(no subject)

[nny]

[Poll #1251948]

Comments

[innerbrat]

Ahahaha this gets on my nerves for absolutely no rational reason.

It was named to imitate 'gene', and thus has the same vowel sounds.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

It's just one of those things that's difficult to intuit when you're working off a purely visual medium. :D

My academic brain, she say 'huh gene whut?'

[innerbrat]

Uh - maybe. IDK, I've used 'meme' in verbal conversations since before forever: mostly in the social evolutionary context in which it was intended. If people persistently pronounced 'gene' as 'genie', I'd be irritated there, too.

By which I mean: MY ACADEMIC ARROGANCE, LET ME SHOW YOU IT?

>_>

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

*points up*

What they said. ;)

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

What you said. It's the sociological equivalent of "gene" and was coined in deliberate mimicry. Saying it any other way is just odd -- like a grownup insisting on saying "horsie" for "horse".

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Not so much, though, since 'horse' is a word that you're going to here on a regular basis, and therefore 'horsie' is a deliberate mispronunciation. Without knowing the origin of the word meme, which is not unlikely, the fact that it is often used exclusively on the internet within a person's life makes it difficult to ascribe a pronunciation to it accurately.

[(Anonymous)]

This is true. :D I just meant that it's jarring; I guess I just assumed that most people know the origin, so it sounds like a deliberate pronunciation: "I know the word is actually horse/meme, but I like saying horsie/meemee!"

Maybe I overestimate the number of people who look stuff up, though. :D

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

...Sorry, that was me!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

That's the way I thought of it. I believe Richard Dawkins is the one who came up with it, or who at least popularized it - originally the term was "mimeme" as in "mimetic", imitating, but "meme" for short, to imitate "gene".

[vaginasaurus.livejournal.com]

I've always said "mem-ee" or however you want to phonetically spell that. But that's because I'm utterly useless. :)

[kashmir1.livejournal.com]

That's how I say it in my head as well. :D

[midnight-violet.livejournal.com]

2nd one. as in ME! ME! (though i see from other comments this is wrong)...
I'd love to know why drabbles are really called that, because im sure it can't really be after the little precis in the oxford companion to english lit which gets called "the Drabble" at home , after the editor...

[clear-as-blood.livejournal.com]

Probably wrong, but I've always preferred mem-eh/mem-mei. (I fail at phonetic spelling.)

I don't know, meem just sounds too simple/kinda dumb to me. q3t09pwosd Also, I think I've seen it as mee-mee/Me-Me more often than the others. And I don't think it's mem 'cause that would make it the French word.

[florahart]

I have heard this word used by journalists, to mean like, spreading concept, the way we are using it here. It's said meem.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

I know it's 'meem', but I say 'meemee'.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Hee, same here. :D

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

...mime?

[gaffsie.livejournal.com]

I know that it's 'meem' and I try to use that in conversations, but in my head I say 'mem-eh'.

[genarti]

I know that it's meem, and I say it as such now, but it took me a while to get over pronouncing it as mem. Because I read the word "memetics" first, you see, and so mem-->memetics seemed the logical progression to me.