Now It's a Verb?!

My fifteen seconds [sic] of fame seems to be having a nearly infinite number of millisecond extensions....

It's actually a pretty good ad...communicates the function of the camera feature pretty well.

Mike
(Thanks to Bahi Para and several other readers)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark Roberts: "'Verbing weirds language' —Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes."

Lucian Pintilie: "Apple is wrong in its pronunciation. Not only in this ad, but also during their various launch events where they touch upon photography. For a company very proud of its attention to detail (obsessing over even minute details is something that Apple considers a virtue), getting this wrong is...well, wrong. What message do they send to the discerning public? Do they even realize that?"

Steve Renwick: "It's a confident company indeed that can run an ad making fun of its customers' self-absorption."

Comments

[Gerard Geradts]

Wikipedia AND Apple.......
Wow

[Peter]

I thought Boca was a town in Florida....

[Patrick Pope]

I've run into this thought process so many times shooting weddings this ad is a painful reminder that far too often "art" is in the eye of the consumer.

[Eolake]

Mike, I’m sorry to argue, but no word ever has equal accent on syllables (if it was indeed you who said that originally), though sometimes it is more subtle than others.

[Chuck Albertson]

I thought you'd written that part of the Wikipedia page...am I mistaken? [You are. --Mike]

[Bambang]

Bokehing is now also discriminative (?)

[hugh crawford]

Gosh that un-bokeh feature sounds really great!

[Christer]

I read your origninal article when it was published and have prounounced the word "with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable" since then. No, I use "even stress" (a term taught by my English teacher in 4th grade) rather than equal stress.

I usually turn off you-tubers when they pronounce bokeh like Boca (Raton), unless, of course, I have already turned them off because the way they scream rather than talk, or the way they dress, or because of their lack of in depth knowledge of the subject matter.

[D. Hufford]

Ohh...I am beginning to hate the English version of that word. As I have mentioned before (ad nauseam), I prefer the most common usage in Japanese of the pre-digital era: addled.

Now we are worried about the the proper placement of accent on the correct syllable? Wouldn't worry. Unless you are an upper intermediate or above Japanese speaker, it is not something you should focus on.Who cares? It is now English. Why, the actors in the clip could not even pronounce it correctly, Boka? OK. How about baka? Might be even better.

[PR]

Oh Gawd! If it's not bad enough having 90% of the photographic community misunderstanding bokeh, we'll now have the whole of humanity abusing the term.

[Herman Krieger]

Don't throw bokehs at me, etc.

[Mike Plews]

Put your focus in
Put your focus out
Take your depth of field and you shake it all about
Do the hokey bokeh and you turn your phone around
That’s what it’s all about

Don’t hate me, I got the cabin fever real bad...

[David L.]

Who hath brokah my Bokeh?

[Hugh]

Brilliant advert..

[Peter]

The pronunciation is correct !.

[MHMG]

So, I googled (oops, isn't Google supposed to be a noun?) to find an audio clip of a Japanese person pronouncing "boke". My conclusion is that most Americans simply can't pronounce it correctly even if they try , so it gets "americanized"... (Nighkon, Nickon or Neekon, anyone?)

I don't personally have any problem with America being the melting pot of the English language, but I'm sufficiently humbled by this discussion today just to opt for "blur" from now on!

[Maggie Osterberg]

That is a very funny commercial.

[Rob Campbell]

To save confusion, perhaps translating Boca Raton back into English might help. Maybe not a good idea...

Rob

[It mean's "rat's mouth" doesn't it? --Mike]

[Edward Taylor]

I love the ad. Also, the ad doesn't claim that she is using the correct pronunciation. She is a character in an ad and that is just the way she says it. Just like if she had used the word "ain't," in the ad, that wouldn't mean that Apple was endorsing it as proper English. I don't mind the pronunciation she uses either. BOKAY is what bothers me.

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

LOL, whilst the ad demonstrates the feature well, unfortunately it over-emphasises the emotional guilt angle, so as to make the act of adjusting bokeh (Boca?) socially unappealing.
This means it’s actually an ad tor cropping ;~)

[Michael Matthews]

Pronunciation? Over at Apple they think different. Talk different, too.

[Chuck Holst]

Warning! Once upon a time the accepted abbreviation for science fiction was sf, which also could mean speculative fiction or science fantasy -- a very useful abbreviation, all in all. Then the news magazines started calling it sci-fi, and now you hear it everywhere. Don't let it happen to bokeh!

[Clayton]

I think they pronounced it perfectly. I hate it when people forget what they are on about and start talking about a bunch of flowers.

[Howard]

My old 500mm f8 mirror lens suffered from donuts...no confusion on how to pronounce that!

[MikeR]

Any noun can be verbed.

[Luke]

HAH!
"Do the hokey bokeh".
Mr. Plews, you are funny.

[Øyvind Hansen]

I thought the ad was quite funny. Young moms typically do not to spend any time whatsoever in forums debating the proper pronunciation of bokeh. So if they mispronounce the word it seems all the more realistic to me.

[Adam Bridge]

Lucian probably says GIF as in "jiff" instead of with the hard G, too. But we'll let it pass. :-)

[Rob Campbell]

Mike: "Mouse Mouth"; doesn't make it up to rat status, rat being rata.

:-)

Rob

[Gary]

I had a friend who (I believe on good authority) called the practice of making nouns into verbs a "squish." The squish is ubiquitous in business. Company X is partnering with Company Y.The recent developments in trade will impact our profits. Etc. To be avoided, in my opinion.

[C.R. Marshall]

This doesn't bother me as much as people who pronounce it as bouquet.

[Ben]

But what learnings can we take away from this? ;)

[Lance Saint Paul]

I thought Bokeh referred to the Quality of the out of focus areas - not simply where something is out of focus. So now it's been verbed and misappropriated. If I'm wrong about that I'm still gonna claim I'm right. My mental boca's been outafoca.
My wife asked me what it meant when we saw the ad & I couldn't tell her because I didn't recognize the word. I thought it might be a new acronym, such as... Blow Out 'Cause Aperture - I certainly understood the visual demonstration.
Foca that!