Talk:Hadron

Pronunciation of "hadron"

The purpose of supplying the suggestion that hadron is pronounced hay-dron is to emphasize the ay sound. Saying the pronunciation is had-ron does not accomplish this goal. According to this web site the long "a" in English Phonetics is represented by "EY". Accordingly, I have modified the pronunciation guide. John R. Brews 12:47, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

According to the following dictionaries, it's pronounced had-ron, not hay-dron or hey-dron.

• Chambers
• Merriam-Webster
• Collins
• Oxford
• American Heritage
• McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technological Terms

That's why I said in the edit summary that, if any evidence can be found for the existence of the pronunciation hay-dron or hey-dron, it should nevertheless be treated as a comparatively rare alternative. Peter Jackson 10:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Peter: Sorry, I didn't catch on that you objected to this pronunciation, and thought you objected to how it was portrayed. I'd simply adopted this formulation from a technical source I had read without looking into it further. I thought Leonard Susskind was pretty authoritative. He provides both hay-dronj and had-ron, seemingly suggesting hay-dron is more common by placing it first. It also is his own pronunciation as in this YouTube interview with him. His etymology hadr appears to be his own.

Now that I have got the point, I looked at the available pronunciation schemes on the web. The source Dictionary.com says the correct phonetic version is had·ron /ˈhædrɒn/ Wikidictionary says the IPA is /ˈhæd.ɹɑn/ and also provides a different etymology: hadros, “thick”, which agrees with Merriam Webster. The sounding at howjsay sounds to me like had-ron, but that at Forvo definitely sounds like the shorter ae sound as in head ron, and accords with the IPA designation.

There is the possibility that the dictionary version is not typical of high-energy physicists, but I don't know that. This YouTube discussion and this one use had-ron, and this one and this one use hay-dron. I'd suggest we adopt both à la Susskind but drop his etymology? John R. Brews 16:22, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

'Head-' would be a highly irregular pronunciation; I suspect it is actually the 'had-' pronunciation in a very old-fashioned RP accent. Ro Thorpe 21:49, 6 September 2011 (UTC)