the language is fluid, mispronunciations sometimes win out, but this abbreviated description doesn’t make sense as anything but bio-pic, a biographical picture, and picture is a synonym for movie. But WTH, can’t control the language. It nettles me because public speakers should be better at pronouncing words than that, and the word goes back to the 1940s. I assume a DJ and someone on TV would be familiar with it and have slightly better reading skills than having to pronounce it phonetically.
But whatever, GIF pronounced like the peanut butter became GIF pronounced life an abbreviated form of ‘gift’. I had to deal with people calling OIDs (Object IDs) like the end of the word hemorrhoid, and it it feels like an ear hemorrhoid to me when I hear it. This is why I hate languages, it’s like the all words were just made up by people.
“Gif” was only ever pronounced like the peanut butter brand because Steve Wilhite, who came up with the format, decreed it so. I mean, it’s his format, so he can pronounce it however he wants, but the pronunciation he likes has two big problems:
the word looks like “gift” without the T, so people tend to pronounce it that way, and
the G is an abbreviation of a word pronounced with a hard G (“graphics”), so pronouncing the abbreviating letter with a hard G doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Sure, we’ve got the word “gin” (an abbreviation of either giniver or engine, depending on context), but in both cases, the shortened word is pronounced with the same soft G sound that the full word uses.
Wilhite insists that GIF be pronounced like the peanut butter because he intended it to be a reference to the peanut butter brand. Ok, fine, but then he can’t be surprised when many or most people ignore his preferred (non-phonetical, illogical) pronunciation.
I don’t care how people pronounce either gif or biopic. But the official “correct” pronunciations defy both phonetics and reason, so I don’t expect people (especially those new to the words) to pronounce them the “right” way).
Similarly, I don’t get too worked up about the fact that “bomb,” “comb” and “tomb” don’t rhyme, but I also don’t get upset when a non-native English speaker guesses that they might.
And yeah, “biopic” is often mis-pronounced by native English speakers, but this entertainment-industry term is borderline jargon…it’s becoming more common in everyday speech, but it’s a legitimately new word to many people.
Yeah, it was, and the other time was a DJ on 92.5 KZPS on Friday afternoon.
That’s why I was startled- it was twice in very close succession, which made me wonder if I’d missed something and was that dumb-ass that **pulykamell **describes.
What’s odd about that is that my initial instinct was to pronounce it as “jiff” and not “giff” and I pronounced it as such until “giff” won out in popular usage. Turned out I was somehow “correct” as that was what the creator of the file format intended, but that was only by luck. My brain parsed it with words like “gin” and “giraffe” and “ginger” rather than “gift” and “give” and “gild.”
Sure, and now I say “bio-pic” (why can’t it just be written out like that to make it obvious?! Argh!) But upon the first dozen times of seeing the word written out, bi-opic was the natural division for me. Clearly, some people see bio-pic immediately, and other see bi-opic. I’m assuming it’s because my brain is parsing it along with words like “bi(-)ology” and “bi(-)ography” and by its similarity to the word “myopic.” I did wonder for a while why biographical pictures were called “bi-opics” until I finally made the connection that the spoken word “bio-pic” was the word “biopic” in print. It’s like that kid who discovers the word “misled” is not the past tense of the verb “to misle” but rather the past tense of “mislead.”
That makes total sense. My complaint is not with those who would pronounce it one way or the other, but rather those who insist that the correct pronunciation is somehow unambiguous.
These aren’t good words for me to be ranty about. They’re easily mispronounced, or there is no clear single pronunciation. I do think it should be bio-pic, with the hyphen in the spelling anyway.
I say BYE-oh-pick, but a British guy who hosts a YouTube channel I like rhymes it with myopic. I thought maybe that was the common pronunciation in UK English.
It was only a couple of months ago that I first heard biopic spoken. Before that I had only seen it in print, and for decades said it in my mind to rhyme with myopic. A guy on TV pronounced it as bio-pic and a light bulb went on over my head.
I will henceforth spell it with a hyphen, not that I foresee using it anywhere except this thread 
I think that may be more common here in the UK. It is certainly how I say it my mind though I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud.
Sure I can see how the correct pronunciation may be bio-pic but mentally it is bi-oppic and that’s not responding to logic.
I’ll just avoid ever using it aloud and just say it was a biographical film.