Talk:microcephaly

US/UK pronunciations of microcephaly
Should the article address the different pronunciations used - specifically, is it a hard k, as in the UK, or a soft s, as in the USA?

With the surge of interest following the association (not yet proven to be causal) between Zika virus and microcephaly, the word microcephaly is being used a lot more by non-medics.

This has raised the issue of its pronunciation. I note that in North America it appears that the preferred pronunciation appears to be "microSephaly", whereas - at least at the medical school I went to - in the UK it is microKephaly.

There are reasons for using either, and as my interest in words precedes my interest in medicine I'm not a believer in pronouncements on what is "correct": the role of a lexicographer is to record current practice, and possibly to explain it, not to pass judgement. In brief, the word is from a Greek work, and in the original Greek, the letter transcribed as a c would be pronounced as a k; but as it's a c, and in English the usual rule is that a c followed by e or i is "softened" to sound like s...

Similar arguments arise around the word skeptic/sceptic (complicated by the fact that, while the original word was Greek with a k sound, it appears to have come into English from the French "sceptique", pronounced septeek).

I have not heard anybody say "etketera" rather than "etsetera"; though I suspect the "it's Greek so it should be a hard k sound" arguments might also apply here...

I note that the OED gives both pronunciations, whereas the US Merriam Webster just gives the American pronunciation.

I am told that in Israel - and I suspect perhaps also in Germany - the c is pronounced "ts" (like a German z).

Penglish (talk) 11:47, 30 January 2016 (UTC)