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GeneralPronunciation of mineral names
20th Apr 2017 13:36 UTCSteve Adams
20th Apr 2017 13:43 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager
http://www.webmineral.com/data/Tainiolite.shtml#.WPiszdLyvct
20th Apr 2017 14:44 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager
20th Apr 2017 15:25 UTCSteve Adams
20th Apr 2017 15:30 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager
20th Apr 2017 15:41 UTCDonald B Peck Expert
20th Apr 2017 18:13 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert
I was going to mention the Photo Atlas but the newer windows won't support that Photo Atlas anymore and ours can't be used. I loved it had that feature.
Shame they didn't update the Photo Atlas for the newer windows systems.
Our copy is completely useless, can't view it anymore and I loved it.
20th Apr 2017 19:19 UTCEd Clopton 🌟 Expert
Before I belonged to a mineral club (and to some extent even now) there are a lot of mineral names and other terms that I have only ever seen in print and have to make my best guess as to pronunciation. I was startled when I heard Roberts say "bismuthinite" for the first time; I had seen the word in print before and wasn't sure what to make of it, but "biz MYOO thun ite" was not among the possibilities I had considered.
Refereeing pronunciations of words having roots in so many languages, by speakers of so many other languages, would be a daunting task. How many (English) pronunciations have we heard for "goethite"? I can think of five or six, none matching the proper German pronunciation of the name of poet/mineral collector Wolfgang von Goethe for whom the species is named.
The author of a letter to the editor in Mineralogical Record 25(4):301-2 (July-August 1994) tells of asking Terry and Marissa Szenics, for whom szenicsite is named, how it should be pronounced. "He said 'zeniks', but she said 'theniks, because I'm Peruvian'." Even the two people for whom the species is jointly named don't agree! That letter also repeats what Roberts said about pronunciations in Hey's Chemical Index of Minerals.
And what of "cyanotrichite"? The "cy" at the beginning suggests "SI an o trik ite", but the Greek root kyanos (sorry, I don't have Greek on my keyboard) begins with K, not S. I say, or at least think, "KI an o trik ite", but I'll bet that's a minority opinion.
Uniformity would be nice, but I'll bet we will just have to live with ambiguity.
20th Apr 2017 19:50 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.
I have heard earth science professionals use varying pronunciations for common minerals such as hematite (short "e" or long e"), limonite (short "i" or long "i"), sphalerite (short "a" or long "a"), chalcopyrite (kalcopyrite or chalcopyrite), etc. One fairly consistent rule is that the second syllable carries the accent. This rule does at times make mineral names that hardly resemble the name of the person after whom the mineral was named!
20th Apr 2017 19:59 UTCHendrik van Oss
In a blast furnace, there is a more or less continuous top feed (burden) of a mix of iron ore, coke, and fluxing & slagging agents (commonly silica sand, limestone, and/or dolomite). Through this burden is an uprushing flow of extremely hot gas, mostly CO, from the combustion of the coke.
The coke (mostly C plus some silica plus some pyrite) burns, with the main equation being 2C + O2 = 2 CO
The hot CO strips the oxygen from the iron ore, which is generally hematite (plus silica/silicate impurities); simplistically, the reaction producing the crude iron is:
3CO + Fe2O3 = 2Fe + 3CO2
The fluxing and slagging agents help these reactions proceed at a lower "temperature" (heat input) than would otherwise be the case. They also combine with the impurities (mainly silica and silicates) in the ore (and the ash content of the coke) to produce a complex (but mainly Ca- and/or Ca-Mg-Al-)silicate melt that is the slag. This can be simplistically described (using a limestone slagging agent) as:
2CaCO3 + SiO2 = (CaO)2SiO2 ("C2S" in cement chemistry shorthand) + 2 CO2
but, ultimately, there can be many phases ("minerals") present, and/or a reactive glass, depending the actual chemistry of the ore and slagging agents (etc...) and upon how the slag is cooled. Some of these phases are synthetic equivalents of natural minerals, and some (though referred to as minerals in the steel and cement industries) are basically not found in nature; a number of these phases have variable compositions. The slag may also contain free metal (iron) and/or iron carbides.
According to the old standard reference on iron blast furnace slags (Josephson, Sillers, and Runner, 1949: USBM Bull 479), among the common phases found in iron blast furnace slags are: akermanite-gehlenite (i.e., melilite), the C2S I mentioned above, pseudowollastonite and other monocalcium silicate phases, olivine series phases, pyroxene phases, merwinite, and pyrrhotite-group phases. But given the wide range of minor element compositions of iron ores and slagging agents, no doubt many other phases have been reported in slags from around the world, and with slags from the same furnace produced at different times. And then, if dumped outside, the slags can weather...
Ditto, in spades, for slags of other metallurgical industries!
