BO CA vs BO KAY - poll or how you guys say it

[stillbound]

lens blur...bokeh...bouquet

Just wondering how you guys say it since i hear it so many ways...

sort of a poll or sorts

JC

[tridakfoto]

I call it blur ;)

[larry_gindhart]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

 

Bokeh (from the Japanese boke, "blur") is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens.[1] Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject. The effect itself is the circle of confusion, an image of the aperture convolved by the image itself.

[larry_gindhart]

Also at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

 

Mike Johnston, former editor of Photo Techniques magazine, claims to have coined the bokeh spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers,[2] replacing the previous spelling boke that derived directly from the Japanese word for "fuzzy" and had been in use at least since 1996.[3]

 

The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 2000.[4]

[jo7hs2]

I pronounce it somewhere between BO CA and BO Keh, with the Keh rhyming with meh or feh, in the Homeric (Simp.) fashion.

[larry_gindhart]

Detailed bokeh test with image comparisons is here

 

http://www.rickdenney.com/bokeh_test.htm

 

"To demonstrate and compare bokeh, I have assembled a range of lenses all in the 120-135mm focal length. These are commonly used as short portrait lenses in medium format and long portrait lenses in 35mm."

[alanrusso]

I'm with Jay - and call it "blur". If you want to see your non-photographer friends think you're being a self-important butt-head... try to work bokeh into casual conversation :)

[bobatkins]

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/technical/bokeh.html

 

The pronunciation is bo-keh where "bo" is like bow (as in bow and arrow) and "keh" is like keg without the "g".

 

It almost rhymes with poker!

[zigzag]

You say bok-ay and I say tomato, tomato, bok-ay, bok-ay, tomato.

 

It's actually dangerous to discuss it with wedding photographers : "look at the bride's bokeh", "Bokeh? she's not carrying a bokeh."

[ken munn]

Bowka

[colin carron]

Without wishing to start an international incident (I live in UK) I have noticed that the custom in the US is to pronounce any foreign language word with the stress on the last syllable regardless of the pronunciation in the original language. An example might be 'beef fil-LAY' for fillet or 'bal-LAY' for ballet.

 

Given this rule the pronunciation of 'Bokeh' in American English, irrespective of its original prounciation, has to be 'Bo-KAY'.

[zigzag]

Without wishing to start an international incident (I live in Australia) - there is a comedy program "Keeping Up Appearances" whose English star is "Mrs Bucket" - pronounced "Mrs bouquet".

[colin carron]

:-)

[terry_smith2]

Boo-Kah

[apetty]

Bow-Ca

[William Kahn]

Have you noticed how close "bokeh" is to "baka", which is Japanese for "idiot"? I'll stick with "blur". Otherwise, I might end up saying things like "giclee".....

[jo7hs2]

Colin,

 

You might want to read this, as there is no French word Fillet. Only Filet, pronounced Fil-ay, and Fillette, pronounced Fill-et.

 

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=95;t=000451;p=1

 

Either way, the French would probably say both sides of the pond are using it wrong in some way. ;)

[colin carron]

Joshua, you are quite right, 'fillet' is the anglicised version and pronounced in a no nonsense 'fill-it' way here. My point is that american english has a characteristic way of dealing with foreign words that will probably get applied anyway.

 

But my French was a little hazy there. What is the French for 'background blur'?

[roger_smith4]

In Japanese it's bo (like a violin bow) ke (k + a short "eh"). The vowels are short, so don't drag them out.

 

Boke also means idiot or dimwit, and in Japanese comedy plays opposite the straight man (tsukkomi).

[J.W. Wall]

arigato

[andy_jones2]

Pronunciation :

.

 

If you can say bonsai, not bone-sai (or Bob as in Atkins) you've got the bo right - the "o"

in boke is short.

If you can say kendo (or keg, as Bob suggests) you've got the ke right - BTW the o in

kendo is long, like the o in violin bOw.

"Kay" is always wrong : if the Japanese pronounced it "kay" it would be written as bokei)

And kah is not in the running :)

That is, if you want to say it how the Japanese say it.

.

 

Origin:

Hard to be definitive without a bilingual photography expert from Japan but

.

Bob, I read your article and propose a different origin : According to Jim Breen, for

example, it is written in Japanese with a Chinese character (Kanji Unicode U+6688 -

Nelson 2151) that is not the same as the one used for senile (perhaps a convenient and

amusing similarity of meaning!)

暈ける 【ぼける】 (v1,vi) to be faded; to be hazy; to be blurred; to be out of focus;

The phonetic characters here are transcribed as "bokeru", as a verb form.

If your browser is confused by those characters see

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1MDJ%DA%F4%A4%B1%A4%EB

[andy_jones2]

http://www.photojpn.org/words/b.html

 

is the best I could find with Japanese photographers' input (Check the credits : Professors

even!) with a definition of boke-aji. They avoid the etymology issue by not using any kanji ;-

)