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My wife pronounces it three different ways, each of which she can support. I pronounce it one, but other than that it's the way I've heard it I can't support my pronunciation even after some searches. What's yours and why?

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After reading this thread i don't know anymore.

Cen tar

Or cen tor

I don't pay close enough attention to myself to be sure which i normally say

[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 64 points 3 days ago

sen-tor

As in taurus, which rhymes with torus.

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

This is the only way in English I've ever known

[-] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

A bunch of Americans pronounce it sen-tar for some reason that I've never understood.

[-] prole 2 points 1 day ago

Seems just like a regional accent thing

[-] sem 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That's how it looks.

I also pronounce Taurus closer to "Tarus" than toorus.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

That's one of my wife's answers.

You're very prompt.

[-] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

This is how I pronounce it in Canada

[-] CiderApplenTea@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

That's how merriam webster pronounces it! I'd pronounce it like that as well, got curious, so I googled

[-] JackLSauce@lemmy.world 46 points 3 days ago

Correctly, smugly and pretentiously

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago
[-] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago
[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 24 points 3 days ago

ken-tavr, I think that's similar to how it pronounced in a lot of languges around here, it's also pretty similar how original greeks did it (kένταυροι)

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[-] kemsat@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Like the other commenter I pronounce it sen-tor. Just like the word "dinosaur" I would pronounce die-no-sor if that makes sense. Both words end in "aur".

...though now you've got me curious about how you and your wife pronounce dinosaur :)

[-] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

Dino-saw. That's just because of how the DNA molecule character pronounces it in Jurassic Park, and it cracks me up.

[-] CiderApplenTea@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I always heard it as dina-sour in Jurassic Park, can't shake that mental reference haha

[-] Corno@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago
[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

If it’s in a Greek or ancient Latin context I pronounce it with a hard C, but if it’s a general English context I pronounce it with a soft C.

I’m not sure what the third way would be.

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[-] MudMan@fedia.io 10 points 3 days ago
[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Be fair. We inherited most of that mess from the French.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

You're not wrong.

[-] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

I pronounce it "Phil". And he would appreciate it if you would stop staring at his missing eye.

[-] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted 8 points 3 days ago

sen-tar

"sen-" like "cent" (like 25 cents), and "-tar" like "a tar pit"

[-] Skunk@jlai.lu 7 points 3 days ago

Scent-ore

Simply "englishified" from French where I’ve ever heard only one way, Centaur (100 tor).

[-] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Can’t are

[-] bitofarambler@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago

sen-tar.

i could see sen-tor.

[-] athkore@feddit.nu 3 points 2 days ago

Kenta-kun thsnks to a Japanese dota 2 stream

[-] kuneho@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Ken (as the name) - ta (with a hard T and A as in catapult) - ur (with an u like in Vonnegut's name)

tho I'm from europe speaking a weird ass language

[-] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago
[-] kuneho@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

that's weird, too, but no

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

Sin tar is the usual way, though it'll sometimes come out more sin tawr, where the au is a bit more drawn out.

Sin tore is a fairly common one.

However, sin tar is more common, at least with what I've heard in meat space. That's a fairly limited thing though, since most of the people I have talked to over my fifty years have been fellow southerners. We do tend to use softer vowels in most cases, and tar is softer than tore in the way we tend to do vowels.

However, with the latin and Greek origins of the word, I'd argue that the tar or tawr would lean closer to that than tore, just because of similar words. When an au is present in medical terminology (which is where almost all of my latin and Greek comes from) it usually gets pronounced aw or ah, not oh.

But, I never hear anyone pronounce the initial C as a K, and that's the way it would have been in both of those languages originally. The Greek version is spelled with a K, when written with the usual alphabet rather than Greek. Kentauros.

Which is an aside.

Wikipedia lists the two I did as the usual pronunciations, fwiw. And all the dictionaries with audio options are either those two, or slight variations of them, where the au sound is rounder or flatter than the norm.

Thing is, it's a word in a living language. Whatever the original English pronunciation may have been, that can change, so supporting a pronunciation is kind of meaningless. What matters is consensus over time, and by location.

So, a regional accent that sounds more like cent-ur is just as valid in that region, it just isn't standard. So would any other variant be, if there's enough people using it to be called a consensus.

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[-] SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

tsen-taür, where ü is not an umlaut, but a diaeresis meaning that you pronounce the second vowel in a row, like in naïve or coöperation.

I come from Poland and we read in a consistent way.

The way shit's written \s.

Such a question would make no sense in Polish.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

From now on, I shall only refer to them as kentauru.

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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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