Karin Nelson

Photographers go crazy for some good bokeh. Bokeh here and bokeh there, bokeh everywhere. There can be any real photography without a bit of OOF (“out-of-focus”) goodness. Prime lenses must be fast, and the background creamy. Everyone does it, and it’s the reason that full frame cameras are all the rage right now. But where photographers – at least in North America – are failing, is with the proper use of the word. Bokeh isn’t pronounced “bo-kay”. Unless you’re living somewhere in the mid west. Neither is it “bo-kah”. The proper pronunciation is bo (like in bo-nd) + ke (like in ke-pt) +h (like in h-e): bokeh. And just before you get overzealous with your newly acquired proper pronunciation of a Japanese word, in the Kansai region (around Osaka), “boke(h)” also means an insult–something like “You dumb $hit.”

Now you know.