20th Apr 2017 20:26 UTCHendrik van Oss
Not sure that there is much debate on the pronunciation of 'slag'.
20th Apr 2017 20:41 UTCHendrik van Oss
"ch" vs. "k" in minerals like chalcopyrite
Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation of calcite as "kalseeja"
Day-klwa-zite vs. Dez-kloh-ih-zite for descloisite
Incorporation of diacritical marks in mineral names (helpful, I suppose, if one knows how the marks are pronounced)
not to mention tongue-twisting engooment of mineral names with chemical descriptors: ferro-ferri-fluoro XYZite, as evidenced in the latest Fleischer, which is making mineral names more difficult than the Latin names of fossils.
21st Apr 2017 01:39 UTCDoug Daniels
21st Apr 2017 05:19 UTCVachik Hairapetian Expert
21st Apr 2017 06:36 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager
Zunyite should be pronounced zuniïte as the TL is Zuni.
Like gauthierite. Everybody say gauthieRite but should be gauthiEite as his name was pronounced gauthiE.
21st Apr 2017 10:00 UTCJohan Kjellman Expert
långban = long ba[r]n
långbanite = long ba[r] night
21st Apr 2017 12:17 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager
As much as people try, I do not believe there will ever be total consensus on the pronunciation of mineral names. Compounding the issues even further than what has been mentioned above is the fact that different languages pronounce words differently, especially when those words are translated into English. The Photo Atlas of Minerals CD (which is where I believe WebMineral got their info from) does a pretty good job of this, but I have heard foreign language speakers say a mineral name and depending on what country they were from, get totally different responses.
21st Apr 2017 12:38 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager
21st Apr 2017 12:44 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager
21st Apr 2017 15:26 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert
Brings about our own areas usages of the Gila Monster with the silent g, or Saguaro with the g silent again.
Having been a herpetologist I ran into that with snake name pronunciations as well and every person seemed to have their own.
Chet, you are right, it is a can of worms.
I think as long as people can understand what another is talking about it works.
I had often asked what mineral someone was talking about with the way they said the word but understanding was reached.
Interesting thread
21st Apr 2017 17:38 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert
21st Apr 2017 18:13 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.
21st Apr 2017 19:37 UTCColin Robinson
21st Apr 2017 23:12 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert
(that's why I've recorded the pronounciation of żabińskiite and czochralskiite; but I won't try with tuperssuatsiaite, no worries (-;)
22nd Apr 2017 00:20 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.
My Polish name is relatively easy to pronounce. Despite that, I get all manner of spellings and pronunciations (Liminski, Liminsky, Leminski, Laminski, etc.). Relevant only in the fact that I have a mineral named after me. The correct pronunciation for it is Lēmanskēīte.
22nd Apr 2017 00:30 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager
But I still spell haemoglobin with an "a" !!! .... and pronounce it with a long "e" .... and I have always pronounced hematite with a long "e".. Some of the very "old" writings show hematite as haematite.
so ... Guess I just must be "old school" !!
Colin ...
Lukasz, there are many new mineral names that I would simply be unable to pronounce, especially those with eastern european and chinese origin.
Perhaps I could just start collecting those minerals with four letters that are easy to pronounce like .... gold, gold and gold.!!!
Cheers
Keith
22nd Apr 2017 00:49 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
22nd Apr 2017 09:07 UTCErik Vercammen Expert
we don't write he(a)matite in Greek letters, so we're not bound to the Greek spelling. And if we did, it should be mikrokline because the Greek has no 'c' only the 'k' (kappa)
22nd Apr 2017 15:11 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
22nd Apr 2017 15:16 UTCErik Vercammen Expert
22nd Apr 2017 16:16 UTCDonald B Peck Expert
22nd Apr 2017 18:54 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.
Hemoglobin universally used in the states but the "e" is still pronounced long.
22nd Apr 2017 23:09 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert
22nd Apr 2017 23:10 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert
22nd Apr 2017 23:32 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager
Yes, some would say Australian is too, but it would be boring if we all sounded the same!
23rd Apr 2017 09:13 UTCTimothy Greenland
Cheers
Tim
23rd Apr 2017 16:49 UTCDonald B Peck Expert
25th Apr 2017 20:41 UTCLászló Horváth Manager
Katapleiite will probably not happen, but a proposal can be made to IMA to change it. They seem to be very willing to consider corrections to mineral names to bring it in line with the name of a person.
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Copyright © mindat.org and the Hudson Institute of Mineralogy 1993-2024, except where stated. Most political location boundaries are © OpenStreetMap contributors. Mindat.org relies on the contributions of thousands of members and supporters. Founded in 2000 by Jolyon Ralph.
Privacy Policy - Terms & Conditions - Contact Us / DMCA issues - Report a bug/vulnerability Current server date and time: May 9, 2024 22:11:32