pronounce hypopnea (OT)

I was reading a medical terminology book and came across hypopnea in it. The book gives a phonetic-type spelling to help with pronunciation of words. It seemed to me that they were saying the second p is silent. So I looked for it on an online medical dictionary and that has two sound files - one which pronounces the second p and one which doesn't - neither of which is the way I would have done it.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hypopnea

I have always pronounced it hy-POP-nee-uh, but I kind of like hy-POE-nee-uh.

nobody wrote:I was reading a medical terminology book and came across hypopnea in it. The book gives a phonetic-type spelling to help with pronunciation of words. It seemed to me that they were saying the second p is silent. So I looked for it on an online medical dictionary and that has two sound files - one which pronounces the second p and one which doesn't - neither of which is the way I would have done it.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hypopnea

When I learned to pronounce it in nursing school.................. hi-pop-ne-uh.................that is the way all the nurses and doctors I was around pronounced it.

tattooyu wrote:I have always pronounced it hy-POP-nee-uh, but I kind of like hy-POE-nee-uh.

Yeah the first one is how I would have done it too, but now I realize that's not right (neither is the second one). When I was reading the medical terminology book I learned that these medical words are basically a bunch of suffixes and prefixes put together to form a medical word. So hypopnea is two words put together: hypo (meaning decreased) and pnea (meaning breathing). So it was interesting learning! I also noted that in the book there is a word for increased breathing: hyperpnea and the book has the second p pronounced but the online medical dictionary has both. I think adding the second p is cumbersome tho.

When I worked for a group of pathologists, there were several commonly used terms that they said differently. Think it had to do with which part of the country (or world) they received their training. One such word was duodenum. Some accented the 3rd syllable, some the 2nd.
It seems to me there should be a right/wrong pronunciation/spelling for any word, but I guess not. Interesting on hypopnea. I've used the second p and accented pop, but don't know if that was what a doctor said or it I just pronounced it how it looked to me.

According to my British friends, I spell and pronounce almost everything wrong.

Reminds me of the old story of the New Yorker telling the Oxford professor: "Boy, Buddy, you shuah do moiduh da English language!"

Even though I've always pronounced it hy-POP-nee-uh, I was thinking of giving FLURF-ka-Murgle a try.

See what happens when I sleep well and have a ton of extra energy?

As luck (and life) would have it, I actually teach medical terminology. Hypopnea and apnea come from the same suffix root, -pnea, which means "breathing" (to which you add a prefix to define what kind of breathing, e.g., the prefix a-, which means "without" or "not," to make the word apnea). The /pn/ combination is also used in the related prefixes pneumo- and pneumono-, meaning lungs, air, or gas.

That oddball /pn/ combination comes from Greek, as does most medical terminology (with much of the rest springing from Latin). Typically, it represents the /n/ sound at the beginning of a word, but both the p and the n are pronounced in the middle of a word. We teach that the p is sounded in words such as apnea and hypopnea.

By the way, you can also blame the Greeks for that strange /rrh/ combination that makes words like diarrhea and hemorrhoid so hard to remember how to spell!

Anyone want to take a crack at pronouncing this word: Ghoti

FISH!

GH pronounced like the end of laugh or cough "F"

O like the O in Women "I"

TI like the first half of the suffix "tion", like in information "SH"

Put it all together and you have Fish!

Is English a great language or what!

alnhwrd,
that was at once brilliant, and pathetic!
kudos

i suffer from osa like many here . although it's no excuse- i just dint get it go fish lol

Dude, there are RULES!

alnhwrd wrote:Anyone want to take a crack at pronouncing this word: Ghoti

FISH!

GH pronounced like the end of laugh or cough "F"

O like the O in Women "I"

TI like the first half of the suffix "tion", like in information "SH"

Put it all together and you have Fish!

Is English a great language or what!