Bokeh

[Allan Bell]

Bokeh, or "out of focus" or "blurred." Take your pick. Yes I know it is of Japanese origin meaning "quality of blur" etc.

 

My question is how do you pronounce the word?

 

I have always said "Bok-eh" but have recently heard it pronounced "Bouquet". (as in bunch of flowers).

 

Which do you think is the correct pronunciation?

 

Allan

[John Mitchell]

I say boh-kay as well. But it could just be a Canadian thing, eh?

[spacecadet]

If I were to use it, probably boakay likewise. If it actually is from japanese I think it would be more like bock- e as in French et.

'Out-of -focus highlights' doesn't take too long to say though.

[Ed Rooney]

According to Google Translate (and my ear) it's said bo-kah in English (that's 'ah' as in father) and bo-ke-ah-di in Japanese (boke aji). That's 4 syllables and little to no accent on each. Where's TokyoMike when we need him?

 

By the way, I've decided to stop eating sushi. I don't really like it, and it's too damn expensive. 

[Allan Bell]

 

 

Buy the way, I've decided to stop eating sushi. I don't really like it, and it's too damn expensive. 

 

     It is amazing the way a thread deviates. Nice one Ed. Love it.

 

I have never had sushi because I did not fancy chasing those little bowls around the conveyor belt. By the time I had finished I would need to have a "proper" meal.

 

Allan

[Allan Bell]

Seems that, so far, the consensus of opinion is BOH-kay.  The person I heard say "boh-key" sounded to be of oriental extraction.

 

Allan

[Niels Quist]

Don't know if it is correct, though:

 

http://petapixel.com/2013/01/01/how-do-you-pronounce-bokeh/

[John Mitchell]

According to Google Translate (and my ear) it's said bo-kah in English (that's 'ah' as in father) and bo-ke-ah-di in Japanese (boke aji). That's 4 syllables and little to no accent on each. Where's TokyoMike when we need him?

 

By the way, I've decided to stop eating sushi. I don't really like it, and it's too damn expensive. 

 

Whatever. It's all just a blur to me.

 

There are lots of inexpensive sushi joints in Vancouver. I stick with the veggie rolls -- yam, avocado, etc.-- myself.  Smoked salmon and cream cheese is another occasional fave. Some places here now offer brown rice sushi, which has a pleasant nutty flavour. I much prefer it to the white, sticky, tasteless stuff.

[Sultanpepa]

bo-kay. ..but really no idea how it should be pronounced. Now is it sush- y or soo-shi.

[TokyoM1ke]

Boke is two Japanese characters (ボク), Bo-Ke both are pronounced fairly shortly and distinctly - don't extend the vowels. The e is pronounced as in "end".

 

It means blurred in this context but also means dementia... 

 

 

Where's TokyoMike when we need him?

 

Asleep during night hours generally! 

[TokyoM1ke]

 

According to Google Translate (and my ear) it's said bo-kah in English (that's 'ah' as in father) and bo-ke-ah-di in Japanese (boke aji). That's 4 syllables and little to no accent on each. Where's TokyoMike when we need him?

 

By the way, I've decided to stop eating sushi. I don't really like it, and it's too damn expensive. 

 

Whatever. It's all just a blur to me.

 

There are lots of inexpensive sushi joints in Vancouver. I stick with the veggie rolls -- yam, avocado, etc.-- myself.  Smoked salmon and cream cheese is another occasional fave. Some places here now offer brown rice sushi, which has a pleasant nutty flavour. I much prefer it to the white, sticky, tasteless stuff.

 

 

But it's not really sushi... totally westernised.  I won't rant for too long on this one - you need to come to Japan for sushi, quite unlike anything anywhere else. The quality and freshness of the fish is amazing.  There are some [slightly] acquired tastes and you have to ignore what some things look like. You also have to drink the appropriate drinks, depending on the food. Some are pretty horrible but with the right Nihonshu (generally referred to as "Sake" in the west) they really work. Avocado, smoked salmon, cream cheese, yam etc. would never be used in sushi here.  The rice is also of a specific type - the white rice isn't tasteless as it has vinegar in it.  That said, the flavours here are much more subtle than elsewhere and it takes quite a while for your pallet to become acclimatised.

[Ed Rooney]

Well, I do enjoy sake, hot and cold, so maybe I'm halfway there.  Thanks, Mike. 

[Linda]

In the midwest I've heard it as "Boca"  pronounced like Boca Raton

 

L

[DDoug]

There are only five vowel sounds in Japanese, whereas we have at least half a dozen ways to pronounce the letter A. Roughly, it's a as in father, e as in get, i as in skeet, o halfway between oh and aw, u as in good or foot not butt or boot. Also, they don't combine vowels; both are pronounced and take two beats, like in stoic rather than choice.

[TokyoM1ke]

In the midwest I've heard it as "Boca"  pronounced like Boca Raton

 

L

 

It's when you get western pronunciations of things like Karaoke "Ka-Ra-Oh-Ke" - I hear foreigners here saying something along the lines of Carry-Oh-Kee and the Japanese don't have any idea of what it means!

 

But then they can't complain too much...

 

 

Really? Simpsons character ... spread for you bread that tastes just like butter (not) ... or maybe "merge"? It really is meant to be "merge" by the way.

[Sami Hurmerinta]

Boke is two Japanese characters (ボク), Bo-Ke both are pronounced fairly shortly and distinctly - don't extend the vowels. The e is pronounced as in "end".

