Pronouncing funky star names

I continually read the star names. I know that some of them originate with Arabic translations of Greek names as well as other origins...but none of that helps me pronounce these things. What is your pronunciation guide for the star names (and some constellations)? Do you folks just show up at star parties and wait to hear how somebody else says it? How do you go from reading it, to pronouncing it for the first time without ever having heard it...without sounding like an idiot? :S

Walt

Walt Soderman said:What is your pronunciation guide for the star names?

Most of us mispronounce these names, but if you want professional guidance you'll find it in A Dictionary of Modern Star Names by Paul Kunitzsch and Tim Smart (2nd revised edition 2006), published by the publisher of Sky & Telescope.

There are sets of pronunciations at http://www.earthsky.org/article/50318/star-pronunciation-guide and
http://www.astroleague.org/al/astrnote/astnot07.html

Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the pronunciations of some of the names of the constellations and stars.

http://www.perr.com/constellation.html

I go by the ones in the RASC Observer's Handbook.

Dave Mitsky

I owuld not worry about it all that much....just hang around other astronomers and listen to how they say it. There is no common agreement on how things are pronounced. There are several authoritative guides to it, including one published a decade or so ago in Sky and Tel, I think---but fact is, these are dead languages, and nobody knows just exactly how they were pronounced. (Even Latin, one we pretty much think we know, gets pronounced differently depending on where you learned it.)

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann is famous for correcting people on how they say their own name. I don't know whether that is true or just a legend. But, let's face it, things are what they have become.

Alex