sephalopod or kephalopod?? (ie hard or soft 'c')

GavanMCooke

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I know it seems to be regional based, we in the UK tend to say Kephalopod (i.e. hard 'c') unless we heard the word first from someone in the US (or elsewhere)

well, I was at the CIAC conference in Crete last month and as the word is Greek I thought I would ask the local greek ceph biologists...the Grecians invented the word after all (is this going to lead to a US English vs English English spelling war?!)

And their immediate and unanimous response was...

Kephalopod - so a hard 'C' please

Thats cleared that up then :P

Gav
 
I would say the same about Kephalod, learnt (and a host of other t's making the past tense). When I programmed for the mainframes, it took me awhile to figure what some of our UK analysts were talking about when they pronounced our common acronyms as well so it isn't just old words that seem to sound oddly in English across the pond.

When I hear someone speaking a foreign language, I try to identify it. On one occasion we were riding a tram in Disney and neither Neal nor I had a clue what the women across from us were saying. Further investigation revealed they were from Liverpool! :concern: However, I did end up being the bar translator for my UK boss at one time.
 
Like Liverpool, there are areas (deep intercity and rural) here that have strong enough accents that typical urban dwellers have difficulty understanding. Most of the country can detect but understand local variants but I live in the South. Here, there are places that the pronunciation and idioms can be as different as the Scottish brogue.
 

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