As a native french speaker, I'm not convinced at all about "zhah(n) bah teest zhoh zef foo 'Ryay" to say "Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier" :D

But it's fun so fun to say

All those, and they couldn't even say which way "tuple" was supposed to be pronounced? I've been dying to know!

As far as I know "tuh-ple" is American programming jargon (Python jargon for sure), while everywhere else it's "too-ple", including American mathematics and European everything - programming and math. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I would pronounce it with the first syllable rhyming with "stew", not "too".

I admit the distinction would be lost on anyone with an American accent anyway since "too" and "stew" rhyme in American English.

Some of the Canadian/American computer-scientists I've spoken to say it as "tuh-ple", including Stephen Cook. I count them as mathematicians.

Honestly the only person I've known to say toople is, uh, me.

I have no idea personally, but I say "tuh-ple" because it comes from "n-tuple" (think of how you pronounce "quintuple").

What about quadru(oo)ple?

I've always pronounced it "toople" but I have never heard many people actually say the word. It's especially confusing as e.g. quintuple is different.

One that got stored in my brain faultily is χ (chi) as "key" versus "kai" - but the indicated pronunciation as ky is still ambiguous (think inky vs Kyle)! Wikipedia says kai. I still tend to pronounce it with a ch sound like Irish, German, Scottish "loch" etc. though.

When you learn that letter in Greek, it's pronounced "key." I don't know if you mathological folks decided to change that or not. ;)

Ha ha, if you're a non-American take these pronunciations literally you will end up sounding like an American mathematician!

orthogonal: US: ohr 'thahg uhn uhl UK: or 'thog uhn ul

Or "beta", "theta" and "zeta", which I would rhyme with "beater" but Americans would rhyme with "data".

Except I'd rhyme "data" with "garter" rather than "dater" anyway so that's a bad example.

Wow, Barbie was right -- math is hard!

(Err, maths)

Fantastic.

However, I wish that IPA pronunciations were also provided.

More and more often now, the IPA transcriptions (and alternate pronunications for some terms) could be mined from Wikipedia. Google's dictionary

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&...

has some entries with IPA transcription of pronunciation, but fewer for mathematics than I expected.

I was excitedly hoping it would be a guide to how to pronounce formulae, alas not.