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.