 

It means blurred in this context but also means dementia... 

 

 

 

 

 

TokyoM1ke beat be to it, but this is how I, as a Finn, would pronounce it. I do use the bo-kay version too because it seems more understandable to native English speakers, but I prefer the Japanese pronunciation (maybe because that's what we use in Finnish too).

[Paulstw]

My accent doesn't allow it to be said any other way than 'Bo-kay' I have tried saying 'Bo-Khu' but it just ends up being the lazy previous version after a while. More often than not I end up trying to explain it, and tend to just say "The blurry stuff in the background" 

 

In Scotland, the word 'Boke' is used a lot. It's a common replacement for being sick or vomiting, so when you say 'bo-khu' people think you mean being sick. 

[Allan Bell]

Boke is two Japanese characters (ボク), Bo-Ke both are pronounced fairly shortly and distinctly - don't extend the vowels. The e is pronounced as in "end".

 

It means blurred in this context but also means dementia... 

 

 

Where's TokyoMike when we need him?

 

Asleep during night hours generally! 

 

Thank you TokyoM1ke for supplying the definitive version. So BO-KE seems to be the true base sound. Which is how I have always pronounced it.

 

Liked your "rant", sorry, explanation of true sushi too.

 

 

 

Don't know if it is correct, though:

 

http://petapixel.com/2013/01/01/how-do-you-pronounce-bokeh/

 

 

Thank you for the link.

 

 

 

My accent doesn't allow it to be said any other way than 'Bo-kay' I have tried saying 'Bo-Khu' but it just ends up being the lazy previous version after a while. More often than not I end up trying to explain it, and tend to just say "The blurry stuff in the background" 

 

In Scotland, the word 'Boke' is used a lot. It's a common replacement for being sick or vomiting, so when you say 'bo-khu' people think you mean being sick. 

 

 

I did not know of that term meaning being sick in Scotland. Interesting how different words/sounds mean different things to other peoples in the world.

 

 

Allan

[Ed Rooney]

Ah, the Tower of Babel.

 

Mike, what about dialects in Japan? I lived in Italy, in Rome, and my Italian is basically Roman, close to Dante Alighieri's (Florentine), but with its own bag of slang and slippery fast talk. Sicilian? You gotta be kidding. In Venice they speak in a sing-song way like Danish. But most mountain villages have their own dialect.

 

So what about the small nation of Japan, Mike? Mike? Mike, you didn't go back to sleep, did you?  

 

江戸

[TokyoM1ke]

Ah, the Tower of Babel.

 

Mike, what about dialects in Japan? I lived in Italy, in Rome, and my Italian is basically Roman, close to Dante Alighieri's (Florentine), but with its own bag of slang and slippery fast talk. Sicilian? You gotta be kidding. In Venice they speak in a sing-song way like Danish. But most mountain villages have their own dialect.

 

So what about the small nation of Japan, Mike? Mike? Mike, you didn't go back to sleep, did you?  

 

江戸

Gottcha! Insomnia strikes.  

 

I am told that there are dialects here, although my Japanese is way below being able to distinguish between them (other than understanding less than I do normally... hard to believe).  Some of them are more to do with how things are said, rather than accent.  There are some strange anomalies here, where you find a city in a region has its own dialect but the rest of the region doesn't.  I'm really no expert... you need to ask again in 30 or 40 years when I've truly mastered the basics!

 

マイケル (MA I KE LU)

[Ed Rooney]

My God, I assumed you were asleep! Zzzzzzzzzz 

 

There are some tricky languages in the world, Japanese being one for its subtleties. Finnish, Hungarian and Basque are others. I sometimes walk the streets here speaking to myself in Italian, just to enjoy the sound and the feel of chewing the words. Sometimes it sound so, but you can't speak it right if you are sloppy-mouthed. I like the sound of both Japanese and Korean, hate the sounds of Vietnamese and Cantonese. Mandarin I find okay. Brazilian Portuguese and French I like the sounds of best -- like someone eating something tasty.  

[TABan]

Brings to mind Patricia Routledge. "It's Bouquet."

[MariaJ]

I think there will always be variations on the pronunciation of it. 

 

I was amazed when watching a photography video on YouTube from the U.K. at how different the pronunciation of Nikon is there compared to Canada.

[IanGibson]

I guess there are variations in all languages. How do you pronounce "tomato?"

[Ed Rooney]

I guess there are variations in all languages. How do you pronounce "tomato?"

 

Oh my. Except for the first line with to-may-toe, to-mah-to, most of Ira Gershwin's other pronunciation variations are nonsense. Here in the tristate area, I say, "Can I get a half-pound of tomatoes?" When I lived in Oxfordshire and shopped at the Covered Market, I would say, "May I have a half-pound of tomatoes, please?" in a proper Oxbridge accent. When I first spoke American I always got "excuse me, sir?" No one even blinked at me when I spoke local. 

 

I did a weekly spot on BBC Radio Oxford when I lived there in the '80s and I never did a takeoff on any British accent.

 

For decades now, English speakers in all parts of the world have been watching films and TV from the other English-speaking peoples. For the most part, we all follow along okay. (I feel as if I've written all this before -- déjà vu all over again as Yogi Berra said. Déjà vu? Hey, that's not English!)

 

And back to bokeh: "The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the March/April 1997 issue." 

 

Back in film days, I had never heard the term. We spoke of DoF and the shadow shapes the blades created, but no one ever said bokeh.