I recently posted a job description. It ended calling for people with both oenophilia and tyrophilia (love of cheese). The latter I derived from the Greek tyros, the y being an upsilon, pronounced "u" (Erasmian), but transliterated y. (http://colet.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/chuck/...)

Now I am informed that it's turophilia (u not y). Google has it 6/1 u/u. Others I can lay my hand on easily—pyrophilia, coryphophilous—use y everywhere.

Does anyone know how this came about?

I suspect a recent (post-Fitzgerald, etc.) coinage.

It's not in the OED, and all the words that are follow the older tyro- pattern.

Oldest cite I can find for tyrophil-: 1907.
For turophil-: 1957.

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 1:58pm.

Nice!

I want to see the job posting ;}

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 6:44pm.

We're going to put it up on the blog soon too.

I misread it as tyrantophilia, and thought you were referring to yourself, Tim.

He's the big cheese around here

Now I want to apply for this job. HUGE tyrophiliac here. ;-)

But yeah, usually upsilons surrounded by consonants seem to pop up as Ys in English. hm. But I would think anybody actually using the word would accept either.

Whenever anyone writes about Greek cheese pies they always say tyropita.

Though not a linguist, I suspect that the substitution of the English "u" for the Greek "y" (turophilia vs. tyrophilia) is merely an attempt to help Greek challenged English speakers approximate the actual Greek pronunciation. I faced a similar dilemma after choosing the Greek "Korydon" (from Theocritus), for my e-mail address.

Evidently, pronunciation of the Greek "y" (upsilon) is similar to pronunciation of the umlauted "u" in German "uber", or the "u" in the French "pure".

One source (Introduction to Greek, by Alston Hurd Chase, Harvard University Press) suggests that when "y", upsilon, is short the pronunciation is similar to the French "tu"; and when long, similar to the 'u' in the French "sur" or the "u" in the German "Hubsch", the German "u" being an umlaut.

Nevertheless, English speakers tend to butcher the pronunciation, pronouncing the Greek "y" as a long English "e", as, for instance, Kor-ee-don (Korydon).

It's nothing of the kind, of course. Here the actual Greek pronunciation would be more like "caw" (omicron being short)-"rrrru" (trilled "r" and umlauted "u"---and "don" ... with the final "o" pronounced long, as in doughnut (or don't), the final English "o" of Korydon being, actually, the Greek Omega. In brief, Korydon should be pronounced, somewhat like "caw' - rrrru - don", with the emphasis after the first syllable.

I don't know, but I suspect that your "coryphophilous" is very similar in pronunciation.

Nevertheless, James Davidson of the University of Warwick, in the Note on Transcription and Pronunciation in his recent volume The Greeks and Greek Love, c. 2007, states that "... pronouncing ancient Greek properly is extremely difficult, so nobody ever bothers." Davidson does help the reader pronounce most of the Greek letters and letter combinations, but, unfortunately for our purposes, not with our omicron "y".

Rood

Sorry, that last "y" should be our upsilon, not omicron. Duh!