Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
15 - A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
Now that the standard model has been with us long enough to have become part of the commonplace wisdom of schoolchildren, it is high time to face head on the contentious issue of how properly to pronounce the word quark. Although only a condensed-matter theorist, I am proud to contribute what follows as a low-cost contribution to straightening out one of the annoying loose ends, others of which may have to wait considerably longer for their resolution.
As a rule, only native speakers of English hold passionate opinions on how quark is to be pronounced, and that is as it should be. One of the glories of the English tongue is that its comprehensibility is undiminished and its beauty even enhanced by the systematic mispronunciation of vowel sounds by non-native speakers. But it is a sad and ugly business when the wrong sounds emerge sporadically from the mouths of natives. Quite aside from such aesthetic considerations, it is surely the duty of us native speakers of English to set appropriate standards that the others, if they so desire, may strive to attain. Nowhere is there more need for clarification than in the hotly disputed case of quark.
The opinion of the majority is clear: Quark is pronounced to rhyme with pork. There is, however, a vocal and embittered minority, biting in its rejection of the prevailing view, whose members insist on pronouncing the word to rhyme with park. It is often argued in defense of this practice that the word is taken from the German name for a horrible yogurt-like fluid, the proper pronunciation of which unquestionably comes closer to rhyming with the English park than it does with pork. This minority argument, however, is entirely spurious. If one were to adopt the German pronunciation consistently one could indeed rhyme quark with park, but only at the price of having to say kvark, which no native speaker of English has ever been known to advocate.
Clearly the decision must be made from a study of English usage and, I would maintain, either on the basis of the Irish variety of English, out of respect for the man who imported the word from German, or on the basis of the American variety, in deference to the man who transported it into physics.
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 103 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016