Will Robinson always pronounced it RO-but and that sounded weird to me. Oh, the pain.
Hmm. Is this with a rhotic or nonrhotic accent?
If the former, I could see someone hearing the usual modern translation of robot from, say, a Brit and assuming that the second vowel has an R.
Similar to how wash became warsh in some dialects.
Well, um, I’d say rhotic? He was American by way of French Canadian. But several generations in the US. I think he was just odd. I don’t remember any other words he said strangely. Maine ca 1983.
I meant pronunciation, of course.
@Paintcharge If it’s the only difference, I’d think it was something like what I said. Or he learned the word* from someone else who had parsed it that way.
*Including if he just was copying someone who he thought said it funny, only to have it become his regular pronunciation over time. I’ve done that.
Or how sherbet became sherbert.
[Moderating]
For a gratuitous political potshot that had nothing at all to do with the subject of the thread, I’m going to have to make this a Warning.
And apparently the Kessel Run only takes 3 parsecs.
I suppose now that technology is more common, pronuciation is more standardized.
One answer often used is to go back to the origin.
Rossum’s Universal Robots, a play by Karel Čapek.
The word itself derives from the Czech word “robota,” or forced labor, as done by serfs.
Pronunciation should arguably follow the origin.
A nice article from MIT
The original robots weren’t mechanical, but based upon advanced chemistry.
In modern parlance (thanks to Phil K Dick) we would call them androids. Indeed Rossum’s Universal Robots Would be the perfect backdrop to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Blade Runner.
Karel considered the use of robot to describe an electromechanical device something of an aberration of his intent. IEEE Spectrum has a nice summary.
My Granny in Yorkshire used to refer to traffic lights as Ro-boes.
Capek’s robots are flesh and blood like the Cylons in 2000s Battlestar Galactica, so it’d probably be more appropriate to call them golems.
Hard to make exact parallels between different fictional entities. Golems are made from inanimate material, like clay. The animation being magical rather than technological.
Phil K Dick’s androids seem a curious melange. They can only be distinguished from humans with tests that reveal subtle differences in psychology. And the presence of implanted memories. They are otherwise biologically essentially equivalent. Just somehow manufactured ab-initio as an adult functioning organism. (I’ll ignore the idea they can reproduce or have serial numbers in their eyes. Both mess with the original premise.)
Your granny and the people of South Africa apparently, where its the preferred term for traffic lights.
From a newspaper search it was also bandied around as a term in the USA, UK and Australia before linguistic boringness set in.
Wilmington apparently the first where it went from an automatic cycling STOP-GO system to one responding to traffic flows. Making sure you're not a bot!
Sydney’s first traffic light in 1933 was a ‘robot’. The location still possesses Traffic Signal Box 01, which some of us think is exciting. Making sure you're not a bot!
Maybe thanks to Rossum’s pioneering work, Prague’s robot was much, much more than just a traffic light. It answered questions as well. Making sure you're not a bot!
If you want to borrow a term from sci-fi that denotes specifically a bioengineered artificial humanoid as opposed to a mechanical one, then I’d suggest “replicant”, Blade Runner-style. Androids, to me, are mechanical like robots (with a nod to Data). Golems are clay (and not really from sci-fi, more from fantasy).
I have a gripe about planet 7 in the solar system which is named after the Greek muse of astronomy Urania and should be pronounced yuh·ray·nee·us.
But most p[people pronounce it your anus, usually with a little giggle
Are all those supposed to be IPA symbols? I can’t imagine anyone pronounces the second vowel as [o], which would make “robot” sound like “rowboat”.
That’s how Wiktionary lists the Czech pronunciation, presumably how Čapek pronounced it when he coined the term unless Czech pronunciation has changed substantially in the last 100 years.
I’m seeing /o/ listed for some south Asian English accents.
Did we get this link already? I may have missed it amongst the IMHO clutter about how Dooers or their friends/family/teachers speak.
Here it is: [ˈrobot]
where /o/ is neither a long vowel nor a diphthong.
Asimov himself pronounced it “row but”. He coined the term which he derived from the Czech language. Robot comes from the Czech word for work (which is pronounced like “Ra boat”). Since he invented the term I think his pronunciation is the best one, but since it’s a made up word I don’t think it can be called correct or incorrect.
ETA: Ignorance fought - I was not aware of Karel Čapek.
Well, it has happened, as noted earlier in the thread. Not saying that it was ever common, but it wasn’t without precedent (in English).
My mother is from Manchester, and curiously also pronounced it ro-boe. She was adamant that it was French, and thus a silent t. It took quite a while for her to change her mind.