The one got me was aphelion, good old Greek word, from ap[o] away from and helios sun. Nice and easy to pronounce, right? [ap-HEEL-yun] Well, imagine my surprise when I hear no less than Block and Bird from Earth and Sky pronounce it [uh-FEEL-yun]. So I look it up in the dictionary and they have it wrong, too, [uh-FEEL-yun], just like Block and Bird.

Well, Harrumphİ!

I guess I'm fighting an uh-fill battle.

Not from this corner of the ring, you're not. If the dictionaries are showing an "aff" pronunciation for aphelion, they've just plain got it wrong. After all, if for no other reason, the fact that its opposite, perihelion, cannot be pronounced similarly should indicate the correct pronunciation. It may, of course, simply be that the OED and all the others have simply chosen to go with the flow.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...