According to Merriam-Webster, bokeh is a noun that means 'the blurred quality or effect seen in the out-of-focus portion of a photograph taken with a narrow depth of field.' Apple, however, has different plans.
In a recent video advertisement, Apple has turned the word bokeh into a verb, 'bokeh'd.' Not only has Apple turned bokeh into a verb, it's also taken a stance on how the Japanese term is pronounced, a widely debated topic. Based on the video, Apple's pronunciation of choice is 'bok-uh,' a departure from the Japanese pronunciation which sounds more along the lines of 'bow-kayh.'
The advert itself is humorous regardless of your pronunciation preference and, for better or worse, Apple's 'verbing' of the word bokeh may very well become a universally accepted.
the verbs one would need to describe apples effect on the culture mind language emotional state and psychosis of american and by extension the Americanized portion of the planet , contain enough of the the 7 words you cant say on TV to effectively blocked form posting on this comments section
what kind of person "bokehs" their mind ..... the apple customer as seen in this commercial....thats what kind
What I get from this is the absurdity of leading camera makers leaving that technology out of cameras and instead ...making photographers spend thousand of dollars on lenses to create the same effect. I use 1.4, 1.8 and 2.8 lenses which cost a fortune and often the subject and background distances still aren't ideal and don't render enough boheh so I add some in Photoshop. Meanwhile my LG G7 allows bokeh adjustment when shooting and in good light does just fine. If Nikon and the others don't soon add this technology to cameras so you can get it with walk around 18-140 etc., they will go the way of Kodak.
I disagree. I love optics and always have . There is something more pure about the images coming through real glass. That's my personal preference. I also don't think Nikon will go under because of this issue.
At least iPhone user will love this tech and I think simulation of BokehAjiControl by using this AI tech to get the melting Bokeh of 300mmF2.8 may be rather easier now...
I like the commercial. Better yet, I like the technology and it'll be very interesting in seeing how this and other tech changes photography over the next decade.
Guess I missed 20-30 years, how many did Rip sleep? Maybe it was the developer fumes. Last I knew an out of focus background was just that and "bokeh" was a bunch of flowers!
The commercial sure made me laugh and it makes perfect sense to use "bokeh" as a verb even though it was not a verb initially. We have a history of making nouns become verbs. Xerox? Google? Email? Text?
That's because the average Joe doesn't care about the "quality" of the 'blur' (or out of focus area) as opposed to just reaping the benefits of being able to "blur the background" using tech. :)
Tonight I have noticed there is right comment at the top. ' the Japanese pronunciation which sounds more along the lines of 'bow-kayh.' As a Japanese I think 'bow-kayh is near true pronunciation.... bow-OK may be better :->
Only English speakers would confuse a diphthong (double vowel) "ay" for a single vowel sound (as in "bet"") But you've butchered French for years ("voolay voo kooshay...") so why not butcher Japanese too?
I am told there are still places in the Deep South U.S. (or Australia) where the word "bed" is pronounced as two or even three syllables ;)
And in Parts of Ireland and Scotland. The settlers of the quite a bit of the American South, at least after the Revolution, were immigrants of Scots-Irish descent.
We are all so bent on adopting something exotic to describe something more mundane. I remember we used to call this effect "blur". But, I am afraid, it only divulges my age.
In western languages, the written form is meant to represent the spoken form; one language. If the Japanese written language developed with heavy influence from written Chinese, which resulted in Kanji, an ideographic language, then the introduction of a western alphabet could only be applied as a transliteration of the spoken form. The trouble here is that this transliteration into phonetic sounds would then be subject to regional dialects of the spoken form of the target language.
The way the Japanese pronounce Bokeh may be proper for Japanese, but cannot be preserved in a transliterated written form to be interpreted by regional English dialects. Given that many people pronounce it "Bow-Ka" and given that these are living languages, it becomes a de facto proper pronunciation. In short, Apple is neither right nor wrong.
I agree. Further it is common when words are brought in from another language to be altered subtly or even extremely. There is for example no such place as Munich (Germany), its proper name is Muenchen (or München) and to take it a step further, there is no such place as Germany, its Deutschland. The term Bokeh was first applied to photography by Michael Johnston who writes the exceptional photography blog The Online Photographer https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html In cases of word appropriation like this it really doesn’t matter what the authentic original language pronunciation is (if indeed there is only one pronunciation, see above comment), so many examples one could cite. The Wikipedia has more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh#Origin
Only companies wich produce real fast lenses has moral law to speak about Bokeh. This thing presented at video is just blurred background by imprecise software.
The phone actually takes a series of photos really quickly and blends them to one. It's similar to the X models portrait mode where the 'Bokeh' comes from using both lenses. So they have one lens focused on the subject and the second taking a series of shots at the varying levels of aperture.
@Photo_optimista : I thought they where using the two cameras to determine depth and then applying bokeh artificially?
I don't know how it would be able to create that kind of bokeh optically with such a small sensor. Taking lot's of shots would make no practical difference to that end.
Oh dear... vocal fry wins hands down. yuk... and even that isn't as bad as people pronouncing button without the "t" sound as in "bu-un"... double-yuk.
Hmmm. Wasn't America yet - 1492 is when Columbus, an Italian, sailing on behalf of the Spanish, landed on a Caribbean island (and never actually set foot on the North American continent). The first English settlers landed in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and the colonies (I assume you are referring to North America; those in South America spoke Spanish or Portuguese) remained English until 1776.
Of course, from 1776 on, the Yanks did begin improving on a stagnating language... 😏
neeee-kōn sounds worse. The long “ē” sounds harsher - at least to me. Regardless, no one is going to change how they say it (just like I’ll say bokeh my way) Nikon can’t stop Canadian’s from sayin zed6 or zed7... Since it’s not hurting anyone, people can say it (Z, Nikon, bokeh) however they want.
If Americans can turn harakiri into "hairy carry", karaoke into "carry okey", karate into "karodee" then I guess mispronouncing bokeh as "boka" is par for the course. It sounds weird though because it's usually pronounced correctly on most of the photography videos I've watched. In the Internet age it's really easy to hear the proper pronunciation of a foreign word and bokeh is easy to pronounce properly in English, unlike karaoke. So why be stupid, Apple?
Only in the northern part of the West Country (SW of England) it would be 'boker' with a hard 'er' whereas a little further sound in Devon you'd say 'bowcarr' with a rounded 'r'.
If you were from the east end of London you'd say 'bowka', from Scotland you'd say 'boookah', from Yorkshire you'd said 'buku', from the Midlands you'd say 'bouka' with a nasal inflection, in Northern Ireland you'd say 'berker' whereas in Southern Ireland you'd say 'bouicah'......
King Penguin, that was awesome! I didn't want it to stop! The best part is that as I was reading it I recognized the accents. Any more regional variations?
It's hardly a story really. Anyone who has any level of knowledge about Japanese knows how much that language borrows from others. It's rare for any sentence not to include a foreign word in it. And as for making a verb of the word, practically any word in English can be either verb or noun, e.g. chair, pen, table, model etc etc.
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